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Interview Podcast Audio The Black Keys
"Strange Times"

The Black Keys have long been known as the second most popular blues duo on the planet, albeit with a decidedly less confusing backstory and less color coordination.

The fiery, Akron, Ohio-based duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney has staked its rep on infusing dirty electric blues with a manic, raw energy driven by Auerbach's howling wails and incredible guitar and Carney's crazed-yet-precise drum work.

On their latest album, Attack & Release, Auerbach and Carney were looking to spread their wings beyond the blues to reflect their broad musical tastes. They have done just that, adding an array of instrumentation that includes flute, harmonica, electric organ, and even a bit of banjo.

They did so with help from an unlikely source: acclaimed producer Danger Mouse, one-half of Gnarls Barkley. Danger recruited the Keys to write and record tracks for Ike Turner, a project that eventually faltered prior to Turner's death. The remnants served as the building blocks for Attack & Release.

MP3.com caught up with Carney as he drove through Arizona on the band's current tour. He talked about the influence of Danger Mouse, the Ike Turner project, economic conditions in his hometown, and a certain rock star and Akron native who has chosen to criticize Akron from afar.

MP3.com: Hey, Patrick? Patrick Carney: Yes. Hey, this is Jim Welte at MP3.com. Hey, how's it going man? Good. How are you doing? Pretty good. You got a second to talk? Yeah, definitely. Where are you right now? Arizona? Yeah, we're driving through Phoenix on our first-ever tour bus. Oh, you got a bus this time, OK. Yeah. Upgraded from the van? Yeah, we were kind of forced to because we have so much promo to do. You also have more stuff--I assume at this point--with the organ and more stuff like that right? Yeah, we have a lot of stuff. I just think we're like spoiled brats right now. [Laughs] Right on. So, I wanted to talk about the album. I guess a good starting point would be how you guys first met Danger Mouse. Well, he contacted us to do... The Ike Turner thing? Yeah. OK. Yeah, that's pretty much it. We never actually met face-to-face until like six months after we started working on that. OK, so it was you and Dan writing and recording tracks for the Ike Turner project, and then sending them to him? Yeah. That's pretty much it. OK. And when you first got to meet him and it got to a point where the Ike Turner part of it was not happening, and these became Black Key songs, and you started working with Danger in the studio and stuff, was there a level of comfort right away? Or did it take a little bit of time for that to occur? Because you guys have been doing your own thing for a number of years now, and I'm sure you had a little hesitation in terms of some new person coming in and mucking it up, or whatever, right? Well, I think we were ready for it. We were a little bit nervous, maybe, that things just wouldn't really mesh, but actually it did--pretty much instantly. We all felt comfortable, and there wasn't anything bad. Got you. Yeah. I was trying not to say the word "vibe." Yeah, exactly. I hate that word. Is he the kind of guy that makes it very easy to get comfortable with and to work with? Is he a very easy guy to get to know and get comfortable with quickly? I mean, he's a cool guy, you know? It all depends. I don't know, he's a normal cool dude. So, as long as the band's normal, they should get along well. Right. There are two parts to the equation. Yeah. And in terms of the Ike Turner part of the whole thing, did you guys ever get a chance to meet him before he passed away? Never. OK. Never. So it was you shuttling tracks to Danger and then... And then them working on it together. We never even talked to Ike Turner on the phone or anything. Got you. How many of the 11 tracks on Attack & Release were stuff that you had been working on for the Ike thing,? And how many of them are brand new originals that you worked on after all that? All of them, really. The only one that was written with the Ike thing completely in mind was the song "Lies," really. But Ike recorded that song and he recorded "I Got Mine." He also had versions of "Psychotic Girl," "Same Old Thing," "So He Won't Break," and "Oceans & Streams" that he was working on.

He had those for months, and all we ever heard were two songs that got done--or three songs. And the songs that we were working on were "Strange Times" and "All You Ever Wanted" and "Remember When (Side A)." Those were all done in the studio. I get the sense that there was a lot of time that went by where you guys just didn't hear anything, and it was like, "Is this happening, is it not happening, what's going on here?" It was just a couple of weeks, or months, but it was just long enough that Dan and I wanted to get it done--or postpone it--so we could make our next record. Right, exactly. So we just kind of postponed it, and since Danger Mouse has been in on all the songs and was a part of just listening to them, we just wanted him involved. Made perfect sense. I know this is kind of out of your purview, but do you think any of that stuff with Ike will ever see the light of day? Well, we want it to. I think it's supposed to. I would be really disappointed if it never came out. Yeah. Maybe it could be packaged into a bigger posthumous project or something like that. Or even just by itself, or whatever. Yeah. I'm sure a lot of people would love to hear it. I think it's pretty good. I mean, there are three songs that are done and they're all really cool. Cool. So you guys are on a tour bus right now. You spend a ton of time on the road. From a distance, you and Dan seem like the kind of guys that make an effort to keep your lives as normal as possible when you're not on the road and when you're not in the studio. Do you kind of strive to keep things as much as they were before all this started for you? Well, yeah, in the sense that I don't think that we've changed all that much. We have in some ways, I guess. In terms of the day-to-day, it probably hasn't changed much. When you're at home--the day-to-day--you get up in the morning and what you do is probably not a whole lot different. I'll put it this way. We don't walk around with suits and holsters. Even on the road, the people that work with us are all friends of ours and so it's kind of like we're just taking Akron on the road for the most part. Right. It seems like the kind of thing where, other than maybe not mowing lawns anymore, you try to keep it as it was before as much as possible. Yeah. Other than the obvious, yeah. Right. Exactly. Well, you talked about taking Akron on the road. I wanted to, if you don't mind, talk about Ohio a bit. It seems like every four years or so, the economic conditions facing the state take center stage, and they are very quickly swept off the stage as soon as the votes are tallied and counted and all that. What's your perception of the changes that Akron has gone through in the past 10 years or so? Well, I mean, it's all relative. The town I can remember, from when I was like 5 years old in 1985, was just a really different place. It was actually a lot cooler because there were more old buildings, but it was real f***ed up. Now, Akron itself looks better, but there are no jobs in Akron. There really aren't.

And it really bothers me to know that when my whole generation graduated from high school--it was like late 90s--and all our older brothers were able to go out and get cool jobs in New York, or Akron and Cleveland. People were able to get jobs.

Now it's like, we just got out of school and we just got f***ed. I think that's the case all over the country, but Akron especially, because there's just nothing. It's really f***ed up. All those people--Clinton, Obama, whoever--come here and talks about how they want to fix sh**, but sh**'s been going downhill in Ohio for a long time--except for Columbus, which is booming. Yeah, Columbus is booming. But outside of that, it's probably is one of the cheapest places to live in America. So, that's a good thing. Yeah. We don't need to get into all the muck of it all, but it struck me that you guys--like a lot of people that I know and like from the East Coast and the Midwest--are very much a part of where you're from. And I just thought it was an interesting thing to view from a distance.

Like I said, to see that every four years, Ohio is so important to everybody, and it's such a big deal to fix the economic conditions of Ohio. And then, as soon as the election's over, we really don't hear about it very much. It must be really frustrating for someone who lives there, and for someone who's been there for a number of years, to see the changes that have gone on and that kind of thing. Yeah, it's overall frustrating. I also wanted to ask you--not to play too much of a Devil's advocate--about a certain lead singer of the Pretenders who is from Akron but hasn't lived there for quite some time, but who occasionally likes to take digs at it. Is that a weird thing--maybe you like their music, maybe you don't--to hear someone taking jabs at where you're from when they don't live there anymore? Well, she grew up at a different time, and I don't think she really understands that you can't point the finger--even if there are some f***ed up local politicians or something--you can't point the finger there because overall, it's a bigger picture thing. And it's just kind of like, "What is she on about? Why does she need to be so critical of a place that's struggling so much? Aren't there bigger fish to fry?" You would hope, yeah. I know that she's all into her PETA and stuff, which is cool, but Akron's just a f***ing small town with struggling people. And good people. For sure. But whatever. I think that she has a whole different perspective being a millionaire and living in London and whatever. Right. But it's probably safe to say that when you get back home in a few weeks or whatever, you probably won't be heading out to her new vegetarian restaurant in Akron, huh? No, I mean, my wife goes there all the time. Oh, does she? [Laughs] OK, cool. The last thing I wanted to ask that this is by far your most diverse album, just in terms of instrumentation and that sort of thing. To a certain extent, an album is always a reflection of your personal musical taste, but do you and Dan listen to basically a little bit of everything? Where do your tastes lie? Yeah, we're all over the map, really. I think this is a better representation of what we're listening to right now. We wanted to open up the sound a little bit. And it's weird, I've been reading some of the reviews, and a lot of it's being attributed to Danger Mouse, which is not entirely true. He definitely helps, and without a doubt we couldn't have made the record without him, but I read some reviews where they even attributed the flutes on "Same Old Thing" to him, and it's like, my uncle [Ralph Carney]. Ralph Carney, right. Brian straight up said he wasn't too sure what to do with horns, but we wanted them and he worked it out. That's why it was a good collaboration, because it wasn't like we were being led down the path. It was more like all three of us were collaborating. Right. And it seemed like it got to a point where you two wanted to expand a little bit and add some broader instrumentation, and it just so happened that the Ike thing came along, and then it went away, and then it all seemed to kind of come together to go down that road together. Yeah. Well, cool man. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us. I wish you a great deal of luck in the new tour bus and on tour. It sounds like you guys are on tour for at least the next month or so, right? Yeah, we got like, yeah, two and half weeks now, a break, then two more weeks and a break, and two more weeks. It just kind of goes on. You plan on staying on the road for a good portion of the rest of the year? I mean, you guys typically tend to stay on the road as much as possible, right? Yeah, we'll be doing some on and off all year long. OK, cool. Yeah, thanks for talking to me. Absolutely, thank you for taking the time, and we look forward to checking you guys out. All right man, take care.