User:Mybudgie/The Mercy Bell

The Mercy Bell, an Australian pop band founded by Becca Boucher (vocals) and Josh Thomson (guitar) in 1992 was originally known as Eat the Menu and started out in the local cafes of Brisbane, Australia. After a few line up changes (including Robert Davidson) two long term members joined – Becca’s little sister Butterfly Boucher on bass and Dale Rankine on drums (from Indy band Pale).

After recording their first album “Little Girl’s cheese” live at The Sitting Duck Café while the coffee machine ground and steamed in the background, they set off to play their first interstate show with only 50 copies of the album (on cassette) in tow…but after their first show the enthusiastic audience paid AUS$700 cash in hand to the band for pre-orders of the album. This overwhelming response concreted the band as a serious outfit and they went on to tour all around Australia for the next six years. Supporting and playing with fellow Australian bands including Something for Kate, Bluebottle Kiss and overseas acts including Blur and the Cardigans. They performed live on Triple J's Australian music show with Richard Kingsmill and recorded two more independent albums “Bite” and “Whoosh”. On the strength of the latter album they attracted the attention of Chris Dunn from Murmur Records but in the end signed a record deal with Polydor Records. “Whoosh” was re-mixed and released under their new band name “The Mercy Bell”.

In 1998 they recorded an acoustic MTV special and recorded an album with Engineer/Producer Victor Van Vugt (Nick Cave, P.J. Harvey, Beth Orton). Both projects remain unreleased to this day as Polydor was about to be bought out by Universal and 'all was on hold'…The band on the brink of signing Publishing (also with Polydor) decided to leave the country and go to USA to find Publishing there instead on an invite (from Becca and Butterfly's musician father Rod Boucher's ex manager). The band now without member Dale Rankine, left to USA and pursued this idea, meanwhile back in Australia they and their A&R were laid off by the new Universal Records Group and ironically the band were re-signed a year or so later to Universal in the USA.

Their time in the USA was difficult re the fact that everything takes so long in the music business and all record companies and managers have many projects on the go, not just the one career (as opposed to the artist). The band were very keen to actually release an album after so many years. They demo-ed and recorded over 20 more songs during this time with a variety of people including Producer Roger Moutenout (Yo La Tengo) but after a six months into the seven album deal they were dropped from the label as once again their A&R person left the company.

The Mercy Bell put business on hold and started playing live again. They enjoyed a short but exciting whirlwind stint in Nashville of radio airplay and packed out shows, until they had to leave to UK due to visas. In London, a bit destroyed by the long trek that is “rock/pop-dom” and their 'finale' USA record deal experience, they played a few final shows in London before Josh Thomson went home to Australia and started playing with his brother in band Full Fathom Five. The Mercy Bell did their final show to date with a string quartet replacing Josh's guitar parts and soon after Butterfly Boucher left UK to follow openings for her own solo career, back in the US.

Becca Boucher (now Rebecca Boucher Burns) eventually went home to Australia too and had two babies but is now back in London making a documentary about her and her sisters life in music and art called “Seven Sisters..including me”. She is also writing music with others including her husband Benjamin Burns for new projects including her own called Belle of the Ball. The Mercy Bell have never officially hung their coat up but they are scattered around the world at the moment…so existence is pending. They are in the process now of putting their music on-line to download. But in the meantime you can look up their separate myspace pages – rebeccaboucherburns joshuathomson and butterflyboucher and just have a listen.