Murder by Death Set to Play in Utah for its Very Last Time

Murder By Death are playing what may well be their last show in Salt Lake City this Sunday (10/19/2025) at The Depot. Doors are at 6 p.m.

After 25 years of building and regularly tending to their cult-like following nationwide, the Indiana six piece is set to largely call it quits. The farewell tour they’re on currently is one long goodbye they get to say in a lot of places to a lot of fans.

When I asked lead singer Adam Turla about how everyone’s reacting on the road, he said it’s been a celebration more than anything else. Not only that — this tour is one of the most successful string of dates they’ve ever had.    

Q: Since you announced your farewell tour, what’s the response been?

Turla: Better than expected. As far as I knew, a lot of people cared about this band, and I felt a lot of people would show up and support it. My wife Sarah (Balliet), our cellist, put it well when she said, ‘When you do a farewell tour, you’re kind of asking if what we did mattered.’ Well, we’ve got the validation we needed and then some. It’s been an overwhelming success, and an emotionally fulfilling one, too. Part of the goal was to put the cards on the table and tell people we didn’t want to tour anymore. We don’t want to be part of the machine of needing to put an album out every two years. There’s never any rest when you’re planning the next tour from the one you’re on. We realized that’s not a good lifestyle for us anymore.

Q: You’re not hanging it up entirely. The band just won’t tour anymore, is that right?

Turla: It’s what we’ve tried to communicate, the best I could come up with. We have these cave shows we do every year, so we’re going to meet up for a weekend each year to do a series of shows. That’s the plan for next year and maybe the one after it. And what if something that sounds really incredible comes up? We’ll never be as active performing as we have been after this last tour, but I don’t want to pretend there won’t be possibilities that surface in the future.

You never know — it could be we play a couple years of these cave shows and then it’s just done, but you don’t get to plan your whole life out, right?

Q: It does seem like bands that “retire” or stop touring or quit making music will take a rest and return after a few years. It ought to be required to take a pause of some kind.

Turla: I can’t tell you how many bands that have reached out to me saying they wished they could do what we’re doing. They have sought my take and wanted to know more about the plan, and assistance on how they might do it. The industry is in such a state right now. Spotify royalties are a disaster. The touring market has been saturated after COVID. There’s feast and famine in this industry, but the peaks and valleys are even more dramatic. It’s a tough time to be a musician in a lot of ways, and everybody’s always hoping their ship comes in. It’s tricky to navigate, and we feel fortunate we’ve had a little more control over our career for a while. The fact we’re allowed to exit on our own terms and positively, I’m grateful for that.

Q: Was the uncertainty of the industry part of what caused you to make this decision?

Turla: No. Once you’ve been in the industry for a certain amount of time, even if things are better after a while, you still have some of the baggage of having had to do it the hard way year after year. Touring gets harder as you grow older. It’s harder to stand up and perform for a couple hours every night. You don’t have the same motivation you once did. And everybody gets sick every tour; you don’t want to go out and have to perform with a cold anymore. For me personally, I’ve been so hands-on with this band, doing everything from the logistics of touring to album releases to writing, and there’s so much to handle. Maybe I’m overly optimistic and maybe I’ll be bored when I quit touring, but I am curious enough to try it.

Q: When you take a long look at Murder By Death, what are you most proud of accomplishing?

Turla: I like that question. I’m most proud when the music feels useful. I get messages from people who talk about songs of ours about loss or death or grieving. They say they listened to a certain song over and over, and it helped them feel hope and process. That feels practical. Somebody was struggling, I made something, and it helped. That makes me feel like the job is worth doing. And that can keep happening after we stop touring. The music will still exist. There will still be a function to the effort we put in over all these years. Hopefully people will keep sending messages after we stop playing.

We weren’t trying to write a catchy tune or look cool on stage. That was not part of our equation. As a writer, I wanted to move people, to make them think about their lives, to have a positive effect on difficult times. I’ve been able to assist with the human journey.

We live in a time where there’s so much content. Some are entertaining. Some are empowering. There are many ways to use media to affect people or change the way they think. With Murder By Death, I wanted to create something that mattered. We weren’t trying to be the biggest band in the world — I lack that kind of ambition — but I’m glad to have helped at all.

Q: So that was always your goal, to make music that mattered?

Turla: I think so. Early on, we were trying to make art. I wanted to live as an artist who made choices and art that mattered to us, that we thought were necessary, important or powerful. Those were our motivations, and it was important to me to never lose that thread.

We have a couple of jokes in the band. One is, whenever we’re writing a new album, if somebody thinks that one of the songs is getting too catchy — if it sounds pretty good and it’s a real earworm — others will say ‘No hits allowed!’ It’s a joke because we’ve never had any kind of hit, not one notable radio song, and we managed to have a good career without it. We’ll twist songs a bit to remove the normalcy of it and add an edge. It’s our strategy for keeping things interesting for us, to make sure we’re always doing this for the right reasons.

Q: Talk to me about the shows you do in the Caverns. Is it a magical place?

Turla: We’ve done that for eight years now, playing the Caverns in Pelham, Tennessee. You walk into the mouth of the cave, and it’s suddenly 58 degrees. We spend multiple nights there a year. It’s really vibey and has the most incredible sound. It’s a tradition, one we want to keep pursuing as we proceed to wrap up.

We were doing the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park shows for 12 years, the hotel from The Shining. While it was really exciting, it got harder to do each year. We went to the Rocky Mountain National Park in January, driving through ice and snow. Everybody’s sick at that time of year, and at 9000 feet of elevation, you’re super dehydrated, and it’s hard to perform and yet, we did 47 sold out shows there. It was a great tradition, but it was time to call it good.

Q: And you said the tour you’re on now is the most successful tour you’ve ever had?

Turla: Yeah, both bigger and better than any tours we’ve opened. Just a fantastic run.

Q: Does that change your mind at all about what you’ve already decided to do?

Turla: No, because it’s an illusion. If we had announced the same exact tour without the caveat of saying, hey, we’re getting off the road, it wouldn’t have done as well. That’s how this industry works. You have big moments followed by quiet periods, and that’s OK. I’m very used to the ups and downs. We’ve never taken a break from touring. Most coming to see our show have seen it before. So we wanted to give the regulars who come see us several times a year a heads up, and let them figure out how they want to engage with us this year.

Q: Besides, it’s better to go out with a bang than with a whimper.

Turla: That was the idea: Let’s go out having fun, a positive experience. I’m calling it a joyful wake.

Tickets are still available.

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