For the Black Keys, 2025 is about doing what they love, making records and traveling, in their own terms.
That is his way of leaving behind the disaster that was 2024: his worst graphic album since 2006, the cancellation of a sand tour after the sale of tickets was delayed, and the dismissal and public punishment of the legendary manager Irving Azoff, as well as his public relations team.
The title of his new album, “No Rain, No Flowers”, offers a positive turn in the growth of experience, which guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Bodye resonated in our conversation before his show in the Greek theater on Tuesday.
“This is an opportunity to get out of the pressure cooker in a tour form that we realized that it was unsustainable and it was not ideal for fans or is pleasant for us,” says Carney.
“We like to be a loser,” adds Auerbach.
The two grew up playing Wiffle Ball and play football in Akron, Ohio, but they were separated and did not form a band until their brothers (who were close friends) urged them to get stuck. They found power in their blue and raw and stripped rocks and finally formed the black keys. But they had to build a friendship while they were building a career.
“We had never gone to a party together or socialized a lot and then we met in a truck driving for programs so that our friendship had a great learning curve,” says Carney.
They began in 2001 as the independent law par excellence, their first two albums were recorded in the basement of Carney, but at the end of the decade they were a rock band in a roll: “Brothers”, they reached number 3 on the posters lists; “The road” reached number 2 and “Gurn Blue” took them to the top. These three albums obtained 11 Grammy nominations and the band was selling sands and heading Coachella.
Naturally, some of the first fans complained while moving beyond their sound of Lo-Fi. “I remember just before 'the way' to think that this could be too rock-And-volin for our base,” says Carney, “but for me the change was a sign in which we were not calling it.”
But despite the success, the band finally burned. In his commercial Zenith, they went to paralyze. “We are not opposite,” says Carney, the most volatile of the two. “But we had achieved all these things, and we felt it was time to get out of the roller coaster.”
In their separate time, both men produced other artists, while Auerbach also released an album with a new band, the arches and a solo album, both gaining critical acclamations but lower sales than the music of Black Keys.
The musicians Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys are presented on the stage during the concert of the Lonely Boys and Girls Fan Club at the Wiltern on September 19, 2019.
(Scott Dudelson / Getty Images)
When they met in 2019, they say their priorities had changed. “You can try to make another album No. 1, but the goal was clear to us: we have this special relationship and if we want it to remain healthy, the road must be interesting for us,” says Carney, and adds that the demands of 200 on the way and the constant obligations of the media they had before “was not sustainable for us at this time. It is far from your children.”
But the role of rock in popular culture has continued to reduce and, although the band returned to the top 10 of the billboard with “Let's rock”; “Delta Kream”, an album by Country Blues Covers; and “deltout boogie”, did not generate the same type of attention and some fans now complained that the era of the “brothers” and “the road” were lost.
“We have made it a little more difficult for ourselves,” adds Carney. “If we had done” the way “again and again or alternate between” brothers “and” the way “, we would probably be playing baseball stadiums now.”
But Auerbach says they always wanted to evolve in a similar way to the bands they loved like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. “We are musical geeks that love the discs, so it was something we aspire to,” he says. “We didn't want to repeat ourselves, so we wanted to do something different with every album.”
He says that both love to look for old dark singles and when they are together in the study, the goal remains the same. “It's like when you find a song that you've never heard before you surprise you,” he says. “That is what we are looking for when we work together in the studio, to create that feeling that you put in your entrails.”
Auerbach adds that after starting only both in isolation, in a basement in Akron, they discovered that they loved collaborating, working with producer Danger Mouse in his biggest and, more recently, musicians like Beck, Noel Gallagher, Billy Gibbons de Zz Tops and Rapper Juicy JJ
That said, Carney argues that even when they have worked with collaborators, “at the end of the day it will sound like us. It doesn't matter who we work with, our aesthetics will always shine.”
But with the combination of the changing musical panorama and its exploration of new sounds, its popularity seemed to decrease. Last year, “Ohio Players” reached its maximum point only 26 years. Then came the Fiasco on Tour, for which they have largely blamed Azoff, who has been investigated by the Department of Justice for Colude with Live Nation (who used to run), saying that he put the band in the wrong rooms, among other things.
Carney tweeted, angry and deep, on how the band fucked, but eliminated them to avoid being sued. When they finally spoke publicly, Rolling Stone confessed to being naive about how the consolidation of the music industry was damaging the bands. They called the European tour “the most bad orchestrated tour in which we had been” and Carney said: “We found her …” of the Azoff company but they were more circumspect in their appointments, without saying the words “Live Nation”.
His new publicist had called me in advance saying that he does not mention these problems, but let the band do it. When that did not happen and my time was almost ready, I raised the problems. After one or two questions, the publicist tried to close things, but Carney said: “It's the Times. Let's do the interview. Come on. We are here” and he generally spoke about the industry as a problem. “We are just trying to make music and tour the AF industry.”
Carney says that the band is now more involved in planning and is “very methodical” on how long it will travel and choose the places, and adds that smaller places offer a better experience of fans and a less expensive, since they do not need video screens for the back of a sand. Auerbach says they are also playing with their song lists, although he says that his catalog is now so deep that they cannot please everyone. “But we definitely have our fans in mind when it comes to making selections.”
As they reposition and “return to the track,” says Carney, the duo is now in a good place despite last year.
“Our friendship is stronger than it has been,” he says. “We have gone through all the possible things that you can go through so we can overcome something now. And there is still a lot of joy to make music together.”
