Jeff: And I'm very curious when we get the chance to talk to musicians, of why you became what you are. What influenced you to pick up a guitar or start singing? What got you into music?

Adam: Sure. For me personally, I would say that I first got into music really just through my stepmom, who was a lot younger than my dad, and she was always going to concerts and she would take me to see really cool stuff, starting about sixth grade. So I would say before I was in ninth grade, I had seen like Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, the Cure, all sorts of stuff, like Red Hot Chili Peppers and David Bowie, the Smashing Pumpkins. She would just take me out and bring me along as her little concert-goer. She was an avid music listener. She had all these great vinyl records that she would loan to me, loaned me an old player, and I would just dig in.
So that was definitely how I got into music as a listener, and I really started to become a very passionate at that age. Then when I was 13, my friend's mom was a garage sale enthusiast, and she bought an acoustic guitar for $20, and she was like, "Hey. Give me 20 bucks and you can have it." I thought somebody might want it, and so I bought it for my friend's mom, and that kinda started it all. It's funny because she actually still comes to all our shows whenever we play in Detroit where I grew up.

Jeff: That's really cool. You had quite the musical education to start off, with all the bands you just named. That'll get anybody into music and anybody wanting to pick that up.

Adam: Yeah, exactly. I felt very lucky and educated in a way that most kids had no exposure that early to the kind of stuff that I was listening to.

Jeff: Of course, and the other thing is, you're getting to see these people in their element. It's one thing to discover, say, David Bowie on the radio or on a record or something, but to actually be able to see him and the spectacle that was David Bowie, that's incredible.

Adam: Oh my god, yeah.

Dustin: The difference between listening to a record and actually going to a show, the inspiration level is jacked like a hundred times when you actually go to a show, and you see these people perform and like Jeff said, they're in their element. Sometimes when I go to these shows it's like, "I need to do that. I need to find a way to be that person."

Jeff: Yeah, so let's move forward a little bit.

Adam: Oh, yeah. It's cool to get that exposure so young for sure.

Jeff: Yeah.

Adam: But yeah, moving forward.

Jeff: Yeah, let's move forward a little bit and talk about ... So you picked up the guitar and then, the inception of what would become Murder By Death, actually started around 2000. Am I correct in saying that?

Adam: Yeah. Before I went to college in '99, and I started messing around, like I was just recording and tracking little stuff. I had a little Fostex four-track that I would do recordings on, and I met some other musicians, and by the end of my freshman year, which I guess would have been early 2000, we played our first show, just opening up at the college radio station for a touring band, and we just took it from there and then when we came back in the fall, we started playing talent shows at the dorms that they would do, and that's how we started playing with Murder By Death. Our early shows were just playing in the little coffeehouse type thing at the dorms, and we just did not have plans or intentions for the band. It really was just a bunch of kids wanting to play music, and just trying to make something.

Dustin: So when did you start to get a little bit of traction and deciding that you wanted to be a full-time musician?

Adam: You know, there was never a full-time musician moment where we were just like, "Oh yes, this is what we're gonna do." We really fell into it. I mean, I guess there kinda was in the sense that, we really fell into it in that way we basically had a moment of ... I would say the first time that a band asked us to play out of town, that was an interesting moment. We started getting known for being ... People started liking us in town, and we had shows that people were actually paying five bucks to get into, and I started doing house shows. We had this house that would do these legendary shows, and the way that we got people in the door was, we were like 19 when we started doing them, and we would just buy a keg, and we would charge five bucks at the door, and we would do three touring bands and one local opener. Everything after paying for the keg would go split among the starting bands, and the local band would play for free, and we were often the local band. We had all sorts of bands coming through doing that. We did about 50 shows over a couple years. The bands that got the biggest ... Other than, I guess we were playing them too, but ... I mean, My Morning Jacket played there. Coheed and Cambria I think did two shows there, actually.

Dustin: Wow, that's so cool.

Adam: We had ... Who else was it? My Chemical Romance was gonna play one time, and then they were just like, "We don't feel like ..." It was before they were big and they were on our old label, and I think they were just like, "Let's just hang out." So we just hang out. And then, we had all these Midwest bands. I think Motion City Soundtrack played one. Just all kinds of stuff. Pele was a really good Midwest indie band at the time, doing instrumental stuff. It was fun.

Jeff: It sounds like a really thriving scene.

Adam: It really was just that we had beer, and we knew so many people, and we threw really good parties, and so people would just show up. I'm actually able to mention that the average show like this would have 150 people at it. I think the most we ever did was 275 crammed into a basement, which was a deathtrap.
This is a good story. We were just remembering this. I was at a wedding this last weekend back in Bloomington, Indiana, where this all happened, and somebody was just remembering like ... We were talking about how everybody smoked back then in Indiana. Just seemed like 90% of people we knew that were 19 years old smoked, and we allowed smoking in the basement, but what was so crazy about it is we had this big basement, and during the semester changeovers, we would basically ... It'd be called a hippie Christmas, because all the students and all the rich kids would basically just buy furniture and then leave it out on the street, and they would just let it sit, so we would go around and we'd collect every couch cushion we could find, and we would liquid nail it in the rafters of the ceilings and all over the walls, and we created this incredible soundproofing that, we only had the cops come once in 50 house shows with hundreds of people at our house.

Jeff: Wow.

Dustin: Wow.

Adam: And so it's pretty amazing, but we also allowed smoking in this veritable deathtrap.

Jeff: Deathtrap, yeah.

Dustin: Oh, no.

Adam: Yeah. It was just insane, but that's what dumb 19-year-olds do.

Dustin: Yeah. You know, it's funny. You were talking about basement shows, and I know Jeff's reminiscing over here too.

Jeff: Oh my god, yeah.

Dustin: Those sometimes were the best shows to play because the energy was so high, and you could just feed off the crowd or the 150 kids that were shoved into a basement so easily, that it was just so much fun to play. They would do it the same way, where it's like five bucks in the door, you get the red cup, you could drink the beer, and usually touring bands made money on donations and merch. We'd walk away with a little bit of money, where it was like, "Man, we should go on a house party tour, because this ..."

Jeff: We almost did. Yeah, yeah.

Dustin: Yeah.

Adam: We did that. That's how this band started.

Dustin: Really?

Adam: That's basically how this band started, is that we ... When we first started the band, we were very indie rock, because that was the scene that we came out of, was the Midwest indie world, and there's all these bands that ... I'm trying to remember so many of them. Pele was one of them, Dianogah ... It was a lot of it was ... The Louisville scene had a lot of good bands like Rodan and Shipping News. It's stuff that was very regional and so we were really into a lot of that, like Touch and Go Records type stuff. So when we first started we were playing art spaces, often like a DIY art space, backs of stores, anywhere that they would allow shows, and lots of house shows, because there just wasn't a culture in 2001 for a lot of music like there is now.
I talk about this sometimes when I talk with younger bands. People who are a little younger than us don't realize that there weren't always tons of cool clubs around. There would be like the club where the radio bands play that aren't big enough to do the big venue in town, and then there would be the little places that everybody would go, that were just whatever was available, and I just feel like the level of those small clubs, you just don't see as many anymore. Instead there's a really good 250-cap club in most towns. But back then it was just sort of like, take whatever you can get, and there was no thought that you would ever make money at that. Indie rock didn't have a future of money in the early 2000s. It was not something ... I don't know, we just never dreamed that it would be a job.

Jeff: Yeah, and I think that's a good way to be, and not attack it like, "I'm gonna be the next big thing." You guys are just going out there for the love of it and it ended up working out for you.

Adam: Oh, yeah. Totally.

Dustin: Well, I remember when we would go out and we would play these shows at these little gigs that would pretty much host us, take all our money and then send us back on the road where it's like, why are we doing these shows at these dive bars when we could just be hitting up these house shows, make at least a few bucks, and have a lot more fun? People actually show up because they're not paying for $9 shitty beers.

Jeff: Yeah.

Adam: Sure. The problem with the house shows is that you never know what you're gonna get, and that's the thing. Anybody who's done enough house shows knows that it's like ... If you do a run of them, if you do six-seven shows a week, you might get a great one, but then the majority of them are just a kid who doesn't know what they're doing, and they haven't told people what time to come, so people just straggle in. You never know when the show's gonna start. They're famous for being a disaster, but the good ones were always great. Even just the show that had like 30 people that actually gave a fuck was always a treat.

Dustin: Yeah.

Jeff: Totally.

Dustin: How many times did the cops show up?

Adam: I have to say, we got pretty lucky. If I was to guess how many house shows we played, I would say ... That wasn't our whole scene or anything, but we probably played maybe like 70 or something, and we never got in trouble, you know?

Jeff: Good.

Adam: It was never like, "We're fucked."

Jeff: Right, right.

Adam: We just felt really ... It was just always something like, "Oh, we gotta be conscious of that." But I feel like we never actually ... I mean, I remember talking to cops and that being a regular part of it, but I never got arrested or anything.

Dustin: That's good.

Adam: Yeah.

Jeff: And like I said, it's amazing that you were able to just go out, do it for the love of it, and now it's turned into this juggernaut of a career for you guys, and the band itself has evolved over the years since its inception, which I think is always refreshing with music out there, and one of the questions I actually wanted to ask you was, through your second album, "Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them?" You actually had some guests from some of the bands that you just were talking about on that record. Going from that record into your third and subsequent seven other records, your full seven records that you have, you changed your singing style. Your first two records, you sang a little bit different and now you definitely have this, as we were saying right before this podcast started actually, this air of Johnny Cash to you now. You've really got this kind of baritone to you. What was the inception of changing that up? Was that just a natural evolution, or was there something behind that?

Adam: A little bit of everything. Basically, our first record we made when I was, I think, 19 years old, and the second record I was 20. Yeah, I think I was 20, and part of it I think was ... For one thing, the big difference between our second and third album was that I took voice classes from Indiana University, and she was like, "Why are you trying to sing so high? It just is not your voice. You need to sing in the lower register. You'll be much more comfortable. You'll have more control." I started doing that, and I was like, "Oh my god. I can't believe I just ..."
You know, nobody ever told me how to sing, and I realized that the reason I was trying to sing high ... and this goes back to what we were talking about before, is that, you know how if you're playing a house show, you can't hear the vocals ever? And I was just trying to get over the vocals, so I can't do this real low sultry kinda thing, which is how I would sing when I was in the car, even when I was a teenager. It was a voice that I'd been singing in church, like when I went to Catholic Mass growing up, my singing voice was low. And I realized that I had been just trying to get it over the band with the higher singing, and it was really challenging for me to sing that high. It really strained my vocals, so it was a tough thing to do, just pushing myself to do that, and I felt so much more comfortable after I took those voice classes.
So that's part of it. It's also just about figuring out, "What is my voice? As a writer, who am I? As a singer, as a guitar player?" Those are questions that you have to ask yourself when you work with ... You know, what feels natural? What do you think sounds cool? Everybody's singing voice is a blend of something that they're born with and something that they're trying to do, and that's the trick. It definitely is hard to know if you're going the right direction, but you just have to pick something and stick with it, and I feel way more comfortable as a singer. I like singing again.

Jeff: Yeah. Well, that's awesome. I always actually wanted to know that story.

Dustin: And I think most importantly, it's about putting in the time, seeing what works for you, listening back. Being like, "Oh, I sound kinda dumb when I sing like that, so I'll make sure to change it a little bit." Or, "Hey, when I make that inflection, it sounds pretty cool, so maybe I'll put that in my toolbox and use that singing trick." I really feel like it's a lot of trial and error, and a lot of just time put into it, or you get lucky and you're classically trained and you have somebody teaching you the whole way, but ...

Adam: Well, and part of it is the physical element. For example, I went back and listened to some of the stuff on the first record and we re-learned some of those songs for the Stanley Hotel shows we do. A couple years ago, we learned a couple ... and there's this one that I sing really high, and I am a much better singer, I have more range than I used to have. I can hit and hold notes. I'm just such a better singer than I was 15 years ago when we made that record, and there's a song where I can't sing that high anymore. My voice has just gotten deeper as I get older, and I had a teenage voice still. I just hadn't fully finished growing, which is a crazy thought, to think that people are still listening to something that I made when I was a kooky teenager, you know? But it's nice. It's great to have a long career, and the fact that people are still interested in something I did a long time ago, as well as the new stuff, makes me obviously very happy and honored. It's nice to be listened to.

Jeff: As it should be.

Dustin: It's probably all that cheap whisky and smoky rooms that really brought your voice down, huh?

Adam: Yeah. Yeah, maybe.

Jeff: Speaking on the musical side of it, Murder By Death has very interesting instrumentation. It's guitar, bass drums, keys and a cello. And a question that arose from our guitarist actually, who also is the guy that just came down and saw you guys perform a show ... He was wondering how, in an instrumentation like that, in a live setting, you play a lot of the times a hollow-body Gretsch guitar, and it sounds like gold and it never feeds back.

Adam: That's a great guitar.

Jeff: How do you handle utilizing an instrument like that with a cello, and then electronic instruments and drums and everything, and not having to deal with feedback?

Adam: Sure. Well, the cello that we play live is, first of all, it's an electric cello that we wrapped in the body of an old beat-up wood cello.

Jeff: Oh, cool.

Adam: So that's one reason it doesn't feed back. Our old piano player, Vincent, who we're still good friends with, he's a woodworker, and so we bought a $50 banger cello and we Frankensteined it together over the electric one, because for years we played just the electric, and nobody understood what it was. It just didn't look great in photos, and especially as digital photography got bigger, we were just like, "Man, I just want people to understand what this thing is. It's a cello." So we did that years ago, and I'm glad we did. I think it just looks better on stage.
So that's one thing. The Gretsch is a semi-hollow. I don't really have problems with it feeding back, because I don't even really use much distortion really. I just do a little bit of gain here and there. The main thing that we struggle with is, we have a bass. We have a cello, which has a lot of bass and body, and then I'm a low singer, and so the hardest thing that we deal with is making sure ... and this is something that, as we get older, we get better at ... is sonic space, and making sure that we're trying to not step on each other's toes or double down and just do too much of the same frequencies.
But that's just something that, as bands play longer, you learn when to lay off. One of the big challenges that we've had with this band, but we've been getting much better, especially over the last two records, is not everybody playing all the time. I think when we were young, it was just like, "We're in a band to have fun. I just wanna play all the time." But we've gotten way better at just being like, "I'm just gonna sit out." There's a song on our second-to-last record called Go to the Light, which originally ... There's a demo of it that's just me and an acoustic guitar, singing and that's the song.
But then when we added the band in and recorded the song on the record, everybody else was playing, and the producer, John Congleton, was like, "Why don't we just take the guitar out and have it be way more airy and so you're just singing over the lap steel that David, our utility guy, is playing, along with the other instruments?" And it's like, "Oh." Sometimes you can just take an instrument completely away and that's the best solution. So now I just sing on that song, and I think that's cool.

Jeff: Yeah. It is a lot about the learning process. Personally as a musician I've learned that throughout my career too. I'm a violinist and I played in rock bands for a long time and I have to deal with sonic issues because for a while I played acoustically, now I play it electrically, but it's also learning where to sit in ... Same thing. When I first was in bands, it was like, "I'm gonna play every note of every song and in between the notes. I'm gonna play everywhere." And now it's gotten to the point where it's like, you know, there are places where I don't need to be there.

Dustin: Also, Jeff never shuts up, so we don't give him a microphone or anything.

Jeff: That's true, that's true. So your writing style is very much storytelling. You've done multiple concept albums throughout the career of the band, and I think that's just really really refreshing and interesting. The band itself seems to be very attuned to movie culture and literature, and that kind of thing, especially you lyrically. Have you ever thought about writing a book, or maybe a companion towards your albums?

Adam: You know, I think part of it is that ... I don't know if I have the focus to do something like that, because I remember when I was in college, I did creative writing classes. I always thought, "Oh, I'd love to be a novelist. I'd love to be a novelist." But I'll say that, one thing is that ... I'm an ambitious guy, but I also know what my limitations are, and I just think for me it would be too hard to ... As I read more about the process of writing a novel, one thing I've heard, and it sounds like good advice to me, is that you basically have days where you write and then you have days where you edit. I think that sort of thing, that's kinda how I approach my songwriting, but I really like being able to pare it down into something as short as a poem or a song, because I just don't produce that much material. Some people are just like a faucet of art, and that's not how I am. I like to distill stuff down.
So for example, I've been writing songs for about two years for what will be the next record, but I have not even begun the editing phase whatsoever. I haven't sat down with a guitar once. I'm just writing, and so I just have all this content for probably like 20 songs so far, that I will then figure out eventually ... I'm gonna start the editing phase in the next month or so, and at that point, then I can present it to the band and say, "Hey, here's what I've got. Let's see if this one sounds good once I actually sit down with an acoustic guitar and sing it for the first time." Or, "Let's see how it sounds when we add all these other instruments, because it's a Murder By Death song." I just feel like the workload to do a novel just sounds so massive, and I dunno.
Like maybe a movie script or a comic or something, but I just don't have the time right now. Sarah, our cellist, and I, we opened a restaurant two months ago, and it is 14-16 hours a day, doing that, and we're just starting to be able to not be there all the time, and it's just an enormous undertaking. We spent the last, over a year restoring a 160-year-building here in Louisville, Kentucky, and it is just a very big undertaking. I'm now humbled by every restaurant I've ever been. Anything that's like a mom-and-pop restaurant, I suddenly have a completely new perspective.

Jeff: So where did that come from? You guys have been doing the band now for the better part of two decades, and finding a lot of success with that, and now like you said, you guys decided to go ahead and become business owners and open a restaurant. Where did that come from?

Adam: I think it's just something we'd always wanted to do. I don't think we've ever taken the band for granted. We've been saying for years, it's like, "Oh, this is gonna go away any day now. People are just gonna not like us anymore. We're not gonna sound like whatever is cool. People are just gonna ..." You know, because we've seen so many good bands almost get there and then disappear. So many friends' bands or just the stuff that we like ... I generally don't like any kind of pop music that's come out in the last, I don't know, 15-20 years. It's just not working for me, and so when you feel like that, and you say, "Well, I'm definitely not gonna write songs like so-and-so." You have to ask yourself, "Is there a future for me in this industry?"
It's hard. You can play the opposite game, which is that you just do the opposite of whatever pop culture does, and we've done that a few times with records where it's like, "Well, what's the zeitgeist doing right now? Let's just do the Murder By Death version of the opposite of that, because I really hate this garbage right now." You can do that, but it's also just such a weird way to ... You never know if anyone's gonna respond. You don't know if people are gonna like it. So I think with the restaurant, it's something that we always wanted to do. Our passion has been food, and by traveling the world with the band, that has only strengthened our love for food. That's what we would do when we get home from tour, is we'd go to the grocery store, just stock up, and get out our many many cookbooks, and just go to town.
This restaurant really is a life dream, and from the moment that we first had any money to save that we earned from the band, we've been putting it away for over 10 years, saving for something like this. Sarah's brother is a chef who's very talented, so he was ready to do it. We were ready, and we've been looking for a building for a long time and finally found one. Just went for it, and now we have six terrifying loans and learning all about customer service and staffing and there's so many elements that are just awful and so much worse than I ever dreamed, but there's also things that are really exciting. We've had all these great bands come in that will eat at the restaurant before their concert. We've only been open two months and when I think about how many people ... We love the idea of feeding people, and the last two months we've fed ... Who's come in? Jim James, Iron and Wine, Modest Mouse, Gogol Bordello ... It's fun.

Jeff: Awesome. Love Gogol.

Adam: It's fun to like, "Oh, you guys are great. Thanks for trying out the spot." We're giving a discount to touring bands. If they reach out to us or we reach out to them, we'll try to set them up with a little bit of a discount.

Jeff: That's awesome.

Adam: It's been fun to tie the two things together.

Jeff: What's the name of the restaurant?

Adam: It's called Lupo.

Jeff: Awesome. Very very cool.

Adam: That's been like, the last year and a half of my life completely, scattered with a few shows in between.

Dustin: How's it feel to be somebody's boss now?

Adam: Well, the fun part is that that's Sarah's job, and I'm not really ... My job was to restore the building, so I was in there doing construction for a year and talking with all the various other contractors and also I do the books, so I do the accounting. I'm kind of a behind-the-scenes guy. Sarah's there now. We open for service in 30 minutes, and her brother's there, so they actually are the boss. I'm the guy that walks in, everybody's like, "Oh, hey man. I think he's one of the owners."

Jeff: That's awesome.

Adam: So it's kinda nice. I like that.

Jeff: So with all this going on, with the success of the band and all that, the one question we always ask on this show: What fuels you personally to continue to create, to continue to go down new avenues like with the restaurant, and to continue to go tour and all that stuff? What fuels you to keep going?

Adam: That's a great question. It's funny because I've asked myself that question before too, because I remember thinking to myself that when I don't get something out of the music that I'm writing, if I don't feel good about it, then I'm just gonna stop, and we'll just break up this band and call it a day, because we've already gotten more out of it than we ever intended. That's been something we've been saying from the get-go. I think what happens with most people is, you put all this work into something, you build up this world of your band, people love it, assuming that they do, and it's hard to say no. It's hard to say no to the offers that you get for the shows or whatever, and so I've asked myself that question, and the truth is that I think ... I managed our band for a long time, and I still business manage the band, I always have, for 17 years. And I've had a lot of people be like, "Hey, if you need a job doing ... If you wanna book bands or help manage bands, you should talk to me."
And while I'm honored by the suggestion that I might be good at that, I don't think I could do it. The only reason I like doing the numbers for the restaurant and for the band is because there's also the creative side to it, and I think you have to figure out at some point, unless you just really wanna be famous or something, which some people, they wanna be loved. Some people, they just need to be loved so much and that's why they're a performer, and that isn't me. I still get stage fright. I just like doing the work. I like working. My parents taught me to just work hard and you'll achieve what your dreams are, and so just dig in, and do the long nights, and make it happen.
And it occurs to me that even though I'm often tired, I am much happier if I'm active and working, and so I think for me, the band fulfills my need to be creative and express some ideas and thoughts that I've had, and it's amazing to have an audience for that. So many people feel that they need a creative outlet, but just nobody listens, and they just don't connect with the idea that it's like, no no, it's the creation that really matters. The celebration of you is an incredible byproduct, if you're lucky enough to get it. But it's also pressure. It's a lot of things, but I just like making shit, is ultimately what it is. I'm always working on some project. Right now I've been renovating my garage. I built a soundproof rehearsal studio in it, and I'm doing ... I store a lot of our vinyl products for the band and stuff, and I've been creating a little warehouse for vinyl storage in another place, and I just like doing the work.

Jeff: That's very very cool. And finally, we kind of touched on earlier, you kinda answered this question. It's been a couple years since your last record, but you are currently writing. You said you got ideas down, you just haven't obviously started editing and bringing it to the band, so another album is ... We can at least say another album from Murder By Death will be on the horizon at some point, right?

Adam: Yeah. I mean, I've been getting asked that more lately because we used to put out a record like every two years, and I think this will have been the longest between records, which wasn't necessarily intentional, but our keyboard player David just had a baby girl in May. We've got this restaurant, it's our baby, and we're just trying to get things ... As you get older, you've got other things in your life and it's just, you realize that not everything has to be so immediate and urgent. So yeah, my hope is before the end of next year I'd like to have a record out. I just don't think there's any need to rush it. I'd rather it just be a good record, and I wanna make sure that there's some powerful stuff on there that people will hopefully get something out of.

Jeff: Awesome. Finally, where's the best place for our listeners to follow Murder By Death?

Adam: My favorite way for people to follow the band is, I like our Instagram account, because we don't do a lot of promotion on it. We don't post that often, but if we're on the road we post more, but Sarah will just do little things here and there, that are just kinda interesting little vignettes of what we're up to, and they're often just sort of unrelated to ... It's not like, "Here's me hanging out with this famous person." It's always just like, "Oh, look at this. We stopped at this gas station and they had the most beautiful cactus." I just mean it's more of like a personal page, and we have our Facebook page which is the best way if you wanna keep up on what we're doing. Like if we're releasing something rare, that's the best way to find us. If you wanna buy our Stanley Hotel tickets, which sell really really really fast, that's the best way. But if you just wanna poke into our world a little bit, that's good. You wanna see what we're eating, follow Pizza Lupo. So it's wood-fired pizza, handmade pasta, and that's our wheelhouse for food. That's where we've been pouring ourselves into. It's been kinda fun, we've had fans coming into the restaurant, just kinda popping in and checking it out, which has been a nice extra support to have that.

Jeff: That's really really cool.

Dustin: You know, you brought it up. I have to ask before wet let you go. How fun are those Stanley Hotel shows for you guys? It seems like the greatest idea in the world.

Adam: It kinda is. I love them. They're a lot of work, because it's basically a concert that's two hours long. It's just us, we play a really long set. It's at 7500 feet, so singing, you feel it. You get out of breath. Even though I'm in good shape and I prepare for it, you get dehydrated. The alcohol affects you more. You have to be really careful. So it's this big thing, but it's also like you're hosting a party for a lot of people, and so you are ... We're basically on display the whole time, and people come up. I do hundreds of photos a night. Hundreds of people. We hang out, we close the bar down. Everybody tells me a story or et cetera, et cetera. It's great. It's very nice and it's fun, but after a few days, it's a serious event, and so I love it because I think it's the most interesting. This'll be the fifth year we're doing it, and I still feel something from the event. The spookiness of the hotel, the wildness of having this crazy event out in a snowy mountain. The whole thing's crazy, and that's why it works.
So I love it, but it's also just like ... My mom wanted to come last year, and I was like, "Mom. You won't see me. I will be literally every minute of every day, I'm occupied. If you come, you just have to do your own thing, and maybe I can have a coffee with you or something." But it's just a huge to-do, because it's my event. I'm talking to the hotel, I'm talking to our manager, our booking agent, just making sure that everything's flowing. Talking to the stage manager, so I'm curating it, so I gotta make sure it's working, and perform, and talk to fans. So it's like ... But every year when it's done, I'm like, "That was awesome."

Jeff: Yeah. Actually, our good friends Brad and Ronnie have came out I think twice to see you guys at the Stanley Hotel, and they come back raving every single time about how amazing a show you guys put on, and it is really great that you guys can do something like that for your fans.

Adam: And you know, the fans are great too. They meet each other, they make friends, and I think that goes a long way.

Jeff: Oh, totally. Totally.

Dustin: And not to mention, Estes Park is probably one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Adam: It's stunning, yeah.

Dustin: Yeah. Elk just roaming around everywhere, and you can eat the elk. They're delicious.

Jeff: Yes.

Adam: Oh yeah, I do every year. I eat like reindeer and shit.

Jeff: That's the best.

Dustin: Yeah, exactly. There's a little joint there you've probably gone to, it's called Grub Steak, and they serve yak and elk there?

Adam: Oh yeah.

Dustin: Oh my god, it's such an incredible restaurant.

Adam: I've had it all.

Jeff: I'm getting hungry.

Dustin: I know, right? I'm starving now.

Jeff: I'm getting hungry, aw man. Adam, thank you so much again for taking the time to talk with us.

Adam: Sure, thank you.

Jeff: I feel like we got a little window into your world, and that was a lot of fun.

Dustin: Yeah, man.

Jeff: And I just really enjoy what you're doing, and I wish you the best with your new restaurant, because it is an undertaking with something like that, but I know you guys are gonna knock it out of the park.

Adam: Thanks.

Dustin: And if you guys need a little bit of extra fuel, let us know. We'll send you some more coffee and keep you going, for sure.

Adam: That's amazing. You should see how much coffee our kitchen crew drinks.

Jeff: Awesome. Well, we'll keep you all Fueled By Death, for sure.

Adam: I love it. Thank you so much.

Jeff: Awesome, man. Thanks.

Dustin: Yeah. Thanks, Adam.