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.