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Written by Shane Roeschlein
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Monday, 01 January 2007 |
 The Black Keys
an interview with Patrick Carney Akron, Ohio, has had its share of great musical contributions to the American lexicon of sound, least of those being art rock outfit, Devo, whose interesting take on punk and new wave became ubiquitous with the pop sound of the Reagan era. The Black Keys (named by a schizophrenic artist friend of the band) hail from Rubber City, U.S.A, and just like Devo, their sound is lo-fi yet their roots are steeped in blues. One might even venture to say their sound is drenched in blues. |
Their approach to recording bares semblance to blues guitar legend Johnny Lee Hooker, except instead of a wooden palette tapped with a boot, drummer and producer/engineer Patrick Carney lays down Bonham-like bombast with gusto. Guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach has the voice of an old soul, one who has seen the bottom of a bottle, an occasional termination of employment notice, and at least one or two bad relationships.
Auerbach and Carney grew up together. One day Auerbach went to Carney to record his band, and when the other members didn’t show up, he and Carney banged out a rough demo. Both members were employed by the same property owner and saw their fair share of slum-like dwellings, of which the boys were de facto landscapers. The “plan” was to work—tour—work—tour, ad nauseam, except they were fired. As luck would have it, things clicked into place and the great cosmic alignment welcomed them with a record contract.
I caught up with Carney while he was doing pre-tour errands and “eating sandwiches.” On their last tour, the band played San Diego’s Casbah nightclub where Carney says he was “terrorized by The Locust,” a grind/noise band that resides there. Upon further inquiry, Carney relates a very interesting “beef” between The Black Keys and The Locust.
“It’s an ongoing story,” he says. “I single-handedly pummeled two [members of The Locust] in Columbus, Ohio. So the San Diego thing was payback. My brother Mike and I were hanging out at this festival [where both bands were playing], and one of them put a cigarette out in my brother’s beer. They were being complete ****! So I put them both—it was the keyboard player Joseph Karam and drummer Gabe Serbian—in headlocks and wrestled them to the ground. They had to bite me to break my death grip.”
Interesting! A non hip-hop beef/brawl.
“We need to get Louis Farrakhan here to settle this beef,” Carney chides.
|  The record label Nonesuch picked up The Black Keys after the band amicably moved on from former label Fat Possum. Their latest record, Magic Potion, was recorded in Carney’s brand new studio, Audio Eagle, and Carney muses that after recording their fourth album, “the first record was less than the cost of rent.” He notes: “Basically we booked a studio for three days. The nicer the stuff you have, the easier it is to make something sound good. Paying attention to detail is important. I record stuff pretty much the same way I did for The Big Come Up as I do now. Only I have more options available.”
As far as the recording technique is concerned, Carney says: “I’ve slowly upgraded equipment and have a better understanding of how it all works together. It’s like anything, you know? If you have enough time to practice something, you’re going to get better at doing that thing.”
Carney and Auerbach’s taste hasn’t changed when it comes to what they want to hear or how they want things to sound. The advantage of having a home studio opens many more creative doors for a band and for The Black Keys; it affords them the time to perfect each idiosyncrasies and effect. “I think the first two records sound cool, but in a way it was a big compromise because we couldn’t get the kick drum to be as loud as we wanted, so we’d turn up the guitar loud or the cymbals loud. There were two ways we thought we could get it to sound good, and we couldn’t get the second way to work so we had to go with the first.”
He adds: “This record is stripped down, more along the lines of Thick Freakness, but sonically it’s still raw. But at the same time there is still definition and it’s less distracting.”
Such is the case with The Black Keys and their adventures in recording. Production of their last record, aptly titled Rubber Factory, sounded open and expansive. It had that “big” rock feel to it, something that Carney attributes to the environment of recording in a large open factory using room mics. With Magic Potion, Carney says, the band “didn’t use any room mics and Dan didn’t have any reverb on any of the guitar we tracked. Plus we had some delay on his vocals. We wanted to do something different.”
Magic Potion is different. It portrays two musicians at the top of their crafts in songwriting and recording. When Thom Yorke requests The Black Keys as openers for Radiohead and Robert Plant digs your band, it goes to show how far these two Midwesterners have really come in a short amount of time. They may not be done with locusts but they won’t be pushing a lawnmower any time soon.
For more please visit theblackkeys.com
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