What do Al Qaeda's Osama Bin Laden and YellowFever's Jennifer Moore have in common?

Nothing, it turns out.

But when the androgynous, unassuming 27-year-old guitarist tried going through Houston airport security with the 7-inch chef's knife she borrowed from her job cutting brisket at Ruby's BBQ in Austin - the one she used to cut vegetables with for homemade, money-saving meals while on tour, the one she forgot was in her backpack - it took the appropriate authorities over 24 hours to figure that out (and it's still up to a judge to officially determine).

"I've been told to just wear what one might wear to church, nothing that's going to draw attention to yourself," says soft-spoken Moore of the court dates still pending in her case. "It's funny because when they were going through my backpack, well, I had a shirt with fake blood all over it, so it was like, a bloody shirt and a knife."

Legally-speaking, it was technically a felony: "possession of a prohibited weapon in a prohibited place."

Career-wise, it was the best thing she, or drummer Adam Jones, has ever done.

Since forming in 2006, YellowFever has released several EPs of deceptively catchy, intelligently minimalist indie-pop that NPR's Carrie Bowenstein once described as "haunted house surf music," an odd, but somehow accurate label that has followed the band from review to review. Yet despite comparisons to Stereolab and favorable reviews of their self-titled debut LP, the duo's quiet demeanor had kept them largely under the radar ... until Moore's accidental jihad.

"Now if you go on Google and search YellowFever and knife, our band comes up more than it ever did," Moore says.

It only cost her one day in two jails.

"They booked me into the city jail at five in the morning until three in the afternoon and then they put me on this weird chain gang," Moore says. "It takes some getting used to to walk on a chain gang."

The county jail was cold, she says, but homelier.

"I played basketball with the toilet paper in the trashcan and people were trading bologna sandwiches and talking. It was kind of like summer camp, really."

As a result of the incident, the band was forced to cancel several shows on its summer tour, including the Seaport Music Festival in New York, which they were en route to when Moore was detained. When they were given another chance to play the festival a few weeks later, Moore decided to make the most of it.

"They invited us up on stage to play a couple of songs and I wore an orange jumpsuit like the one I had in jail as a joke," she laughs. "But I'm trying to downplay most of that stuff for the most part. I'm not dressing in a ski mask or anything."

For court, her lawyer is recommending slacks and a button-up shirt (and no fake blood).

Moore says she'll comply, just in case.

"I mean, I don't think anyone thinks I'm a terrorist." 

YellowFever

Tuesday, Aug. 10, 8 p.m., all ages, cover TBA
Northern, 321 Fourth Ave., Olympia
northernolympia.org