Fistful of Mercy, featuring (George Harrison's son) Dhani Harrison, Ben Harper and Joseph Arthur, performed their first live gig last night in West Seattle at Easy Street Records.
The small, intimate venue was announced just the night before, but word traveled like wildfire and the little record shop was packed to the gills with fans by 7:00. The stage was tiny, and with all the equipment there, there was barely room for the band. What started out as a plan for a small gig, with about 25 chairs lined up in front of the stage, ended drawing such a large crowd that the chairs were removed completely to allow the fans to pack in. The crowd extended through the balcony, back into the store, and out into the street.
Fistful of Mercy is doing some pre-promotion for their upcoming album As I Call You Down, due out around October. The show started a few minutes late at 7:45, and the band seemed to be surprised at the crowd that had gathered to hear them. After saying how much they loved Seattle and were happy to be making their debut performance here, cheers went up, and they also thanked Seattle radio station KEXP for their support.
I caught a glimpse of the set list which was sitting on the stage--here it is: Vain True, Call Down, Fistful of Mercy, Father’s Son, Restore, and Things Go Around. The encore was so incredible that they did one more song called Friends.
According to an article in Rolling Stone on-line, Dhani met Joe at a skate park in Santa Monica and they became friends. Joe invited Dhani to join him in the studio. When Dhani arrived for the three-day recording session, he discovered that none of the songs had even been written. But by the end of the three days, they had nine acoustic songs recorded. Dhani likened it to his father’s band, the Traveling Wilburys. Dhani also got drummer Jim Keltner to do drums for the album. (Jim is not touring with the band however.)
We were treated to a positively amazing, upbeat acoustic set of music by three extremely talented musicians who are well-suited for each other harmonically. Dhani Harrison, also has another band, Newno2, and is the spitting image of his father George Harrison, both in looks and voice, which is surreal all by itself. Ben Harper, an icon in his own right, recently performed the Artists Den with Ringo Starr and has several albums out, all of which were featured prominently on the shelves at Easy Street last night. Joseph Arthur has an album called Nuclear Daydream and played the Montreal International Jazz Festival.
Things Go ‘Round, Harrison said, is a “throw-back to John Lennon's Instant Karma”, about people being held accountable for their actions. Melodically I likened it as well to “Watching the Wheels”.
The audience was asked to sing along with the encore of Friends, and the chorus rendered a beautiful optimism: “I hope you find friends with whom you belong.”
At the end of the show, Dhani told the audience “We’ll be back, probably in October.” After the show I talked to Ben Harper for a moment who told me the reason they started here in Seattle at Easy Street resulted from the friendship the band members have here, with the store employees as well as Seattle itself. He said “We love Seattle, and this is a great place to start. Seattle is amazing, we love it here.”
See the band singing "Fistful of Mercy" on the you tube video below.
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