Indiana indie-rockers Murder by Death will play one of their last shows ever in Orlando

Adam Turla has always possessed an eye for spotting hidden signs in life.

There were signs as a college student at Indiana University that he should take his gothic-country outfit Murder by Death seriously, and that there could be a future beyond playing shows at pizza parlors and basements.

“You get a lot of little signals,” Murder by Death’s frontman tells Orlando Weekly. “It could be something as small as playing a basement show and we got our little CDs out and everybody in that room buys a CD. Or having a show where people were engaged and paying attention.”

Turla saw the signs that he could take the guitar gifted to him from a garage sale, and go pretty damned far with it. He is also cognizant enough to recognize the signs that the show is over.

After playing thousands of gigs and releasing nine studio albums, the show is indeed over for Murder by Death. Their current tour, which heads to Orlando’s Social on Tuesday, is the band’s last. The seeds for closing up shop were planted back during the early days of the COVID pandemic in 2020.

“We were on the biggest tour we ever had and then one day we were driving 16 hours home and had no future in sight. No unemployment and no help was on the way. It was kind of an eye-opener,” says Turla.

“But also I realized I was in a state of feast or famine my entire adult life. I was either completely broke, waiting to go on tour or I just got home from tour and my body is destroyed.”

The band will still play their annual Cave Shows in Tennessee, but will stop touring permanently. Turla recognizes the way the industry has changed for the worse since Murder by Death started two decades ago, in particular thanks to Spotify.

“My instinct is to say that the music industry is worse than when we started,” explains Turla. “I feel like there are more predators out there 1762396506 like Spotify. There are people trying to take our intellectual property. The music industry has always had predators.”

One of the ways that Murder by Death has gotten ahead of the game is self-funding their albums via Kickstarter. The band started using Kickstarter as a vehicle for fundraising back in 2012.

One of the albums that was funded in this manner is their latest, Egg & Dart, released this past summer. The album is focused on something that Murder by Death have been saying a lot of these past few months: goodbyes. Whether saying goodbye to a relationship, or goodbye to consuming mainstream news, the band says farewell in many different ways on Egg & Dart.

They recorded the album in Los Angeles, around the time wildfires were ravaging the city. The setting of the recording of Egg & Dart still weighs on Turla’s mind; he plans on spending time volunteering with disaster relief after the tour is wrapped.

“We went to Los Angeles to record and right around the same time [were] the wildfires in Malibu and Altadena,” remembers Turla. “Our studio was less than five miles from Altadena, and it was a wild time to be there. We had masks on outside and there were windstorms that made it worse. There were wild animals like coyotes, foxes and bears that were fleeing Altadena and you would see them in the hillside. … The whole community stepped up, and it was cool to see the way people were engaging, whether collecting clothing or goods.”

Sometimes saying goodbye means having the freedom to be your truest self. For Murder by Death, growing, evolving and, yes, aging together has allowed the band to do things musically that they couldn’t when they were younger. Egg & Dart pushes at those previous limits.

“With the last couple of records one of the things I’ve had fun doing is trying to get into the headspace of myself in my teens or 20s,” says Turla. “Trying to go back and think about what if I write a song in my 40s that I would have loved to have written in my teens or 20s that I wasn’t as experienced to write back then. I have written certain songs trying to go back and reflect on what I would have to have gotten done that I couldn’t then.”

Lately we’ve seen bands try to relive past glories and reunite for tours. Bands that Murder by Death have worked with musically or toured with, such as My Chemical Romance and Minus the Bear, have reunited recently for reunion shows. But Turla is adamant (at the moment) that we won’t be seeing a Murder by Death reunion tour at the Social in 2035.

“When you do a farewell tour you are ending an era, even if you are a band that intends to come back. We don’t plan on touring again,” he says. “We might play some more shows down the line, but aren’t going to be a band that plays 26 shows in 30 days. The intention is not to do that again.”

With that in mind, Murder by Death are taking it all in on this last ride, and are excited to play the Social one more time.

“We would play at Will’s Pub and the Social once or twice a year back in the day,” says Turla. “I remember one time in 2006 we did this two-night stand at the Social with Lucero and it was this wild tour where we were up all night partying really hard every night. It was a different time, but it was really fun. Whenever we go to Florida we try to go to the ocean or try to go walk on the beach. We try to engage in nature in some way because there’s a great natural element to Florida.”

(Murder by Death with BJ Barham, 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 11, The Social, 46 N. Orange Ave., foundation-presents.com, $35)

Indiana indie-rockers Murder by Death will play one of their last shows ever in Orlando

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