It’s hard to pin down the sound of Indiana band Murder by Death into a nice little press-friendly phrase: Midwestern murder balladeers might work. Brooding, Gothic Americana gets sort of close.
It’s also hard to pin down lead singer/songwriter Adam Turla for a phone interview about the band’s appearance tonight at Little Rock’s Downtown Music Hall. It’s the band’s first Little Rock visit since 2010.
“I’m sorry. Can you call me back in, like, two minutes?” Turla asks.
Uh, no problem.
Wait, wait, wait.
Start to talk with co-worker about 2012 Murder by Death album, Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon, when the phone rings and Turla is on the other end. The band is just outside San Francisco, he says, and needed to make a pit stop.
Back on track, Turla says the band, which also includes drummer Dagan Thogerson, cellist Sarah Balliet and bassist Matt Armstrong (multi-instrumentalist Scott Brack-ett, formerly of Okkervil River, stayed home in Texas for medical reasons. He’s replaced on this tour by David Fountain), has been touring out west for the past few weeks after a stint through Canada.
“It’s been great,” he says. “We’re at the point in our career that we can guess how it’s going to be, but then sometimes we get to a show and there are 100 more people than last time and it’s awesome.”
The group got off the ground in 2000 in Bloomington, Ind., calling itself Little Joe Gould, before changing its name to Murder by Death after the 1976 detective spoof movie written by Neil Simon and starring Peter Falk, AlecGuinness and Peter Sellers.
The band’s debut, Like the Exorcist, But More Breakdancing, was released in 2002. Other releases include Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them?, In Bocca al Lupo, Red of Tooth and Clawand Good Morning, Magpie.
There are also a smattering of EPs, including Fuego.
“We were just kids playing music for fun in college,” says Turla, whose speaking voice is nothing like the dark baritone of his singing. “It just kind of happened that we ended up doing it full time.”
Turla, 32, the group’s primary songwriter, grew up in Michigan, mostly near Detroit. He was 14 when he got his first guitar, a $20 acoustic, inspired by a buddy who had just started playing. He was listening to a lot of classic rock at the time, “The Who, the Allman Brothers … just the kind of stuff you like when you’re 14 and just got your first guitar, the Beatles and the Stones.”
He began writing songs and singing not long after picking up that first guitar and playing with his buddy and a few other friends.
“Here we were, sitting around in this basement with all these instruments and [songwriting] just kinda fell on me. It’s been like that from the start,” he says.
On Bitter Drink, BitterMoon, Murder by Death at times sounds like a cross between Nick Cave and Johnny Cash (and, on “I Came Around,” the Pogues). Turla’s songs often lean to the literary, with evocative imagery heightened by Balliet’s mournful cello.
Turla credits the moody, Gothic feel of Murder by Death to his bandmates’ creativity and unique instrumentation, with not only cello but trumpet, piano and mandolin: “We all have different interests musically, and it’s a weird hodgepodge sound, frankly .…”
Somewhere around this time, Turla’s cell signal goes bad and the interview devolves into a few seconds of “Adam? You there? Hello?” and then silence.
After a little while, he’s back on the phone, picking up where he’d left off and hardly missing a beat.
“I like that,” he says of the band’s sound. “I like eclectic groups and movies that cross genres. I’ve always preferred stuff that’s a bit weird and out there. It comes from our personal playing style and just having, naturally, an eclectic instrumentation.”
Murder by Death
Opening acts: Larry & His Flask,
Swampbird
9 p.m. today (8 p.m. doors open),
Downtown Music Hall, 211 W. Cap
itol Ave., Little Rock
Admission: $15
(501) 376-1819
downtownmusichall.com
Style, Pages 27 on 09/24/2013