Matthews (2012)

Whole Note

With only one day's notice, Dave debuted Mercy on the 4.24.12 episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, with the Roots' "Captain" Kirk Douglas accompanying him on acoustic guitar and backing vocals (the Roots are Jimmy Fallon's house band). Stefan confirmed on twitter that it was a full band song. Dave played it solo at few benefits in the next two weeks before the Summer Tour started.

The full version debuted at the Woodlands tour opener 5.18.12 as part of a three song run of the new album songs. That performance revealed that Rashawn would handle the harmonies and after starting on the guitar, Dave moved to the piano for an instrumental outro that was not featured on the earlier versions. Starting at Scranton on 5.28.12, the outro melted in Out of My Hands (with Dave already at the piano). This combination of songs would continue through the tour with about half of the subsequent versions continuing with the segue. Like the other songs from the new album, Mercy was played consistently during the tour, but not every night.

On June 27th, with the album announcement, management also revealed that Mercy would be the lead single of their upcoming album "Away From the World." A youtube video of the studio version was released that was fairly identical to the live versions, with the addition of strings in the outro. Steve Lillywhite on his twitter account said the radio edit would end at the end of Dave's lyrics and not contain the outro.