Hard-hitting Black Keys are keeping it simple
By Chris Nixon
For The San Diego Union-Tribune
September 14, 2006
Drummer Patrick Carney is getting ready to go out on tour with his band The Black Keys, but he's lacking one piece of key equipment before he hits the road.
“I've gotta go buy pants,” admits Carney, talking via phone from his home in Akron, Ohio, where he was born and raised. “I've got one pair of pants. I usually bring two pairs total on tour, so that way I can wear each pair for like four days. I usually don't even take deodorant. I usually just take Old Spice. That will cover up anything. I don't mind smelling really bad on tour. We're not very hygienic or fashionable.”
The Black Keys – Carney and childhood friend Dan Auerbach – create no-nonsense rock: just drums and guitar, ripping gritty rock 'n' roll. The Akron-based duo may not be the most hygienic band on Earth, but their honest rock makes no excuses. Auerbach's distorted slide guitar riffs and white-boy-soul vocals sidestep pretense and fashion in favor of earnest blues.
Hailing from the midsized Midwestern city, the pair met as kids and attended the University of Akron before dropping out to pursue music full time.
“It's like a cross between 'Family Ties' and 'Roseanne,' ” says Carney of his hometown. “Akron's a cool place. It's very laid-back, mostly because there's nothing to do.”
The Black Keys' straight-ahead sound stems from the band's stripped down recording process. Carney and Auerbach hunker down in the drummer's basement, controlling every aspect of an album's conception.
“For our first record, 'The Big Come Up,' the advance on our record deal was zero dollars,” Carney says. “We had zero dollars. So I got a credit card and went to Guitar Center and bought a digital recorder. So we basically realized (that) for $1,000, we could have unlimited time to make a recording. It may not be the best quality, but we'd have a lot of time.”
Complete with fuzzy, blissful blues guitar and unadulterated buzzing drums, a Black Keys recording defies the modern idea of a crisp, clean recording.
“I was happy having my drums being completely in mono and not being able to actually hear anything except the white noise of the cymbals,” Carney says. “And I still feel that way.”
For their current album, “Magic Potion” (released this month on Nonesuch Records), Carney and Auerbach have perfected the art of home recording. The disc staggers through 11 dusty tracks, sounding like they were born from bloodied, blistered hands.
The Black Keys come from a relatively small town, which spurred the band's DIY attitude. Even though “Magic Potion” is the duo's fourth album, they still record their own albums in their own basement and in their own way.
“Rather than taking an advance from a record label to go give it to somebody else, we take our advance and save most of it and buy a nice microphone,” Carney says. “And maybe an extra pair of pants. We just don't want our sound to be compromised. We don't ever want to be recorded so we sound like Phil Collins.”
Chris Nixon is a San Diego music writer.
