Fistful Of Mercy (Ben Harper,Joseph Arthur,Dhani Harrison
**I'VE STARTED A NEW THREAD BECAUSE THE FIRST ONE HAS BEEN RUINED BY BRIGGINS AND A BUNCH OF OTHER IDIOTS
http://www.coldplaying.com/forum/showthread.php?p=4457649&posted=1#post4457649
Joseph Arthur (Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Organ) / Ben Harper (Vocals, Guitar) /
Dhani Harrison (Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Bass)
As I Call You Down
There’s a song called “With Whom You Belong” on Fistful of Mercy’s debut album
that sums up the simple, but affecting sentiment behind As I Call You Down — a
nine-song collaboration among musicians Joseph Arthur, Ben Harper, and Dhani
Harrison. A stellar tune that plays out between heartily strummed acoustic guitars
and exquisite three-part harmonies, “With Whom You Belong” is about friendship,
and, fittingly, it closes out the album. “While we were making the record, we all
became good friends,” Arthur says. “The album is the culmination of those
relationships.”
Spend time around these three and their easy camaraderie is readily
apparent. They banter like brothers and finish each other’s sentences. The album
they’ve made together under the moniker Fistful of Mercy is shot through with
that engaging chemistry. Deeply melodic and willfully groovy (thanks, in part, to
world-class session drummer Jim Keltner), As I Call You Down shines with the
aforementioned guitars, including some killer slide from Harper, and those
undeniable harmonies. It’s the sound of three very experienced musicians, each
used to running his own show, coming together and having a ball.
So how did Fistful of Mercy come to be? Arthur, a singer, songwriter,
guitarist, and painter with a decade-long recording career, and the two-time
Grammy Award-winning Harper had known each other for years, and had often
discussed writing songs together. In January 2010, Harper joined Arthur onstage
at Arthur’s show at The Troubadour in Los Angeles and the two decided to get
something going. Meanwhile, Harper had befriended Harrison, whom he knew
from a skate park the two both frequented. “Ben had no idea who I was when
we were finally introduced properly,” Harrison says. “He recognized me as ‘that
guy from the skate park.’ But I used to ditch school, get high, and listen to Ben
Harper records when I was 17.”
Harper admits he hadn’t recognized Harrison at the skate park (“I wasn’t
looking at his face, I was looking at the bottom of his board,” Harper says, “the
guy’s a badass”), but had heard him interviewed on the radio when Harrison was
promoting You Are Here, the 2008 debut album from his band thenewno2.
“Dhani’s music was amazing, the interview was amazing, and something hit me,”
Harper says. “It was a feeling you get when you hear something you know is
going to represent something else in your life somewhere down the line.”
Harper and Arthur (who had never met Harrison at this point) booked
studio time at The Carriage House in Los Angeles and Harper invited Harrison to
come down. “I thought they had a record done and that maybe I’d turn up and
play some acoustic guitar and do a bit of backing vocals,” Harrison says. “So I
arrive the first day and met Joe, who’s sitting on the floor with five pedal boards,
a sampler, and a sequencer, and I've got … a ukulele. I’m like ‘Shit, I thought this
was an acoustic record? What are the songs? Maybe I should learn them before
Ben gets here.’ And Joe says, ‘Oh, we haven't written them yet.’ And I said,
‘What do you mean you haven't written them yet? You've got an engineer
[sheldon Gomberg] sitting here ready to go, and you haven't written anything
yet?’ Then Ben walks in and says, ‘Right, let's write this record.’"
“We had one line: ‘You love like I love,’” Harper says of the lyric that
begins the album’s title track.
“That was it,” Harrison says. “We started there.”
The odyssey had begun: Three days, nine songs — three songs per day.
Because of the time crunch, Harrison would give them each assignments and
they’d each go off to their corners to write. “It was okay to reject people’s
ideas,” Harper says.
“So our big man egos were kept in the back seat,” Arthur adds.
Harrison: “It was definitely an open forum—”
“—Which is rare,” Harper finishes.
The first day yielded the album’s first trio of songs, the plaintive “In Vain Or
True,” “I Don’t Want To Waste Your Time,” and “As I Call You Down.” The second
day found them switching gears, kicking things off with the rollicking “Father’s
Son,” which Harrison calls the album’s “jug-band jam track,” followed by “Fistful
of Mercy” (which they chose as the band’s moniker after realizing that only a
handful of bands named their group after a song), and the instrumental “30
Bones,” featuring violin by Jessy Greene, who plays with Arthur. On Day Three,
the psychedelic “Restore Me” was recorded, along with the trippy “Things Go
‘Round,” and the emotionally resonant “With Whom You Belong.”
At the end of the initial sessions, nine songs had been sketched out with
vocals, guitars, occasional bass, and bits of production on top. “We thought that
was going to be the record,” Arthur said, “but Dhani was pushing for it to be
more.”
“I'd never done anything like this before, and I thought that with a bit
more effort, it could be this incredible, world-champion kind of record, rather
than just an acoustic thing,” Harrison says. “It could be up there punching
heavyweight.” That’s when the group hit on the idea to bring in Jim Keltner to
play drums.
“He’s the god of the whole thing,” Arthur says of the veteran session
musician, who has performed on albums by a seemingly endless list of artists such
as George Harrison, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, and The
Rolling Stones. “Jim is the Dalai Lama of the drums, straight up,” Harper says.
“He's one of the most important living musicians, and he graced us with his
connection to Dhani.”
“The night I called to ask him to do this, we spoke for three hours,” Harrison
says. “We were both crying, and he said, ‘Not only do I love this record and
would love to do this, but I have all these ideas.’ Sure enough, when he came in
the next day and started playing, everything changed from the first hit of the
drums. Joe said, ‘Now I’ve got to play the fucking bass.’ It opened up a whole
world of possibilities.”
Those possibilities are fully realized on As I Call You Down, which will be
released on October 5th on Harrison’s label Hot Records. The three musicians
plan to tour together and are already incubating lyrics and ideas for a follow-up,
though each has his own solo albums in the works.
“For me, the reason to make a record like this is to be on an album with
Ben Harper and Joseph Arthur,” Harrison says. “That's why I turned up, because I
love their music, and to be involved is improving my musical repertoire. It was a
no-brainer. Why would I want to be on this record? Why would I do this? Because
they're awesome, and I like that.”
http://fistfulofmercy.com/download/
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QjIGa_WMTE]YouTube - Fistful Of Mercy - Fistful Of Mercy (Studio) Joseph Arthur, Ben Harper & Dhani Harrison[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcg9scKfbhM]YouTube - Fistful of Mercy - Fistful of Mercy (Live on KEXP)[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub06BLalx84]YouTube - Fistful of Mercy - In Vain Or True (Live on KEXP)[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkfIlV7Nur8&feature=related]YouTube - Fistful of Mercy performing "Restore Me" on KCRW[/ame]