Pink Pony, NYC
Thursday, May 15, 2003
Interview by Jennifer Amadio and Marisa Brickman
Honesty is the best policy. Black Keys know this and their earnest
approach to making stripped-down lo-fi blues-based rock is what makes
the duo so damn good.
It's hard to fathom that lead singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer
Patrick Carney are in their early 20s and are capable of making music
that sounds so mature and so confident. Black Keys emerged from the
depths of their Ohio basements with the debut album, The Big Come
Up (Alive) two years ago and their organic juke-joint rock quickly
caught the attention of some of the most finicky critics.
The Black Keys' follow-up record, Thickfreakness (Fat Possum)
was released earlier this year and the boys have been kicking up dirt
ever since. After being scooped up to go on tour with Sleater Kinney
and selling out shows in Europe before even headlining one of their
own in the States, Black Keys have raised the bar and setting standards
for anyone who dares to step into their world – their primitive
backwoods world where people still drink moonshine and where time stands
still.
The Black Keys' music pays homage to blues old schoolers such as Howlin'
Wolf and Muddy Waters as well as labelmates T Model Ford and Junior
Kimbrough, but the boys seem to be channeling the spirits of the real
deal rather than being a rehash or a copycat. Listening to them on record,
you'll think you've found an old overlooked gem. Seeing them live, you'll
be overcome by their raw power and you'll realize the kind of intensity
and integrity that goes into keeping it real.
Marisa: How did you guys meet?
Dan: We met in Akron in the neighborhood. We grew up right around the
block from each other.
Marisa: Were you in a band together before Black Keys?
Pat: Not together, but we've been playing music with each other since
middle school. We didn't form a band until last year. I guess it was
actually 2001 when we came up with the name.
Marisa: It's not typical for teenagers to get together and
play the blues. Is this a new thing for you guys, or were you always
drawn to the music?
Dan: It was something I was into for sure. I was really getting into
esoteric stuff and really, really early music and practicing that on
the guitar. When I would get together with Pat, I would take what I
was learning and mix that with whatever he was doing. That's pretty
much the same equation that we've always used.
Marisa: Dan, you thanked your dad in the liner notes for introducing
you to music. Was he into a lot of classic older stuff?
Dan: He was just into music in general. He played records all the time
when I was growing up. He always had music around when I was a kid and
was especially into Motown and rock 'n' roll. He was the person to introduce
me to music.
Jen: It's amazing how what your parents listened to or what
your siblings listened to ends up having such an effect on you when
you're older.
Pat: One of the first things I got was this little tape player that
was like red and blue and yellow.
Marisa: Like the Fischer Price kind?
Pat: Yeah, it was like that. It was super old school. My dad got me
that and a Frank Zappa tape.
Jen: That's crazy. How old were you?
Pat: I think I was eight. It was the first tape I ever owned. That's
completely true.
Marisa: Did you like it?
Pat: Yeah, I learned to like it after that. My dad was good to me too.
He was in bands and stuff.
Marisa: Your sound is really powerful and it's crazy to think
there are just two of you. Are there certain things you have to do differently
to produce a certain sound or effect when there's just two people?
Dan: I think that by now it just comes naturally to us.
Pat: We don't really know what it's like playing with anyone else because
it's always been just the two of us.
Marisa: Do you enjoy the dynamic of just working with one
other person?
Dan: It all depends on who you're working with. We connected when we
were kids in high school and we knew where we were going and what we
wanted to do.
Marisa: Your last record was heralded by quite a few respectable
music journalists. Were you surprised?
Pat: We definitely didn't expect it. Everybody hopes that it does well.
When the first one came out I didn't expect for anything to happen,
really. I hoped that our second record would take things a step further,
and it has definitely exceeded my expectations. Usually that doesn't
happen. A lot of times the second record is a let down, or people just
lose interest and stop paying attention. There are really a lot of amazing
bands from Akron that came out between '95 and '99 that just totally
get totally overlooked now, but are totally great and influential. Sometimes
bands just slip out of the public eye. I really love Belle & Sebastian.
For a while they were so huge. They were all over the place and now
you never hear a word. Things are so different now.
Jen: There was a big boom of good music in the early '90s and
then towards the later part of the decade when alternative music stopped
being alternative, certain people stopped caring about music and a lot
of stuff got overlooked.
Pat: It was more of a personal thing and people were keeping it to themselves.
Corporations got involved and were able to manipulate everything and
make crap available for so long. That corporate formula just stopped
working. That's why all of these bands like Cat Power are just now getting
attention. She's been around since '95 and she's just starting to get
attention. It's not because her new record is that good. It's just that
indie stuff is acceptable again in the mainstream.
Marisa: It's almost like the early '90s again where a lot of
the more underground and indie acts are sort of breaking through to
mainstream audiences.
Pat: Yeah, the whole Flaming Lips thing is weird. They were around for
the first wave, and they're still here. Beck is the same way. They've
been able to persevere through the bullshit. For a while I just wasn't
used to seeing bands I like in magazines, and now I'm used to it. It's
weird, but it's not going to last that long. It'll be over in a couple
of years once there's a new kind of Nu Metal.
Marisa: How do you feel about being compared to the White Stripes?
Dan: I don't know enough about the White Stripes to really make a judgment
on it. Since they've become popular, all of these duos are coming out
of the woodworks, but they've always been around. It's not a new thing.
Marisa: It's cool that people are accepting of that –
duos aren't your traditional pop band, no matter what they sound like.
It's pretty crazy that the White Stripes can sell out huge ballrooms.
Dan: They're like the biggest band in the world right now.
Pat: It doesn't bother me either. I think it's good for music that they're
popular. Something happened somewhere. It's not normal for a band like
that to be so popular. Seriously.
Jen: It's almost like you need a band like The White Stripes
or The Strokes to break through first and make way for all of these
other bands that have been playing together for so long.
Pat: It's the same thing that happened with Nirvana. It was so weird
when I heard them on the radio. It's weird to hear The White Stripes
on the radio now, after like, Creed, or something.
Jen: I'll listen to The White Stripes 24 hours a day on the
radio if I don't have to hear Creed, or System of a Down.
Marisa: You always mention System of a Down.
Jen: I hate them. Or Godsmack – those are my three least favorite
bands.
Pat: I think Creed is mine. They're way up there on my list. Them and
Nickelback, P.O.D. –
Marisa: It's crazy that such mediocre bands are so popular.
How was the tour with Sleater Kinney?
Dan: It was great. They were really supportive and very cool. We played
most of those cities for the first time.
Jen: Did you know them beforehand, or did they just hear the
record and ask you to tour with them?
Dan: They just heard the record and liked it. I saw them in 2000 at
a small club in Cleveland and I went back to where they were selling
merch to say hi to them. They were really nice and a lot more rowdy
back then than they are now.
Marisa: I guess it's more of a career for them now. They're
like professional women now, married with babies. It's not a party anymore.
Pat: It was still fun, and they still rock on stage though.
Marisa: You guys have done a few covers – a Beatles cover
[“She Said, She Said”] on the first record and a Junior
Kimbrough cover [“Everwhere I Go”] on this record - as well
as a few others. How do you pick the songs you want to cover?
Dan: It's all been kind of on a whim. At the last minute we've just
been like, “Let's do this song” because we like the band
or we like who wrote it.
Pat: We've tried a few songs that absolutely just didn't work and they
died immediately.
Marisa: The first thing I read about you guys was the tour
diary article that Peter Relic wrote for Arthur when you were on tour
with Sleater Kinney. Now he's your manager? How did you hook up with
him?
Pat: There was a local paper in Cleveland called The Free Times that
got shut down. Before it got shut down, Pete got assigned to do a story
on us. Actually he didn't get assigned, he found our record and wanted
to interview us. He came down to Akron and wrote the first feature on
us. We became friends and started hanging out. He's like family now.
He knows my girlfriend. He's friends with our dads. He became a friend.
We didn't know he wrote for Rolling Stone, but he sent the record [Thickfreakness]
to the new editor over there and they wanted him to review it. One day
we discovered it all. It was really weird. One of our friends called
and was like, “Dude, have you seen the new Rolling Stone? You're
in it.” Apparently Janet Weiss [from Sleater Kinney] talked it
up to the editors at Rolling Stone and the next week Pete was like,
“Hey, I have this new band to review.” And they were like,
“Oh yeah, we've heard of them.”
Marisa: And another reason Pete went with you on tour was because
you weren't old enough to rent the van.
Dan: Yeah, that's part of the reason he came on the tour. It's like
an extra $50 a day if you're under 25. Yeah, he took us out. It was
awesome.
Marisa: Did you guys have a period between the first record
and this one where you were being courted by major labels? I read that
you went into a big fancy studio and tried recording some stuff, but
you weren't really feeling it.
Dan: We were talking to a few major labels and Fat Possum. It only took
us about a month to decide we wanted to go with Fat Possum.
Marisa: Was the recording process the same for this record?
I know you did it in 14 hours.
Dan: The studio was the same place; Pat's basement. The only difference
was that we knew what we were doing and we knew more of what we wanted
for the second record.
Pat: The first time we had an idea of what we wanted, but there was
more experimenting. We didn't even give ourselves enough time to second-guess
anything.
Marisa: Did you have everything written already?
Dan: There were a few things that we did in the studio, but some of
it was recorded earlier on a four-track.
Marisa: It seems like that sort of recording process lends
itself well to blues and music that is more free form and organic.
Dan: We weren't trying to make it sound like anything that sounded produced.
We wanted to not think about it for a reason. We wanted all the nicks
to be there, all the flaws. We wanted it raw.
Marisa: I guess when you do it yourself you know what you're
going to end up with if you're in control of the whole process.
Pat: Yeah, and you also have to know what you're doing. There are a
lot of bands that record their own stuff. If you know how to do it,
it's cool. But if not, it can be a mess. We recorded in this big studio
in San Francisco with this guy who wanted to be our manager. He paid
to fly us out and put us up. We didn't want to do it, but we did anyway
and it was an awful experience. It was a waste of a whole day. He was
a really nice guy but he had no idea what he was doing. I'm not going
to say any names.
Dan: Yeah, he was really nice. He just didn't know what we wanted. It
was cool, just kind of pointless. He was really into trying to get a
certain sound.
Marisa: So, he was a producer?
Dan: No, he just had a lot of money.
Jen: That experience aside, would you want to work with another
producer? Sometimes producers just help you make your music into something
you didn't know you were capable of doing.Pat: Yeah, maybe if it was
a different band. There's no use in working with a producer with a band
that should not be produced.
Marisa: I guess that's sort of the antithesis of what you're
striving for?
Dan: We're just making music that is really direct. There's no interference
in the chain from us to the record. We spend time making it sound good,
but there are no lies behind it and no tricks. I like records that sound
slick, but that's not us.
Marisa: Do you have certain ideals you try to stick to or prescribed
rules for your songwriting?
Dan: It's pretty much unspoken, but we know what we want. We like to
keep it simple. We like it raw and that's pretty much it. If we feel
good about it then we can't go wrong.
Pat: The main thing is the joy of making it. We have to have fun making
it and that's the only standard we have. The main joy is being proud
of what we do. We just have fun with it.