Murder By Death to bring a murderously good sound to Pittsburgh

Murder By Death

Mr. Smalls

Sept. 8, 7 p.m.

Tickets $15

The Pitt News rang up Murder By… Murder By Death

Mr. Smalls

Sept. 8, 7 p.m.

Tickets $15

The Pitt News rang up Murder By Death’s lead vocalist and guitar player, Adam Turla, one afternoon. A low — he is often compared to Johnny Cash — but apologetic voice answered. “I’m so sorry about this, but is there any way you could call me at 3:30? I’m playing Frisbee golf.”

Sure, no problem. Despite having every reason to be, Turla is in no way a contemptuous celebrity. Murder By Death, which in addition to Turla is made up of Sarah Balliet on cello and keyboard, Matt Armstrong on bass and Dagan Thogerson on drums, lives the kind of whirlwind life of which every band dreams. The gang met at Indiana University and started playing in 2000. Its country-rock sound scored the band a song in one of the biggest promoting spots of the year — the “Inglorious Basterds” trailer.

Ironically, the band’s members didn’t even get free tickets to the movie.

The Pitt News: Where were you the moment you found out “Comin’ Home” was being used in the “Inglorious Basterds” trailer?

Adam Turla: I was driving and was stopped at a stop sign because there was construction going on by my house. This guy was waving traffic on, and I looked at my Blackberry and had a message with “Inglorious Basterds” in the title. It was an offer from Harvey Weinstein saying we want to pay you for using “Comin’ Home.” I just started yelling. We were already really excited about the movie.

No matter how hip a band is, they have to sell their stuff these days since no one buys CDs. So for us to be involved with something I 100 percent back is really thrilling. It’s not like getting your song in some crappy hand towel commercial. Like, they’re very soft hand towels!

We saw the movie and just lost it. It’s the best new movie I’ve seen in years. But we didn’t get free tickets! We even asked.

TPN: Did everyone in the band know at a young age they wanted to go into music? How old were you when the Johnny Cash comparisons started?

AT: At 13 or 14, I bought a guitar at a garage sale for, like, $10 and played for fun. I just kept doing it and never stopped. At 22, I started taking voice lessons and they told me I had a low singing voice.

Dagan, our drummer, has played a really long time and always wanted to perform in a band. Sarah went to a youth performing arts high school and started playing cello at around age 8.

TPN: Do you prefer performing live or writing and recording?

AT: You like both because the fact is we tour an average of 150 shows a year. You get kind of sick of it after a while because you don’t take breaks. But after a month in the studio, you get bored.

Traveling is why we do this, though. The opportunity to see the world is a thrill to us, and we’re so lucky. This year alone we’ve been to Europe twice. We’re touring the Virgin Islands, we’re going to Greece. We just got an offer to play in Australia, too.

TPN: What kinds of crazy stuff happens to you guys while you’re on tour?

AT: We have a pretty big drinking group so everybody has their little shame stories or triumphs. Recently we played on the Italian island of Sardinia. The show wasn’t even one of the best shows of the tour, but the experience on the days off was amazing. We spent the days swimming through natural arches.

Across Italy, every city we played they gave us samples of their local moonshine — everyone wants to share.

It’s not always debaucherous, but we have crazy nights playing in the middle of the street in a city with a population of 2000 people in northern Italy. Or playing on the Baltic Sea in Poland on a mountain with horses everywhere. There are so many things that come to mind, it’s almost hard to think of one because the whole thing seems ideal to us.

TPN: Where’s your favorite place to perform?

AT: Every place has a different thing we like about it. The Denver shows have always been really good. I really like Boston because they’re always rowdy and drunk shows. We’ve always liked Pittsburgh. It seems like a big midwestern town and has that mentality we like.

TPN: What is your writing process like? Where do you get inspiration?

AT: I actually try to avoid being involved with too much media when I’m writing, because I don’t want stuff to rub off too much. I want to keep a perspective and the Murder By Death voice.

For this new album, I went out into the woods for two weeks by myself. I set up camp just off the Appalachian Trail and wrote songs. It was just complete

isolation, not talking to anyone and was a really effective way of writing — just out of loneliness.

TPN: How did you decide on your album title, Red of Tooth + Claw?

AT: Sarah chose it. She has a love of biology. It’s referring to the idea of natural selection. Nature is vicious and will defend itself to stay alive via claw and fighting. The idea of this album is brutal and animalistic, and Sarah liked the idea of including humans in the term nature.

TPN: Speaking of names, I definitely thought you were a hardcore metal band the first time I heard Murder by Death. Where did it come from?

AT: It was a comedy murder mystery from the ’70s. It’s funny, because we didn’t realize we would ever be mistaken for hardcore. There were bands at the time who had heavy sounding names, Trail of Dead or Black Heart Procession, and it never occurred to us that maybe they had a problem with people assuming something.

We just thought the name was funny. We thought, “Oh, it doesn’t make sense, so people will just check it out.”

It looks really funny whenever we send checks out from Murder By Death, though. Whenever I go to the bank and cash a check, they’re like what is this?

TPN: What are some of the stand out moments in your career?

AT: We opened some shows for The Pogues. They’re a band from the early ’80s who combine punk rock and traditional Irish music. They made me realize what you can do with lyrics. It ended up being even better than we thought, because not only did we meet them, we hung out with them and hit it off. And they were complimenting us on our music. You always want to be validated by your heroes, but you kind of never expect to be. So when it actually happens, it’s surreal.