THE BLACK KEYS

“See the moonlight shining on your window pane,

See it leave you as faithful as it came"

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“C”

Main Decade: 00's

Main Eras:

Alt/HardRock (2000-???)

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Key Members:

Dan Auerbach: Guitar and Vocals

Patrick Carney: Drums

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Key Songs:

Everlasting Light, Tighten Up, Howlin’ For You, Lonely Boy, The Only One, Remember When (Side B), Too Afraid To Love You, Heavy Soul,  Midnight,  Sister, The Moan, Run Right Back, I Got Mine, When The Lights Go Out, I’ll Be Your Man, So He Won’t Break, The Desperate Man, The Lenghts, These Days, Unknown Brother, Run Right Back, Sinister Kid, I Got Mine, Next Girl, Gold On The Ceiling, 10Am, Hard Row, Your Touch, Little Black Submarines, Thickfreackness

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The first Black Keys song I heard on the radio was “Too Afraid To Love You.” I was blown away, and all I could manage to say to my wife was, “Look what we’ve come to! Blues can now be played with a synthesizer, electronic blues… and the worst part is, it sounds damn good!” Of course, it’s not just keyboards; there’s also a guitar and a rhythm section, but basically, the synthesizer carries the main part of the song, and it’s still blues—the good kind. I came up with the idea of ​​calling what I heard from the Black Keys “Blues of the New Millennium.” Somehow, I felt it wouldn’t be the last time I’d hear them. Shortly after, the album Brothers became a worldwide smash hit and has automatically become the one at the top of my list of best albums of the second decade of the century (and they’ll have to work really hard to knock it off). The previously unknown Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney became an overnight sensation, the heirs to the White Stripes, who were then musically going their separate ways.

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Comparisons to the red-and-white duo were inevitable: for the strong blues foundation of their music and their garage influence, for their penchant for lo-fi, for being one of the few truly complete two-piece bands, and for the reference to the colors in their names. But that's where the similarities end. In fact, this "overnight stardom" is quite ironic, because the pair had been laying the groundwork since 2002; Brothers was only their sixth studio album! Of course, after their massive success, everyone rushed to delve into their past and marvel at their previous albums, all of which were of a very high standard. Where had they been all this time? In reality, the Black Keys commercially represent the vast majority of bands who spend their entire lives toiling away, recording in garages, and self-producing well-crafted albums, but who, due to the new global conditions of the music industry, never achieve visibility and play barely enough to survive, if they don't have other jobs to support their passion. The Black Keys were lucky enough to make a phenomenal album that couldn't go unnoticed, and which was partly helped by social media and the speed of communication (and word-of-mouth recommendations) today, but that's the reality for most bands today: surviving for the love of it or in very, very small local circles.

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Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney have been friends since childhood. They met when they were eight years old, as they were neighbors in a small town in Ohio called Akron. Dan's father is of Polish-Jewish descent, and during his childhood, he grew up listening to his old blues records, which had a profound influence on him. His maternal uncles played bluegrass, so they were also a big influence on young Dan, and presumably, one of them bought him his first guitar and taught him to play. In his youth, Auerbach was the very definition of a popular kid: a good student, a guitar player, and captain of the school football team.

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Patrick Carney was the complete opposite. A withdrawn, shy, and insecure boy. His musical influences came from a maternal uncle who had played saxophone with Tom Waits. His parents divorced when he was eight, and he lived with one parent for a while and then the other. His father got a house on the east side of Akron, where the Auerbachs lived. He met Dan playing street soccer with the other neighborhood kids.

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In high school, Dan formed his first band, a blues trio called The Barnburners. By then, he had already absorbed the sounds of his greatest blues influences: Robert Johnson, Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside, Clarence White, Robert Nighthawk, T-Model Ford, Hound Dog Taylor, Fred McDowell, Kokomo Arnold, and Son House. But what Son House was to Jack White, Junior Kimbrough was to Dan—his greatest musical influence. Carney was already a skilled drummer and owned an 8-track recorder, but he was one of the outcasts at school, and although they knew each other, it hadn't occurred to them to try playing together. In 1996, The Barnburners broke up, and a mutual friend suggested they get together and play. The chemistry was immediate. The name came from a schizophrenic friend who used the term "Black Keys" to refer to people with bad vibes who didn't appeal to him at first glance, but it also alludes to the black keys on the piano that form the pentatonic scale characteristic of the Blues. Both Dan and Pat enrolled at the University of Akron, but dropped out to pursue musical success.

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They started playing in local bars, but realized they couldn't make a living from it. They needed bigger venues, and that meant leaving Akron. And to leave Akron, they needed a demo. Dan called his old friends to put together a four-piece band. The idea was to record a song they all knew in Patrick's basement, using an 8-track recorder, an '80s Tascam 388 8-track… but the others didn't show up; they preferred to stay home playing video games. So Dan and Pat recorded it by themselves. They decided they didn't need any more people, and over time the demo grew to six tracks of their own songs, basically blues patterns with improvised lyrics. They sent the demo to a dozen record labels, but the only one that responded was Alive, from Los Angeles, possibly the only one on the planet that could sign them without even seeing them.

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They went into the basement of the Carneys to record their self-produced debut album, featuring a good selection of covers that included the Beatles. And the rest is history… Wait, no! The rest was a long uphill battle, chipping away at the rock, searching for opportunities, and releasing very good albums that no one paid any attention to. Their debut, The Big Come Up, came out in 2002, perhaps the rawest and bluesiest of them all. Thickfreakness followed in 2003, also recorded in the Carneys' basement. The sound is somewhat more upbeat and energetic, still with a blues base. It was recorded in a single 14-hour session. They had tried recording with Jeff Saltzman as producer, but they didn't like it, as they sounded like just another radio band. But the album allowed them to start playing at festivals. Sometimes the travel costs didn't cover what they were paid to perform. They couldn't afford flights, so they spent most of their time traveling in a '94 van they called Grey Ghost (I'm guessing the one on the cover of El Camino?).

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In 2004, they released the EP The Moan. It received good reviews, but their songs weren't getting radio airplay, and live shows weren't paying off. The pair had to cover the losses from a mini-tour in Europe (around $3,000 USD) that the record label refused to take responsibility for. Some time before, Dan had been contacted and offered money for a song to appear in a commercial. They had both been outraged and rejected the offer. By this point, when Nissan offered them money to have "Set You Free" in a commercial, they didn't hesitate. It would be the beginning of more than 300 licenses for commercials, TV series, video games, movies, sporting events, political campaigns, and more. of Black Keys songs, which, ironically, would be what kept the duo afloat until 2008.

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Rubber Factory was recorded in an abandoned building in Akron that had once been a rubber factory. The pair took considerably more time and liberties with the recording, achieving what many consider their first gem. “10 AM Automatic” gained some radio airplay, and the Black Keys began performing at larger festivals, such as Coachella, Boonaroo in 2005, and Lollapalooza. That same year, they released Chulahoma, an album entirely of covers of Dan's idol, Junior Kimbrough, which is largely ignored in their official discography. Their fourth album, Magic Potion, was recorded once again in Carney's basement. By then, their songs were being used in commercials ranging from cars to Victoria's Secret lingerie, and they also discovered that writing original songs for films was a lucrative business, so that year several OMS albums featured previously unreleased Black Keys tracks.

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But they still hadn't taken off as they'd hoped! In 2007, producer Danger Mouse was working on the preparations for Ike Turner's next album and asked them to write songs for it. The thing is, Mr. Turner died during that time, but Danger Mouse was more than impressed with what they had written, so he didn't give up until he convinced them to let him produce the material for what would become Attack & Release, in my opinion another of the duo's tremendous gems. Obviously, it had a bigger budget, was recorded in a proper studio, had ample time, featured arrangements, was their first with a professional producer, and generally had a much more professional feel, without betraying their sound. The album charted, and the duo finally achieved some visibility. In 2009, Dan Auerbach released his solo album, Kip It Hid, which is basically a Backstreet Boys album but without the band's name. Patrick felt betrayed because Dan never told him anything about this side project, so he formed his own band, Drummer. Adding to Pat's divorce, the tensions nearly led to the Black Keys breaking up just as they were beginning to gain recognition. Fortunately, they reconciled, and the result was 2010's Brothers. And now I can truly say, "And the rest is history..." The Black Keys catapulted themselves to become THE band of the early 2000s, with a blues sound reminiscent of the masters of Delta Blues—the most basic kind, with powerful riffs and that raspy voice; they evoke the sounds of 80 years ago, yet simultaneously incorporate futuristic, modern arrangements that seem even a step or two ahead of our time. I called it electronic blues the first time I heard it, and although the synthesizer dominates in only a few songs, Dan's powerful guitar still conveys that cutting-edge feeling, something distant from the past, and yet, also from the future.

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The album Brothers brought them all the fame, recognition, awards, and tons of money they deserved for all their previous albums combined. A flawless, well-rounded album with tremendous songs, full of hooks, and a certain darkness and melancholy of the blues. Suddenly, it turned out that Robert Plant, Billy Gibbons, Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Kirk Hammett, Matt Halders, among others, were "lifelong fans" of the Black Keys. The album swept the Grammys, and the entire record was played nonstop on the radio.

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In 2011, they released El Camino, with even more impressive production (again by Danger Mouse). It's still a great album, but it's the other side of the coin to Brothers, much brighter, more upbeat, with major keys, danceable rhythms, and a greater variety of genres. It swept the Grammys again and was considered album of the year, but in my opinion, it falls a little short compared to Brothers, and I dare say even compared to Attack and Release. However, asking them to reach the same level as Brothers would be too much; it's one of those once-in-a-lifetime albums.

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Let's be realistic, the odds for bands to achieve success peak on their second or third album, and then decline with each release; the odds for this duo, with so much experience, were practically nil. But the Black Keys aren't a miracle. They're the exception to the rule. They're living proof that perseverance and musical quality can overcome statistics, the music industry, the global village (which, in most cases, works against you in music), the anachronism and trends of genres, and absurd comparisons… And they're proof that the Blues is the mother of it all, and eventually returns in various forms when its dying offspring, Rock, needs it most. God Save the Black Keys, the band to watch in the second decade of the millennium!​

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By Corvan  

Jan/14/2014

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