The Pig Merchants: Religion, Pogs and iPhone Autocorrect

Brad Fuhrman and Adam Rohrer needed a band name.

“Adam had suggested, ‘Let’s call ourselves the pogs’” Brad says. “We were like, ‘Yeah that’d be really cool because then we could have merchandise that would be pog merch,’ and in the course of texting about ‘pog merch’ [the iPhone] corrected it at one point to ‘pig merchant’.”

And for three years now, everyday they’ve been snufflin’. So to speak.

It’s with a sense of humor and humility that The Pig Merchants approach life and music. Adam says, “There is sometimes a sadness to our songs, but that’s just because that’s where we draw inspiration from; the sad things that happen in life. But at the same time we’re hopeful for the future.” However any sadness in their music transcends into, as Brad calls it, “a furious optimism.”

And if Brad and Adam’s apparently different belief systems (Buddhist and Christian, respectively) bleed into their music, it only serves to show that the most elemental human emotions and desires are universal. “I don’t think that either of us set out to write Christian or Buddhist songs,” Adam says, “But because that’s what we are that comes out in it I think.”

Find more information about The Pig Merchants at www.thepigmerchants.com or at their Facebook page.