Fistful of Mercy Biography

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.”

Fistful of Mercy Visits Sirius XM's The Spectrum
by Sonya Alexander, October 5th, 2010

Brand new super-trio Fistful of Mercy paid a visit to SIRIUS XM's The Spectrum on Monday, October 4, 2010, and it was easy to see that their comraderie is genuine and this rapport shines through in their acoustic rich, earnest music. Ben Harper, Dhani Harrison and Joseph Arthur joked around a bit before getting started, Ben tickled that he'd just given Pee Wee Herman an autograph, and throughout the session. Good-natured guys with quick wit, when it was time to get down to business, they were consummate performers and perfectionists. Violinist Jessy Green was also with them in the studio and her playing added an additional layer of melancholy to the already tony songs. They performed five of the tracks from their debut album, As I Call You Down, released on October 5, 2010: "In Vain or True," "As I Call You Down," "Father's Son," "Fistful of Mercy," and "Things Go 'Round."

When asked about how they first met:

Joseph: We first met after Lollapalooza, then we formally met. We also crossed paths at the Troubadour.

Ben: Actually we first met in 1994, in England. Peter Gabriel brought you back to meet me. Because it was so crowded backstage, we ended up having a civil conversation in the rankest, dirtiest bathroom...!

When asked about how the group came together:

Joseph: I texted Ben on a whim. I asked him to sit in with me at the Troubadour.

Ben: I'd met Dhani at the skate park, he's a mean skater. This kid can skate on the carpet in his home! Joseph and I decided to hit the studio and I invited Dhani. They had never met.

When asked about getting together for recording the album:

Dhani: I showed up at five to noon on Monday, three ukuleles in my hand. I didn't get the memo!

Ben: I was born three weeks late and I've been late to everything ever since! They were already working by the time I got there. But I saw they were sitting on the floor, legs criss-crossed, apple sauce. That was a good sign.

Joseph: There was definitely a friendship born, a brotherhood. There's a difference between friendship and musicality, and we had both. The illusion of time is extended in the studio, so three days can seem like three hundred years.

Ben: We shared the process of dreaming together and the songs were the conversation. I feel like I brought my 40 years experience to the project. I've always had an investment in harmonies. I grew up on the Carter family, the Byrds, the Blind Boys of Alabama, who I did harmonies with.

Dhani: A friend of mine asked me when he found out I was in the group if I remembered Ben playing at our spring show! He couldn't believe I was in a band with him. I've done a lot of surf rock, electro-psychedelic rock, probably because I didn't want any comparisons to my dad.

Ben: A solo effort would have been different for him...

On the name of the group:

Joseph: At first I wanted to name it something based on a Sergio Leone title, like "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"...."Fistful of Dollars."

Dhani: Fistful of Mercy is also the most powerful Kung Fu. I asked RZA about that and he confirmed it.

On touring:

Ben: We'll have a two week run in the states and ten days in Europe. We've also started work on the next album. Let's not talk about it, though. The vibe is there to do more.

On the current popularity of collaborating:

Joseph: Because record companies aren't really around any more, they don't have as much power, it's cool to collaborate now.

Ben: Music got a little boring there for a bit.

Dhani: Now it's like, 'Let's have fun again!' A lot of people talk about doing projects like this, but they never go anywhere. This just kind of seemed to effortlessly come together. Joe is responsible for us finishing. He was tireless. This record is honest and true, legitimate in its own way. I feel good about that.


Be sure to catch the broadcast of Fistful of Mercy's interview and performance on Wednesday, October 13 at 6:00 pm ET on The Spectrum, SIRIUS channel 18 and XM channel 45. The performance will be rebroadcast on Thursday, October 14 at 10:00 pm; Friday, October 15 at 9:00 am; and Saturday, October 16 at 12:00 pm (all times Eastern).


(from Examiner.com)

Talkin’ Shop in the Back Room with Fistful of Mercy

The back rooms of record stores are sacred and vanquishing. They are not hallowed because they are on the edge of extinction and for anyone who has done time in a record store will tell you, it is where the real fun takes place, where the real conservations between connoisseurs are held, it is an exclusive club for lovers, fanatics and geeks.

In the back of a Jersey strip mall store named Vintage Vinyl, is a spot where the songs and the intellectual and societal debates live on through the fading band stickers and posters that adorn the cluttered walls.

It is where the members of Fistful of Mercy, Joseph Arthur, Dhani Harrison, Ben Harper and I form a circle, and like thousands of times before, we speak in the air of record store clerks of a time gone by about the how three solo artists formed a group, not because of money but for art’s sake.
The record, the self titled Fistful of Mercy, was recorded in three days last January, over Grammy weekend at The Carriage House in Los Angeles. Nine songs recorded in three days is no joke, especially for three guys who have never worked together before, never mind two of them being total strangers.

Dhani Harrison: Ben called me to play on Joseph Arthur’s record and I wasn’t familiar with Joe at that time. I was supposed to be starting my record, a whole crew coming in from England to start on a Monday morning. They (Ben) called me on Saturday to start on the Monday do this record with us? I called my band and my guitar player was like, Joseph Arthur? Get over there. So my guys only had to wait around for me for three days to make the record, they could have waited for three months.”

Ben Harper: It took me 40 years and three days to be in a position, to have my ego checked at the door, to be able to make a record like this, it took R7, working with the Blind Boys, a lot of collaborating, awareness, consciousness, to check my ego at the door and be a voice in the chorus, not THE voice in a chorus. There’s a big difference.”

Their collective harmonies and “group think” mentality has allowed each of them to grow and push themselves to new levels vocally. In particular, there is a specific soul to Joseph’s Arthur’s voice, that has previously been untapped and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by Arthur’s biggest fan, Ben Harper.

Ben Harper (pointing at Arthur): When I heard your voice on “When Things Go Round” I was like, you just broke some shit wide open, I had never heard that, it was something else.

Dhani Harrison: And I thought he just sounded that way normally.

Joseph Arthur: Being around Ben and the way he sings and Dhani, and they way he sings they way they sing, I mean they are such great singers, so it inspires me.

Dhani: I’ve sounded the best in my life on this record, because I had to keep up these guys, you get a verse and you have to do something with it.

Joseph Arthur: Just now, when we just played I was tripping out, Ben was singing a verse, and I was looking at him thinking, damn he’s a good singer. I’m a fan of both these guys.

Dhani Harrison: Me too.

Joseph Arthur: It’s great to be in collaboration with people you have a lot of respect for.

Ben Harper: It pushes you in such a healthy way and that mutual respect enables us. The mutual respect: its wind at our back, its wind in our sails.

Joseph Arthur: It’s the driving force.

Dhani Harrison: Because we had a no time to do it in, we had no time to think about it.

Joseph Arthur: That’s what galvanized it. We were on the spot to invent something, we booked the studio. It had to happen and we didn’t want to waste each other’s time.

Dhani Harrison: Three songs a day, “chop- chop,” cancels all the ego out of it.

Ben Harper: This record for me, is like “Welcome to the Cruel World,” it’s like “Fight for Your Mind” it comes from where I’m from.

Joseph Arthur: It’s a young record.

Ben Harper: It’s got this young innocence and this mandatory sincerity I feel. You don’t profess your own sincerity ever because that’s an insincere sentiment in itself. I didn’t know what I was doing when I made “Welcome to the Cruel World,” and “Fight for Your Mind” and it was the same feeling with this. I am 12 records deep man, I know how do this. It is as fulfilling as it is frustrating, because once you know how to do something, there’s a certain something you can never retrieve and this retrieved it.

Joseph Arthur: There’s a Lester Bangs quote, “Rock n’ roll is all about not knowing what the fuck you are doing.”

Dhani Harrison: I agree with that.

Joseph Arthur: You have to keep putting yourself in positions of discomfort so your sub-conscious can reveal itself, because you re on the spot to invent something.

Dhani Harrison: I showed up saying, where are the songs? Oh we haven’t written any yet. (laughs)


Photo by Rob Roth


Just because a studio is booked and three accomplished musicians get together it doesn’t automatically and necessarily translate to success. The music business, the labels and lawyers tend to get in their own way when it comes to these kinds of collaborations from seeing the light of day, but when it’s good, and Fistful of Mercy certainly is just that, it’s impossible to keep it back, especially when one of them owns a label.

Dhani Harrison: I knew that it had to come out, and soon as possible. To be to able to go make the next one.

Ben Harper: It is so meant to be, because that process, which I can’t believe to this day, triple pinch me, man was curiously smooth. It was meant to be out into the world, because it was too smooth.

Joseph Arthur: It was kind of effortlessness to the whole thing.

Dhani Harrison: Well, I don’t know if it was effortless.

Ben Harper (pointing at Harrison): He’s the head of our label.

Dhani Harrison: In my mind I had to think a lot about on how this was all gonna go down.

Joseph Arthur: That’s why it was effortless.

Ben Harper: He’s been on the phone with iTunes all day.

Joseph Arthur: Oh you’ve been working! I was wondering why it’s so effortless.

Ben Harper: By the way, he’s a killer record exec. I’m just blown out, by what this kid gets done.

Dhani Harrison: I hate record executives. I had to become that which I hate in order to not to deal with those people. Now we all get to not deal with those people.

Ben Harper: But you are born to do it man, you have the shoulders.

Dhani Harrison: You have to become more of shit to do it. I have “prick-i-fied” myself a little bit in the process. But I’m happy because I’ve got thicker skin.

One of first things I notice about them is that there is no clear cut leader of the group. It’s an even trade off, and it seems like the mantra of “checking the ego at the door” worked all the way around, and is instilled in each member, and they have taken notice of me taking notice.

Ben Harper: (smack his hands) Yeah.

Dhani Harrison: Good. I’m glad you noticed that and that’s a cool thing. Because we’re pals.

Joseph Arthur: We’ve got a good chemistry, kinda like family.

Dhani Harrison: (pointing at Arthur’s ear): Are you wearing a skull, dagger earring?

Joseph Arthur: Ah yeah, I did that for you. (laughs)

Dhani Harrison: It’s wicked.(laughs)

Ben Harper: It’s a great opportunity for us to grow together musically in our own direction for years to come, while still staying equally connected to our solo endeavors.

Joseph Arthur: Yeah.

Ben Harper: It’s such an opportunity.

Dhani Harrison: It’s awesome.


by Tim Donnelly, 2010/10/19
(from Relix)

Fistful of Mercy brings a trunk full of energy and creativity to Seattle's Showbox
By Nicole Brodeur

8 p.m. Tuesday, Showbox at the Market, Seattle; sold out.

One night in August, a crowd spilled onto the sidewalk in front of Easy Street Records in West Seattle, bearing witness to the first public appearance of Fistful of Mercy.

The union of Ben Harper, Dhani Harrison and Joseph Arthur was still in its honeymoon stage; they had been together less than a year, and wouldn't release their first album, "As I Call You Down," until Oct. 5.

But it went so well that the band — with violinist Jessy Greene — is opening its first tour here on Tuesday at the Showbox at the Market.

"It was an ecstatic event," Arthur said of the Easy Street session, which drew hipsters and seniors, families with kids. "The energy was so incredible. It felt like we were part of something special."

The whole project is pretty special, considering that the album — a top-shelf mix of folk, blues and rock — was composed and recorded in little more than three days.

"I like to work fast, but this type of experience hasn't really happened to me before," Arthur said by phone the other day.

It started last January, when Arthur (The Lonely Astronauts) was preparing to play L.A.'s Troubadour. He texted his friend Harper (The Innocent Criminals) and asked him to sit in. Harper did, then booked three days in a recording studio and invited Harrison to join them. (Harrison, the son of the late George Harrison, debuted as a professional musician when he completed his father's last album, "Brainwashed" after his death in 2001, then went on to form the band thenewno2.)

Arthur and Harrison started collaborating immediately on a song that would become "I Don't Want to Waste Your Time," which seemed to capture how they were feeling about first meeting in front of studio microphones.

"We were all nervous," Arthur said. "We wanted to make music together, but to book studio time is a little nervy. So I think the album is the sound of a friendship evolving."

Arthur couldn't articulate how they all fit together.

"There's no way to make us into caricatures like that," he said. "Everybody is pretty much a full-on human being. There's a lot of soul and experience and pain."

But what clearly works are their voices: Harper's mix of lightness and blues, Arthur's mix of raw and heartfelt, and Harrison's inherited sound, familiar to anyone who has listened to "Something," yet new at the same time.

"The three voices have a chemistry together beyond anything I could have planned," Arthur said. "I sat there and listened to the playback and it was kind of humbling.

"At the risk of sounding totally esoteric, we were guided by spiritual forces, and I feel like this union has this written all over it."

It also helped that they each take turns driving the music.

"We all respect each other and trust each other and we all hand that off in a nice kind of way," he said. "I like handing it off. I think it's a relief.

"There's a core of love and trust and respect going on."

Arthur, who lives in Brooklyn, is feeling torn because Fistful of Mercy is based in Los Angeles. (They're scheduled as musical guests the first week of Conan O'Brien's new show on TBS).

He isn't sure how it will all play out. For now, he's just grateful.

"I remember when we were recording the album, Dhani said 'I feel like my life just got a whole lot cooler,' and I feel the same way," Arthur said.

"Yesterday, we rehearsed and then went out for a drink and I was like, 'Man, I love these people.' There is a lot of love between all four of us.

"I look at it as a new kind of family."

(from Seattle Times)

Fistful of Mercy skates onto the music scene
November 10, 2010|By Denise Quan, CNN

Dhani Harrison cruises past the conference table on his skateboard and pops a trick in the corner of Hot Records -- the label founded by his father, the late Beatle George Harrison. A couple of minutes later, Joseph Arthur skates down the hall. Then Ben Harper walks in, a black-and-white board tucked under his arm.

So much for networking on a golf course.

The new trio Fistful of Mercy had its genesis at a Southern California skate park. Harrison, who fronts the indie band thenewno2, bumped into Harper -- then in the midst of working with his rock project, Relentless 7.
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"When you're skateboarding, you don't really have time to socialize. It's more like trying not to hurt yourself," says Harrison. "We met again at Lollapalooza, and it was like, 'Oh hi, skateboard guy.' And we talked about doing some songs."

In the meantime, Harper had made plans to enter the studio with Arthur, his longtime friend. "It was all done via text messages really," recalls Arthur. "He asked me if I knew Dhani Harrison, and I said, 'No, is he in our band?' "

The three musicians ended up writing and recording nine songs over the course of three highly productive days at the Carriage House in Los Angeles. Most of the songs are acoustic and feature three-part harmonies.

"I've heard it called a folk record, and I've heard it called a pop record. I've heard it called a soul record," says Harper. "It really is a chameleon of a record."

Its lyrics also have a chameleon-like quality. The album tells the story of someone trying to figure out where he stands in a relationship. Given the fact that Harper recently filed for divorce from actress Laura Dern, his wife of five years, one might think it is a record full of breakup songs -- especially since the CD opens with the line, "Just 'cause you say so don't make it true. Just 'cause it's over don't mean we're through."

"I can see them interpreted as that," Harper says. "It's a record that will reflect where you're at, more than us being able to say what it's like."

Harrison, however, says the lyrics tell the journey of Fistful of Mercy. "I see the record as more people getting to know each other and testing each other's boundaries," he says.

"The first song we wrote together was 'I Don't Want to Waste Your Time,' because we all are a little nervous about wasting each other's time," Arthur says. "The album's kind of like a conversation -- a three-way conversation -- and sort of a document of friends becoming brothers."

CNN spoke with the three members of Fistful of Mercy as they rehearsed for their first tour, which kicks off Tuesday in Seattle.

CNN: You came in working off a phrase, "You love like I love."

Harrison: When I saw Ben, we kind of recognized each other as people that were going to be friends in life. And as I was leaving, I was like, "I like you because you're cool. You love like I love." And he just laughed and said, "That's the first line of the song we're going to write." Sounds kind of corny, but it actually was true.
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CNN: Did you guys write individually, or did you write in the same room all together, throwing phrases and words out?

Harrison: Both. It was like, "How about this?" "No!" "OK, next line." "Yeah!" Boom, boom. It just kind of naturally happened.

Harper: We had something called the Lyric Police. It worked.

Arthur: It's like we tricked each other's egos in a way, because it's like a cartoony way of being able to edit each other's stuff without becoming offended in any way. Plus we had three days, so we kind of got this Brill Building vibe of like, "We just have to get this record done." So you didn't get engaged in a possessive way. It was more like we were one working towards an objective. They say they haven't invented time travel yet, but I think they have. It's called a recording studio. You can fit a month into three days.

Harper: The time constraint works as a discipline to stand up and be the player that hopefully you are, the singer that you are, the writer that you are.

CNN: If I were going to think about an album the three of you might do together, I don't think this is the sound I would have come up with, necessarily.

Harper: Joe brought a lot of equipment -- samplers, digital gear effects. Dhani brought ukuleles, and I kind of went in-between. I brought some acoustic and some electric. And it could have gone in any number of directions, but it pretty quickly defined itself.

Harrison: In my band, I'm kind of used to being the lead guitar player and the lead singer. As soon as I sat down with these guys -- I mean, I don't know if you've heard Joe play, but he is one of the most amazing guitar players that I've heard. And Ben is -- enough said, you know. And so I just kind of gave up on that idea. So I became the keyboard player, which is the first time I've ever played keyboards in a band.

Harper: Well, everything you touch, you play. I think I've seen you sit down with a banjo and write a song in five minutes.

Harrison: It was really bad, though.

Harper: Actually, it was a great song, I'm afraid, and I was a little bit jealous.

CNN: Dhani, you put this album out on your record label, Hot Records.

Harrison: It just happened that Ben was coming out of his deal, Joe puts his records out [on his own label], and we've never put anything out other than newno2 records, but we had the system in place. I said to the guys, why don't we just put an album out on my label? And I couldn't believe it when they all said, "Yes." And then I got to be the record boss, which is a bit of a joke. It's all very family-oriented, ma and pa kind of style. You know, we're all pals.
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Harper: I was blown away, because we sat down to do the art, and he was talking about UV spot varnish, and code numbers and Pantone numbers. But even better than that, there's nothing misspelled on the record, and all the colors are the colors that we picked. So often, you get something back, and it's sort of factory-pressed. But this felt like something handcrafted.

CNN: Ben, when you came into this room, you said, "I'm going to sit on the side." Is it a relief to not have to be the guy to answer the questions all the time?

Harper: For me, it is.

Harrison: For me, too.

Arthur: For me, three.

CNN: Then how do you get anything done, if nobody wants to be the decision-maker?

Arthur: We take turns leading. Of course, there's an adequate amount of tension to make rock and roll together. You don't want a tensionless environment, but there's a healthy amount. You can trust it. There's a load of love and respect, and I think we all have kind of an innate feel about when we should lead and when we should follow.

CNN: So do we call this a debut album, because there's more coming up?

Harrison: We didn't get the hang of making the first record, because it was done so effortlessly. We want to spend some time together, and write some more records. Even if it's just to hang out.

CNN: How is the second album going to sound compared to the first one?

Harrison: It's kind of like saying, "How would you describe a painting, and how's it different from the one you haven't painted yet?"

Arthur: When you write a poem, you write one line, and that line informs the next line, informs the next line, informs the next line -- and then suddenly, it's a poem. So we're in the process of just writing lines right now. So it's hard to know what the poem's going to be.

Harrison: Whatever it sounds like, it'll definitely be fun to make.

(from CNN)

The power of three
Fistful of Mercy puts the 'super' in supergroup
By Sarah Rodman

The first time Joseph Arthur heard a playback of one of the songs by his new group Fistful of Mercy, he was taken aback.

“I heard the harmonies come back and I felt like, ‘Wow, this is special, this is just beyond the sum of its parts,’ ’’ he says on the phone from Los Angeles.

Considering the parts are the well-regarded singer-songwriter himself, folk-soul rocker Ben Harper, and Dhani Harrison, son of the late George Harrison, and that the trio wrote and recorded its debut, “As I Call You Down,’’ in three days, that assessment was happy surprise.

Especially since Arthur and Harrison were total strangers, meeting for the first time in the studio through mutual friend Harper. The trio play a sold-out show at the Somerville Theatre this Thursday.

“He was actually there first and Ben was late, so me and Dhani were hanging out for the first hour messing around with mandolins and acoustic guitars and I was like ‘I guess we better start trying to write some songs,’ ’’ he recalls with a laugh. “Dhani thought that the songs might be already written, and he was just going to come in and sing on my record or something.’’

Instead the trio started from scratch, writing three songs a day — “Brill Building-style,’’ says Arthur — and searching for a perfect vocal blend. “All three of us have a wide range, all three of us can sing comfortably in falsetto and can go low. And we can all play everything so it just fell into place.’’

“The weird thing about working in a recording studio is it bends time,’’ says Arthur of the compressed schedule. “They say they haven’t invented time travel yet, but they really have. It’s called a recording studio. When I think back on that session it doesn’t seem like three days, it seems like it was a month.’’

The result is a record that exudes a pleasant airiness as the singers roam from bluesy back roads (“Father’s Son’’) to folksy back porches (the title track) to gentle, sun-soaked beach pop (“I Don’t Want to Waste Your Time’’) with a few psychedelic finishing touches. The sound has drawn comparisons to Crosby, Stills, and Nash, the Beach Boys, and both groups to which Harrison’s father belonged — the Beatles and the Traveling Wilburys.

Arthur’s heard them all and quotes the late, great comedian Bill Hicks in response. “There was this interview he gave where he said ‘I’m inspired by the idea of Lenny Bruce.’ And I always thought that’s so cool because I understand that. I have a lot of respect for Crosby, Stills and Nash, but I haven’t really explored their music too much, so it’s more like we were inspired by the idea of Crosby, Stills and Nash.’’

The original thinking was that the group would do an acoustic album and put it out on the Internet, but Harrison wanted to put drums on the record and knew just the man for the job.

“We were going to take turns playing drums on some stuff and finally Dhani was like, ‘Maybe I should just call Jim Keltner.’ And we were like, ‘Um, yeah, I guess that would be good,’ ’’ says Arthur with a chuckle of the ability to simply ask the legendary drummer who has played on hundreds of records with everyone from Eric Clapton to Barbra Streisand to the Wilburys to sit in. “Being in the studio with Jim is like a gift from God. Not just because of the way he plays, but hanging out with the guy and listening to his stories, it’s just incredible.’’

In addition to calling old family friend Keltner, Arthur says Harrison was a real driving force in the studio, which is interesting since Fistful of Mercy will be many listeners’ first introduction to him as a musician. “Dhani is fierce, he’s a big leader,’’ says Arthur. Since he and Harper are used to directing their own bands, he says, he’s enjoyed the give-and-take dynamic of the group. “We all take turns driving and that’s what’s great about it.’’

That democracy will extend to their live shows as well, as the trio plans to perform one solo song apiece and a few covers in addition to the album. “That’s the funniest thing about this whole week,’’ says Arthur of band rehearsals. “Getting enough songs to tour on, that’s a problem that neither Ben nor I have had in a long time.’’ He expects that by the time they reach the Somerville Theatre they’ll have a few more originals to debut, since the album only has nine tracks.

Arthur, Harper, and Harrison are so jazzed by the project that fans can expect to hear more from Fistful of Mercy in the future. “We’re all going to release solo stuff maybe in the spring,’’ he says. “But we’re already writing for the next record. It will be interesting to see what it’s like with a lot time. It’s going to be totally different. Hopefully, it makes for something even more powerful.’’

(from Boston Globe)

A Fistful of Mercy and Bursting With Talent
How a surprise supergroup made one of the year’s most critically lauded albums at a breakneck pace.
by Brian McManus

When singer/songwriter Joseph Arthur booked time in Carriage House studio in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles with acclaimed slide-guitarist, friend of 15 years and sometimes-collaborator Ben Harper, he didn’t know exactly what to expect. They hadn’t written anything yet, but figured they’d plunk something down in the studio, have a little fun and, by the time it was done, he’d have a tiny side-project to add to his own burgeoning career.

Something like that.

What he got instead was a full-fledged band, new friends, a U.S. and European tour and a critically lauded album. Add to that promotional appearances on Conan’s new TBS show (which included Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello sitting in) and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (where the Roots backed them up), and being joined onstage by the likes of Eddie Vedder and, whoa, can you say “HAPPY FUCKING SURPRISES”?

“It’s wild. It’s funny how some things manifest so quickly—come up with a band, a name, an idea—and to suddenly see T-shirts with the name on it, tour. It’s amazing,” Arthur says over the phone, en route to the San Francisco airport to catch a flight to L.A..

The band is Fistful of Mercy—a name Arthur came up with by altering the title of Sergio Leone spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars. The album they recorded on the fly is As I Call You Down—a swaggering groove of an eclectic record that’s been described by critics as pop, folk, soul and many points in between. Perhaps the only common word you’ll see in reviews of the band and album is “supergroup.” Oh yeah, did we mention Dhani Harrison is in this thing too?

It started like this: Arthur, more than decade into a prolific solo career, had booked two shows in January at the famed Troubadour in L.A. He wanted to make the nights different from one another, and asked longtime friend and two-time-Grammy-winner Harper to join him onstage one of the nights. Harper joined him for both, and the overwhelmingly positive reaction from the crowd made the two turn the conversation about booking studio time and getting something going—one they’d had many times over the years—into reality.

In the meantime, Harper met Harrison—both avid skateboarders—at a skate park, where the two spent quite a lot of time. Harrison used to ditch school, smoke weed and listen to Ben Harper records when he was 17. He knew who Harper was. It wasn’t until the two talked music that Harper figured out he was talking to the son of Beatle George Harrison. He told his new friend about the Carriage House session he and Arthur had coming up, invited him to join.

The result was three massive double-days in studio, where the newly formed trio made fast friends and wrote and recorded nine songs.

Sounds impossibly hard.

“After making so many records as a solo artist it kinda takes the pressure off in a way,” says Arthur of the daunting task. “That was one aspect of it being a fast process that I think helped us, because it kept our egos out of it. We had an agenda of trying to get at least the framework of the album together in those three days and we had kind of an impossible workload, so it enabled us to come at each other in a way that made us come together as one.”

Part of the “fast process” that didn’t help, Arthur says, is that people keep referring to it, as though the speed at which it all went down and the special circumstances that helped create it didn’t allow them to write a cohesive record, and instead sounds like, as one commenter on No Depression said, just “three guys having a really good time.”

“I just disagree with that,” Arthur says. “I know the three-day album thing keeps going around, but it was a process. The initial spark of it was three days, but we worked on it a good couple months after that in fits and spurts. But the ‘three-day’ thing is working against us in that way, and that’s come up. I think we made a really complete record. I really believe that. I think those songs, there’s some looseness there, but in a way that I think is beneficial to the album. I think these songs will survive the test of time. They’ll be around for 30 years from now. They’ll still hold up.”

Those songs run the gamut of style. Lead track “In Vain Or True,” has a quiet, Beatles-esque quality. “Father’s Son”—the song they’ve been performing on their many television appearances—is a meaty, cocksure campfire bruiser brimming with swagger and a gospel edge, punctuated with handclaps and a foot-stomping Baptist revival feel. The album’s title track is all three-part harmony—a trait beautifully strewn across the entire album—and deep lament.

Originally, Arthur and Harper just thought the album would be a sparse acoustic album. Harrison had other ideas about what it could be, and recruited legendary drummer Jim Keltner—who’s performed with the likes of George Harrison, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell and the Rolling Stones—to play on the record. That changed it mightily.

“He made it a lot better,” says Arthur of Keltner. “Jim came in, and the moment he started playing it was obvious that that was the way forward. I’d call it acoustic soul music. The thing about that record that I think is going to give it the energy to survive is we were discovering the process while we were making it. We didn’t discover the process to make the record—the record is the sound of us discovering the process . In that way, we’ll never be able to duplicate the record.

“It’s mainly like three people coming from an unconscious place and working together, just an acceptance and a celebration of this process that we discovered together.”

In other words, they caught lightning in a bottle—a special moment recorded on tape, shared with one another, and now with everyone.

(from Philadelphia Weekly)