Just a few weeks ago PropertyOfZack had the pleasure of speaking with Adam from Murder By Death while on their early fall headlining tour. Adam and I discussed their last tour, their 2010 release, and a 2011 request tour that you certainly do not want to miss out on. Read up and enjoy!

For the record, could you state your name and role in Murder By Death?
This is Adam from Murder By Death. I sing and play guitar.

The band has been constantly touring for a while now and will continue to do so. How have these recent dates been for you guys?
It’s been fun. We’re doing mostly smaller towns, or towns that we don’t get to very often, or we’ll play in a small room in towns that are bigger. It’s been a cool idea. The record release one was more us playing to New York, LA, Chicago and so we’re trying to do a little more of a rock n roll bar tour. It’s been fun. It’s just about done.

How is it having Samantha Crain and Ninja Gun out there with you?
It’s been great. They’re good folks. Tomorrow is Samantha’s last day and then we have two more shows after that. She had some previous engagement, but it’s been really fun. We knew the drummer for Samantha Crain. We didn’t realize she was playing with Samantha Crain, but it’s kind of an awesome coincidence. The Ninja Gun guys are really fun. They’re just good dudes.

The band is obviously still supporting the 2010 release of Good Morning, Magpie.  Now that the albums been out for six months how would you say the total reaction has been?
It’s good. It’s only been six months, but compared to the first tour, there’s definitely more people that are familiar with the record and songs then the week it came out. I like when people are singing along to the new stuff. With each album we put out I’m a little concerned about people enjoying the new one because we just have so much material. Luckily our fans have been so supportive of us in general and let us kind of experiment and change our sound up a little bit to keep it interesting.

The big change in people’s mind for this record compared to previous material is that this had less of a theme to it. Was it odd at all writing songs with no strict guidelines for the first time in a long time?
I never start writing with a strict guideline. Usually what happens is I get a couple songs, I start to notice a story, and I flush out the story. It didn’t start differently. I did the same thing; I started writing songs. It was fun. It was kind of nice to try to make individual stories instead of making one giant one.

What prompted you to wander off into the woods by yourself for all that time to write the record?
It was just something I always wanted to do. I’ve never done more than a night alone camping solo and I decided that two weeks would make for a really interesting and ambitious trip. I think you can sort of become a caricature of yourself with the material you write because you spend more and more time touring or handling the business of your band. You realize that you’re an adult and that this is your job and you have to pay for your mortgage or support your kids. So people start to get consumed with that and I think it gets very easy to make an album a secondary thing, So for me I thought the best thing to do would to be to get away from regular life and just focus on being creative, on being an artist.

Is it an experience you see yourself doing again in the future?
Absolutely. I planned on going this year, but it ended up just being an extremely busy year with touring for the record. We get home on Saturday night and I’d like to, depending on the weather, probably go out for a couple days or something before it gets too cold.

This past summer the band put out a DVD to celebrate ten great years. How did that go over with the select fans that had the opportunity to pick a copy up?
So far I’ve heard people have liked it. I never see press about that or any of the 7”s we put out because it’s never pushed by a publicist. There’s not a lot of coverage. People seem to like it. It’s cool. It has old photos, new photos. Some footage from a 2009 February tour and some footage from 2003 with us playing in basements and stuff.

After these dates finish up in October nothing is on the books. Should we expect to see any more Murder By Death dates before the end of the year?
As far as I know, we’re taking a couple months off just to recuperate and enjoy home. I’m going to do some writing. I’m not thinking about another album yet, but I’d like to write a bunch of material when we decide what we want to do next. If we start early we won’t have to have the moment of, “Oh crap, we have to make another record?” I’d rather just be ready to go.

Is there a relative date in your mind to get into the studio with the material you plan on writing?
Not even close. We’re still going to be touring on this record. I think we’re going to do a winter tour starting in February. It’s going to be a request tour. So when you purchase the ticket you get to pick three songs that you want to hear and the day before each show we’ll see what the votes were and we’ll create the set list based on what people want to hear. We tour so much sometime people say, “This time I can’t make it.” I want to be like, “Don’t miss this tour because you’re going to miss some stuff we wouldn’t normally play. We have plenty of time to rehearse before the tour so we can dig up some stuff that we have never played live or don’t really know how to. It’s a fun idea.

Is Europe a possibility at all in the next year?
Well we did a month in Europe in May and June and covered a lot of ground there, but we did skip some places. Maybe in the summer. I’d like to go over in the summer and do some festival touring.

Murder By Death has been around, as we already discussed, for 10 years now. In that time period musical influences and overall life influences can change so drastically at any given point. How would you say your influences have changed from 2000 to today musically?
With this band I always felt it was never about influences as much as it was just about what we felt like doing with each record. We come from such different backgrounds musically and I think that’s what sort of made our band what it is and what’s been so eclectic is that we never started the band saying we wanted to be “this type” of band. We just started writing songs and it came “this” band. So there has been a huge variety. In the beginning I was definitely more whatever indie-rock was in 2000. Then I think we tried to do something that we thought was less modern. We tried to write good songs that would last that weren’t going to be as easily faded I guess. I would say that’s how we’ve changed. It’s not like the newer the songs are the better, it’s just that we’ve had more interesting sounds.

Is there anything else from Murder By Death that we should be on the lookout for?
I know we’re doing a New Year’s show in Lawrence, Kansas. I’m looking forward to that. We’re going to just keep releasing these split 7”s that we do. I think the next one’s going to be The Builders And The Butchers. Those are fun.

Thanks so much for your time!
No problem, thank you.