It’s been more than two decades since Murder by Death formed in the idyllic college town of Bloomington, Indiana — and the years since have found the haunted-Americana outfit pushing the limits of what fans should expect from a live show. This includes the band’s annual two-weekend residency at the purportedly haunted Stanley Hotel, the Estes Park landmark that served as the inspiration for Stephen King’s 1977 horror touchstone The Shining.
Singer and guitarist Adam Turla says he gets a kick out of treating fans to Murder By Death concerts that are experiences, like the Stanley Hotel shows and the gigs the band plays 500 feet deep in the Caverns Pelham in Tennessee.
“I just try to think, ‘What do I think is cool?’ I have a vehicle to make cool things, so I’m gonna make them and hope other people think they’re cool, too,” he says from his home in Louisville, Kentucky, where he’s busy shipping merchandise, including vinyl copies of the new Murder By Death album Spell / Bound, to fans during the holiday rush. “That’s what you’re doing when you’re starting a band. You’re saying, ‘This is what I’m into. I’m making the art I believe in.’”
In the leadup to the 10th anniversary of what is arguably the band’s coolest regular gig, Boulder Weekly asked Turla to share a few of the albums he would bring with him if, like the ill-fated Jack Torrance in King’s masterpiece, he found himself as winter caretaker of the famously spirited hotel. Tickets are already sold out, but if you’re among the many Murder By Death fans who will be purposely stranding themselves in Estes Park this weekend and next, these picks will make for a great soundtrack.
David Bowie – The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
Turla says he was pretty deep into jock life as a teenager, before his whole world changed upon hearing David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. Decades after his life in rock ‘n’ roll started as a kid equally obsessed with the Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, Dungeons and Dragons and Robert Smith, Turla still sees Bowie’s “defiant act” of getting into the Ziggy Stardust character as a line-in-the-sand moment for him.
“He was so out there that it opened up my mind to a [new] form of expression… I was playing sports at that time and there was nothing freeing about sports that I could find. You couldn’t be yourself,” he says. “I realized I was a weird kid and pretty much everyone else that was on the team got weeded out. I watched talented kids get pushed out of the system because they were a little weird. I was hanging on in that world for a while, honestly probably because I was a lefty pitcher and we were rare. I saw a freedom in [Ziggy Stardust] that excited me.”
The Pogues – If I Should Fall from Grace with God (1988)
Next up for Turla would be the Pogues’ classic If I Should Fall From Grace with God, which he heard on a cassette in a car as a kid. “It was so raucous and beautiful, and I was, like, ‘Whoa! You can be both?’ The lyrics were the best I had ever heard at that point, and that became a hugely important band for me when it comes to what I think is interesting about music.”
The Cure – Disintegration (1989)
Opening for the Pogues was a Murder By Death career highlight, according to Turla, but opening for The Cure would be such an honor that he wouldn’t mind retiring afterward. Disintegration is third on Turla’s list of albums he’d take to the Stanley if stranded there.
“It’s one of my most-listened-to albums of all time. … I love their catalog. Anything that came out from their start to the late ’90s was deep in my psyche. I just dug in. That album has such a comprehensive-album feel and it’s also very wintery, so it’s perfect for the Stanley.”
Björk – Homogenic (1997)
The last choice for Turla is Björk’s Homogenic, “another record that just blew my mind when I was starting to realize what was possible with music. I think my friend had told me about Björk, and what I did not understand until I got this record was how it was both super organic and electronic, and that there was a level of composition and artistry that was so much farther in the direction of challenging art than I ever knew was possible in that genre, or whatever I had assumed was her genre.”
He says album opener “Hunter” is apt for being stranded at the Stanley because it’s “another incredible winter song that feels like you are in an arctic tundra pulsing with a snowstorm.”
ON THE BILL: Murder by Death 10th annual concert series. 8 p.m. Jan 6-7 and 13-15. The Stanley Hotel, 333 E. Wonderview Ave., Estes Park. Sold out.
