Murder Ballads is a truly unique package, A
Graphic Novel with an an accompanying soundtrack by Dan Auerbach and Robert
Finley. It deftly weaves the music into an narrative that is a meditation on
music, race, obsession, and how far someone will go to see their vision become
real, Murder Ballads follows the fall and reinvention of Nate Theodore, the
dead-broke and deadbeat owner of a failed record label who is on a cross-country
drive in the dead of winter with his wife Mary, fleeing the wreckage of their
business and heading towards the destruction of their marriage. But Nate is
given an unexpected chance to redeem himself when, during an unscheduled detour,
he "discovers"
Donny and Marvell Fontweathers,
two African-American brothers who play a singular version of doom-laden country
blues.


Convinced that the brothers are
the key to his salvation, Nate's desperate to make an album with the brothers
before someone else finds out about them-but he needs money. Money he doesn't
have and can't get through any conventional means. So he persuades Donny and
Marvell to join him in a crazy scheme: they'll undertake a minor crime spree to
raise the funds needed to produce their record. Naturally, complications arise
for this wannabe modern-day Alan Lomax and his soon-to-be stars, and just like
in the murder ballads the Fontweathers Brothers play, the body count starts to
grow..

Music contributed by Dan Auerbach and
Robert Finley."

Visual artist(s): Paul Reinwand, Chris Hunt