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Murder By Death: New Home, New Sounds, New Options

Murder by Death

For Adam Turla and his band Murder by Death, this weekend's Pit Stop Music Festival in Bloomington is a kind of homecoming. Turla founded the group with his personal and professional partner, cellist Sarah Balliet, 15 years ago while attending IU. But last year, while preparing its seventh album, the band relocated to a new hometown, Louisville, and has found itself in new territory, geographically and musically.

"When I moved to Bloomington in '99, I thought I was moving there for four years, and I ended up staying 15," says Turla. "And that's kind of a common story there, because It's a relaxed place, it's an affordable place, it's got culture, it's a place that I think has an independent spirit in the Midwest. "

With a change of scenery for Murder by Death, it happens, has come a change in sound. The band has long been known for gothic, story-driven songwriting, for Turla's moody baritone vocals and Balliet's cello. The reviews of the new album, called Big Dark Love, are mostly positive, but often cite a more streamlined sound. This time in the studio, Turla says, he sometimes started with just his guitar and voice and instructed the other four players to add only the minimum. He chalks it up to the need for the band to evolve.

"Different songs call for different approaches," Turla says, "and I was really happy with some of the ways that we were able to, basically just not jam a ton of playing into songs that I think were served better by being more spare."

Living in Louisville has granted Turla and the band easy access not only to a recording studio they like, but also to a unique concert venue. In June they'll be playing a series of "secret shows" to an audience of 200 in an underground cavern.

"We actually rented it for a week so we can rehearse in the cavern to make sure that we are using the sound of the cavern for the concert," he says. "So we're gonna kind of do like a stripped set, probably, just to make sure that we're not just making this cacophonous nightmare show. Unless that's really cool for a certain song! We've never done anything like that, where the room is almost like a sixth member of the band where you have to work with it and figure out what makes sense."

They aren't just tickets to shows in a cavern, they're tickets to the band's independence. Over the last three years on Kickstarter, fans have been able to make pledges ranging from eight dollars to ten thousand, and be rewarded with innovative incentives ranging from a copy of the next single to a trip with the band to Graceland. What began in 2012 as a way to subsidize vinyl production of its album Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon, and to presell records, turned into a fundraising phenomenon. In 2012, the band set out to raise $100,000. Before making the new record, they set the bar at $150,000. Each time, they nearly doubled their goal. For a while, they could claim the third-most-lucrative music-related project in the history of Kickstarter. Turla claims to be pleased, but not altogether surprised.

"A lot of people don't realize that Kickstarter is not just money from nowhere," says Turla. "The people who have been most successful on it have been building their audience for a very long time. In my experience the groups that go for the everything-now kind of approach don't, the musicians don't usually benefit from it as much as the industry does. But I've always been like a kind of a do-your-own-thing, eventually people will catch up and will figure out if you're doing something honest and something that's yours. Kickstarter, I think, caters mostly to groups that people already are big fans of. And it's just a great platform for groups like us that have been around for a while, that are still growing, but have never had a huge shot to go really big."

Doing well on Kickstarter, Turla says, has given the band new options. Last year they felt free to tour a little less. And they've begun pursuing ways to give back, including donating a portion of their merchandise sales this weekend to the food pantry Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, a place they once relied on from time to time in the town where they made their name.

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