Murder by Death Interview: SXSW 2010

Murder by Death is an Indie Rock foursome from Indiana. They are releasing their fifth album, "Good Morning, Magpie" this April. Spinner interviewed vocalist and guitarist Adam Turla.

Describe your sound in your own words.

I try not to do that because I have no objectivity...mostly we have a cellist [Sarah Ballet], we have a bassist who pretends he is playing a magical guitar [Matt Armstrong], I sing and play guitar and we have a drummer who does metal [Dagar Thogerson]. So we get an eclectic sorta rock, Americana, indie ... It is what it is.

How did your band form?

We partied a lot when we first met at college, and we basically thought it would be fun to start a band. We didn't mean to do it for ten years so far, it's been great and fun and we've kept going with it.

How did you come up with your band name?

It's from a '70s murder mystery spoof, it's by Niel Simon the playwright. It is basically making fun of murder mysteries, there are murders ... and mysteries ... and death. So it made us laugh and we liked having a dark name that was kind of a joke and ridiculous.

What are your musical influences?

I honestly don't know. I try not to listen to too much music when I'm doing a writing session because then you end up copying what other people are doing, if it's something you like it's hard not to have that in your head. There are bands I like, I've been listening to an old Colombian singer. I really like sixties soul music.

What's your musical guilty pleasure?

I was really into Butt Rock ... basically anything with a ton of guitar solos and super high vocals. In high school and my first year of college we would make fun of it but also listen to it. When you listen to this stuff long enough you realize this stuff is actually amazing. Iron Maiden was once something I listened to that I thought was hilarious to "Oh my god, this band is better than every other band." The things I thought were silly like singing really high and playing guitar really fast was actually their talents. It might not be the most artistic to some people, but damned if I don't still listen to it fifteen years later

What is the inspiration behind the songs?

It's mostly the fact that none of us listen to the same music. We just basically, everyone does their own thing with the interest of making each song as strong as it can be. We try and bring our own personal style to the table for each song.

Favorite song from your new album?

I really like the song 'White Noise' which is near the end, because it is this dark brooding song. It seems like it is going to explode at some point and get really loud or really heavy but it just never does. It keeps this slinky sort of dark feeling to it throughout, I really like that we chose to go that way with it. For totally other reasons I like this song 'King of the Gutters, Prince of the Dogs' which is really just interesting because I get to play fly guitar for the whole song and it changes time in the middle of the song and goes into double time -- it's really fun to play live.

What's in your festival survival kit?

I don't have one. Maybe booze. A flask.

What's your favorite gig you've done?

We've done eleven hundred gigs, so I've had many favorites. One of my favorites we were playing in Switzerland on my birthday, July 3rd, and we playing outside and it was right on a lake and there were boats pulling up and listening while we were playing. It was an amazing show.

What's your biggest vice?

This band.

What's the craziest thing you've seen or experienced while on tour?

There are so many things...I remember one of my favorite nights of a tour that was rowdy. We got extremely wasted after a show in San Diego. We had all these fireworks in our hotel room and there was an old people's home across the street from the hotel and there were some open windows and we just started shooting them through the open windows. That was pretty shitty. And we threw an ironing board down three flights of stairs. That was pretty cool.

Beatles or Stones?

Definitely the Stones. I liked the Beatles when I was a kid but they lost me as I got older. The Stones, I keep finding more and more material that I appreciate now.


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