The Black Keys

The Black Keys are gearing up to release their latest album, No Rain, No Flowers. The Akron, Ohio duo consisting of Dan Auerbach on lead vocals and guitar, and Patrick Carney on drums, have released 12 studio albums since their indie debut, The Big Come Up in 2002.

On today's episode Justin Richmond talks with Dan and Patrick about their process of mixing the new album. They also share memories growing up together in a town filled with eccentric characters, and they explain their newfound love of DJing parties where they challenge themselves to make people dance to an eclectic mix of unknown songs.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from The Black Keys HERE.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's
my conversation with Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney of the
Black Keys. So you guys are finishing a new album.
It's not not quite done though.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
It's basically it's we's to have to mix it. So
that's almost done. So we're going to LA in two
weeks too to tweak some mixes and yeah, it's gotta
be sent to uh often get pressed in like three weeks.
So we're basically done with it, just have to master it,
mix it.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Have you guys mastered anything out there or do you
typically come out to LA to do that?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
I mean we've met, we have stuff mastered all over,
we have stuff mixed all over, but typically we don't
attend a mixed session. This is like what it's like
the first time we've ever done that, just to kind
of do final tweaks because it's so difficult to you know,
it just sucks trying to explain stuff in an email,
so little, tiny, nuanced stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Is that in response to having been unhappy with any
mixes recently or just was it album moting mixed once
and it wasn't the standard?

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Or well, I mean I think you know, uh, since
Brothers we've been kind of sending stuff off to get mixed.
That was that was a game changer for us to
be able to tap into someone that's like, uh, you know,
that's what they do for a living. Prior to that,
we'd mix stuff ourselves, or we would like, you know,
mix it with a maybe just an engineer at the studio.

(01:51):
But you know, when we sent Brothers to Chad Blake,
that was a real eye opener. See what it's like
to get something back from someone that's just you know,
a master at that craft. And so we've you know,
we've made a lot of albums with Chad. We did
the last record with Spike Stint and then we're working
with Manny Merrickuhen on this album.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Wow, Delta Kaream. I guess this decade from like Delta
Cream to now its four albums, it does seem like
the sounds like you started the decade almost It sounds
like back to like the big come up kind of sound,
down to doing do the Romp Again Part two and

(02:33):
have kind of slowly moved away, or not moved away,
but slowly drifted to a sound that's like it's a
more complete production sound maybe or a more full production sound.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeah, Delta Cream was really just a jam session that
we released. You know, we didn't really know we had
an album until how long was it after we recorded
that that we even listened to it?

Speaker 4 (02:58):
Yeah, we did it.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
We recorded in December of twenty nineteen, right after the
first leg of the Let's Rock Tour, and then the
pandemic happened. I don't think we really checked it out
to see what was there until the July or August.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
And then we didn't fix anything. So it's just it's
just a it is what it is, you know, no
overdubs at all, no overdubs on it, just some percussion
and then Yeah, so when we got back to making
like a normal Black Keys record, he was more kind
of back to you know, being creative in the studio,

(03:32):
working with the studio as a tool to you know,
kind of get creative and stuff. And because that's you know,
part of the fun of it for us has always
been recording.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, basically we put we put Delta Cream out in
spring of twenty twenty one, and then we did some
promo around that. That was the first time we were
able to work in like you know, a year and
a half and then around that promo stuff, we just
hopped in the studio and started working on what became
Dropout Boogie, And when we kept when we finished that album,

(04:06):
we just kept working so kind of like the basically,
you know, from that spring of twenty twenty one until now,
we've just been in a constant state of recording. So yeah,
like we went from the Drop Off Boogie into making
what became Ohio Players, you know, which was we recorded
like a ton of songs for that album. We end

(04:27):
up releasing nineteen and then you know, we put that
out and then kind of ended up right back in
the studio this summer and just once again it got
another batch of like twenty songs and we'll put you know,
like eleven of them out.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
On this album.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Do you guys typically record jam sessions or was that No,
we don't usually do that, to be honest, I mean,
all of our recording sessions start with us jamming, but
then we build on it.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
But this thing was this happened because I was making
a record with Robert Finley in the studio and I
had Kenny Brown there and Eric Deaton, so you know,
that was sort of the the reason that we got
in the studio for that in the first place, you know,
because we've never recorded with a bass player ever. That

(05:17):
was the first time on Delda Cream, so you know,
that was even though it felt like the big come
up days and it was like something new at the
same time.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
You know, have you guys recorded with the bass player
live since then or no?

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah, a couple of times. Our cover of Forgot to
Be Your Lover, that's right, we did that in La
with Tommy Branneck on bass, and we did a couple
other songs. I think, but I love it, you know
it really I under you know, now after twenty some

(05:56):
years of playing drums, I understand why. You know, it's
great to have a good bass player. Nice to lock
in with the bass player.

Speaker 4 (06:04):
It's fun. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, a lot of the songs I'm Brothers started with
bass and drums.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah, that's right. So Brothers was basically cut that way
because we when we were making that record Black Rock
right before that, we're doing like, you know, the music,
and then we're having rappers come in, so we're making
beats essentially, we were you know, focusing on starting the
tracks with a lot of them with just bass and drums.
So we went into Brothers, we just kind of maintained

(06:30):
that method and.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
Mark Neil had an amazing Rickenbacker bass. It was like
a rick four thousand or something. It was awesome, sounded
so good.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
And so for Brothers, did you guys put guitar over
those basic tracks? Then? Yeah, wow, that's a that's a
unique way. I don't know, that's a really unique way
of doing it, especially considering the guitar or drum band.

Speaker 4 (06:56):
You know.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Well that yeah, that album, most of it was recorded
at Muscle Shoals Sound and when we did that, it
still hadn't been renovated, so it was it was pretty
messed up. And Mark Neil brought like this twelve channel
stood suitcase mixer, so that's what we tracked through. So
we were only able to monitor twelve tracks at a time.

(07:18):
So like I think there was a couple songs that
had thirteen songs when we or thirteen tracks, and when
we had listened back, we just would like not listen.

Speaker 4 (07:25):
To the tambourine, but we not.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
We couldn't hear the whole thing together for the most
part until we got mixes.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
You had to trust the tambourinees coming through right.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yeah, but there was something about the way that we
recorded that so minimal and then gave it to Chad Blake,
who was able to just like maximize everything. And he
loved it too. He's used to getting sessions that have
a million tracks, and he was he loved that mixing

(07:55):
that record.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
He loved that there was only about thirteen tracks, yeah, versus.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
The exactly Delta Cream the same thing when he was
mixing that.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
How come you guys sent that record of Chat instead
of doing it yourselves.

Speaker 4 (08:11):
We're not Chad Blake. Yeah, well there's only one Chat.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
There's only one Chad Blake. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
But if you guys had been doing it yourself before,
was it was just a experiment in a sense.

Speaker 4 (08:23):
Well, us doing it ourselves.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
This whole thing was an experiment.

Speaker 4 (08:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Everything we did was we had no idea what we
were doing. Man, there's no re frame of reference. We'd
never seen anybody mix, you know, so we didn't know
what mixing.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
What we kind of had because we've gone to like
shitty studios and Acronym made recordings on like an eight
and then we get we get the recording back and
it would just sound like the drums would sound like
someone was smacking a pillow. So that's when we started
just doing everything ourselves. It's like, if it's gonna sound
fucked up, like at least make it sound fu Yeah,

(08:57):
at least, let's let's do it ourselves. And then every
time when we first tried to go into studios, you know,
like back then around the first second record, we did
not We didn't know how to commune. We were so
used to using like a real to real eight track
or like a primitive digital recorder. Then we started dealing
with like looking at like a real compressor and stuff,

(09:18):
you know, Like I remember being mystified and why the
VU wasn't hitting the red on a on a compressor
and it was going backwards, and I was like, dude,
thing's broken, bro, And you know, I'm sure they thought
we were complete idiots. But it was frustrating because we
kept wanting things to sound distorted and you know, kind
of gritty, and it was really hard to get those

(09:42):
sounds in a real studio.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
It's been a lifelong search for those sounds really, to
be honest, that's half the fun of it. Though.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah, the sound on Ohio Players was really cool.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
I mean there's live performances at the root of every
one of those songs real, you know, absolutely, yeah, songs
like on the game stuff like that were we're kind
of we're live in the studio. We tracked that one
with bass, bass, guitar, our, keyboards and drums live, and
a couple other ones from that session too, so they

(10:14):
really have a great like live raw feel. And those
were recorded at toe Rag World, Famous Toe Rag that
has closed recently, but we always wanted to record there,
and I think we may have been like one of
the very last to record there, Famous London's all analog studio.
The guy was really inspired by Joe Meek. Liam Watson,

(10:38):
he ran It's really cool place and Mark Neil designed
the room right, Yeah, Mark Neil helped him design it.
The guy who recorded us in Muscle Shoals.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Did he work with Joe Meek? Was he around like when.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
No, Joe Meek died like he killed himself in his
land lady right, something like that? Yeah, some tragic story. Yeah,
were you guys?

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Were you guys around for.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
God?

Speaker 1 (11:06):
Who's the other great?

Speaker 4 (11:07):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (11:09):
John Peel? Did you guys ever do like a Peel session?

Speaker 4 (11:11):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, yeah, we did a couple of them.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
That was our first That was our first kind of
big break outside of the US was John Peel playing
the Big come Up. And then our first trip over
to England was like a promo trip when Thick Freakness
was about to come out in April of two thousand
and three, and uh and yeah, we did our first

(11:35):
Peel session there and then a couple of months later
we got asked to come.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
To his house, his country estate.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, he would do it. He would do like his
show in the summertime from his house. We we had
this crazy year of two thousand and three, just you know,
being really broke but traveling a lot, and this one,
you know, we went and played some festival in Norway.
Then we flew to London and we got picked up,
drove right to his house. Remember we were just so

(12:06):
jet lagged. I took an app in his daughter's bed
while Dan played soccer with him in the yard and
went through his record collection. And then we did another
Peel session like literally two months after that. It was
a live thing again with like Steve Malcolms and the
jicks from in Brighton, and then you know, we did

(12:29):
a Peel set when we put out Rubber Factory. We
landed in London to do a tour there, like right
at the end of October, and uh, when we got
picked up from the airport, our driver had a newspaper
and the headline was John Peel dead at sixty four
And we were supposed to head to a Peel session

(12:49):
like the very next day. So we actually went to
the Peel session still and they were like, we don't
know what to do, Like I made a veil three right, Yeah, yeah,
they're like, you know, we don't know what's happening, but
we know like he's like he was trying to do
John Peele, trying to accomplistion of Lonnie Donegan songs. So

(13:10):
like we just spent two hours trying to learn these
two little Lonnie down Against songs. But yeah, it was
like it took all the momentum out of our out
of our thing, because that was like our only supporter
in the UK.

Speaker 4 (13:23):
He died. He went on a trip to Peru and
had a heart attack.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
What was what was it? First of all, what was
his record collection? Like that record collection must have been crazy.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
He was crazy. He had different how like different outbuildings
like there was like a barn over here, and they
all had thatched roofs. Right, So there's like a thatched
roof barn over here. That was all his seventy eighths,
and then over in this thatched roof big thing was
like all his you know, forty fives. And we we
dug through his LPs and looked for some stuff. You know,

(13:55):
I wanted to hear like let's Work Together by Wilbur Harrison,
and so we searched for it and found the record
and played it and he's like, I'm like, no, that's
not that's the wrong version. You know, we need the
earlier version. So we he went back and he found it.
He had it.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Fuck, he had had all the everything.

Speaker 4 (14:13):
I mean, he had a million albums, right, wasn't that
you know?

Speaker 3 (14:16):
As soon as you sent him on attached to find something,
He's like giddy. It was awesome.

Speaker 4 (14:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
That Peel session at his house was live on BBC,
and uh, his whole family was there and they made
a stinner. It was like, you know, it was really special,
you know, and us like at the time, you know,
we you know, we weren't really kind of aware of
the gravity of what it was to.

Speaker 4 (14:43):
Be hanging out with that guy. You know, he was
just kind of this cool DJ. And then.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
You know, as we got older, we kind of learned
like what that show really meant to people and what
it really was, and you know, I wish that we
had something like that. I mean, I think the world
would benefit from another John Peel. I mean, I mean, look,
if you go back and look at his playlists and stuff,
it's it's incredible what he's sposing people too, especially like

(15:10):
pre internet, to be able to turn on the radio
and have some guy playing you the Residents and then
you know, like you know, a Howard tape single pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
And the continuity between you know, he'd done it so long.
Just being able to present like led Zeppelin in like
nineteen seventy and you know you guys in two thousand
and three. I mean, that's just that's crazy. You know,
it's nuts. And his sessions always sounded really good to
me too. I always love finding like an appeal session,
you know, because they sound always they sound pretty different

(15:41):
from the records usually, but they just sound I don't know,
there was a really I don't know how he who
if he used it, like, I don't know who engineered sessions.
But they were incredible.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
You know, I did it made a veil when we
were doing them. I think that's really did them.

Speaker 3 (15:56):
He has a BBC. Their studios are incredible, They're their
gear was always amazing. It was like that was the
first time we ever saw Cole's microphones. Yeah, Cole's ribbon
mics you know. Yeah, no, those those some BBC sessions
always sound.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Amazing because basically use a ribbon mike.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
Always, you know. I mean after those sessions we started
to but yeah, they would have ribbons on everything.

Speaker 4 (16:20):
Yeah, now that's a cool thing.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
You show up and then basically, here's this world class studio.
You've got like six hours to record four songs, and
you can do anything you want to do. So you know,
if you wanted to, who knows, they would let you
do whatever you wanted to do. The coolest John pil
Antono is that he told us he was present in

(16:44):
Dallas when Lee Harvey Oswald was killed in that parking
garage at the police station because he was working for
a radio station.

Speaker 4 (16:56):
And so he saw that in person. And I guess
he's in the I guess he's in the film.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Wait, wait, he wasn't he was actually at the police station.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, when Lee Harvey Oswald gets killed by Jack Ruby,
he's one of the guys there.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
That's incredible. I'm gonna go I'm gonna.

Speaker 4 (17:13):
Yeah, watch it on slow mo. See if you can
find him.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
Yeah, maybe somebody can find them in the pictures.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
Maybe he'll be in the files of releasing the JFK
files that are coming out. John Petle was involved. How
does it feel promote I mean, I guess the difference
between promoting a record then and now. I'm just curious.
You guys do do a lot of press, do you
guys like what how do you guys go about figuring

(17:38):
out the way in which you want to promote a
record or do not spend much time thinking about it?

Speaker 2 (17:43):
Back then, I remember one of the first interviews we
ever did with like a European you know, first one
of the first interviews period. We were at south By
Southwest two thousand and three, and we we did a
couple of interviews. One of them was with enemy and
then we landed in England a couple of weeks later
for the first time to and our publicists handed us
to the enemy and in this interview, We talked for

(18:05):
like thirty minutes, and at the very end of the interview,
the journalist is like, so, do you guys take drugs?

Speaker 4 (18:09):
You've ever taken any drugs?

Speaker 2 (18:11):
And we're like we were like naive kids, you know,
and we're like, I was like, oh, I spoke opium
once and uh the headline of the fucking m was
like Opium fueled Blues Duo and I was like, holy shit,
this is insane. It didn't really help us sell any records, but.

Speaker 4 (18:32):
It was cool.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
Look kind of miss headlines like that. Miss magazines in general,
kind of sometimes for for for you know, headline like that.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
You know me too, Yeah, I miss I missed being
able to like pick up a music magazine and I
have something I want to see in it.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
You know.

Speaker 4 (18:49):
It's like back in the day, like.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Just you know, Magnet or Alternative Press or Flip Side
or Maximum Rock and Roll. Even just at our local
grocery store, you could pick up this one cook magazine
called ray Gun, which is like as a music magazine
that lasted for just maybe a couple of years, but
it was like the graundraphic design was so crazy, like
you could barely read the articles because they like lay

(19:14):
the articles out. But you know, that's where I've actually
in the you know, you know, early magnet magazines and stuff.
That's where I kind of discovered a lot of what
I know about music. They kind of set me in
the right direction. Like that's when I read about Daniel Johnson,
you know, love his laughter and K Records and all
that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
I don't know for me too, though, I'd get sit
down a lot of like dead ends, you know, like
looking through a magazine and you have to try to
spend you know, fifty bucks on a bunch of records
I saw on a magazine and then you know, they
all sucked, and that was kind of a bust.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
It usually sucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I bought a lot.

Speaker 4 (19:50):
Of shitty records.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
Were there local like zines in Akron or.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
Sort of, But.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
It seemed like a lot of that stuff was like
geared towards hardcore punk, which Dan and I.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Were never into, never never had a stage.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
No. We get along too well with our fathers.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
Will be back with more from the Black Keys after
the break. Your dads were friends too, weren't they our dads?

Speaker 4 (20:26):
I mean we're neighbors, they're neighbors. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah, that's how Dan and I know each other from
just growing up around the corner from each other.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
And your dad was an art teacher or procure of
art supplies, Yeah he was.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
He was an antique dealer and he collected folk art
outsideer art. Yeah, he would, you know, he was like
a picker.

Speaker 4 (20:52):
You know.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
He would go around Ohio and Pennsylvania and West Virginia
and he would have his routes that he would run
and go to different places and buy things and then
he would sell at shows, antique shows he would go
to like Brimfield, or he would go to the Triple
Here Expo in Manhattan and set up a booth, and

(21:13):
you know I would go and help him and ship
and it was always fun. I love doing that stuff.
Did you learn a lot about art through him or
were you interested in learning? Yeah? I learned everything about
art through through him. Being around him and being on
the road, you know, you know, probably prepped me for touring,
you know, getting in my dad's van and driving from

(21:35):
Ohio to New York City and you know, loading and
unloading the van for the shows and stuffy yeah no,
and he you know, he would introduce me to two
artists and and and show me the difference between different
different types of art. And yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Has anything of his or anything you've gotten from him
made it to any artwork Blackie's artwork or arts.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Mm, I don't think so, but I mean no, I
mean one of the guys that he would help facilitate
an acron this artist named Alfred mcmore. My dad would
like bring him crayons and art supplies and pipe tobacco
and bring him stuff he needed, and he would try

(22:22):
to help him get his art out there, you know.
And this guy was he would leave voicemails on the
phone at our house. And Pat's dad did a story
in the local newspaper on this artist, so Pat would
get these voicemails too, and it became, you know, the
origin of the name of our band, the Black Keys

(22:44):
was this outsider artist, you know.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
So he would call our houses like every day, multiple
times a day.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
Demanding pipe tobacco and crayons.

Speaker 4 (22:54):
And he would tell like, you you're big. If you
don't bring me a two liters of coke some crans,
you're a black Key, you're d flat.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
And he'd make these five foot wide he put long
scrolls with cran and pencil, and so Dan's father had like,
you know.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
Just a basement filled hundred of them.

Speaker 4 (23:20):
Maybe because he would, you know, give him.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
He's living in like a halfway house, you know, and
he had very little resources, so chuck with like give
him some Cran's paper stuff. Then get these scrolls and
sell some, give him some of the money. And but yeah,
they're they're pretty incredible. He would draw a lot of
like a lot of highway patrol people in high heels.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
Big chandelier, earrings, chandelier because he done boots.

Speaker 4 (23:52):
Yeah, it was so cool.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
They were. They were like these long stream of consciousness.
They would be like funeral processions, you know, people in
open cadillacs and like all these different Jesus was playing
like rock and roll guitar and they're amazing.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Really, I mean, Alfred would wear about the three or
four suits at the same time. And then his daily
ritual was like to go to the Stewart and Calhoun
funeral home to any random funeral and just cry.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
He show up to random funerals and cry.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
This is the person that my dad brought over to
the house to spend time with his sons. Exposed expose
us to his artwork.

Speaker 4 (24:35):
Alfred No, I mean his.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Artwork was so beautiful, but like impossible to display, Like
where where do you put a fifty foot roll of
art work?

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Do you guys still have some of this?

Speaker 3 (24:47):
Uh huh oh? Yeah, man, my dad got him to
do a couple of small pieces and they're okay, but
the roles are actually where it's at.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah, I got one little small one. It says mcmore
mclusts and that's where. That's what we named our publishing
company after mcmore mcless.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
Is he still Is he still around? No?

Speaker 4 (25:08):
He died in two thousand and nine.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
I think did he Did you guys ever play him
any of your music?

Speaker 3 (25:16):
I don't believe so.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
He knew about the band, but I don't think probably
no interest in Yeah, you guys might have set him
off a little. I don't know, I could aggravate him.

Speaker 4 (25:28):
You know.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
Were there other people like characters like that around town?

Speaker 3 (25:34):
Yeah, there's a lot of like, there's a lot of
characters an Akron.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
There was the purple Purple man. That guy his house
is purple as cars, probably acrons full of that kind
of stuff there. There's like it's kind of like pull man.

Speaker 4 (25:52):
Then there was a guy we called Eep.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
In ild Square and uh, the little neighborhood we kind
of grew up around. Uh, there was a really eccentric
shoe repair man who just retired, but he'd be in
there with the fumes and stuff and he dressed the
window up in like inflatable dolls, really really out there. Yeah,

(26:21):
there's all that's my kind of when I when I
think about like classic Akron, it's like, my brother was
really into trains, like model trains and stuff, and so
we would go on Saturday sometimes to this place called
Glenn's Train Shop and it was this building covered in
ivy in the middle of like the worst neighborhooded Akron

(26:42):
back in this lot. You'd walk in there and just
be this guy just smoking with like you know, ten
thousand boxes of vintage trains, just mean as hell.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
They total Like that's what Akron that did?

Speaker 1 (26:56):
He did he deal them?

Speaker 4 (26:57):
Or yeah, you sell them? He was like.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, you're like, what gauge do you want? He's like
h ah, he'd like judge you by the gauge of
the train that you want. The real trains are, oh
gauge Apparently that's what you want. The real trains are what,
oh gauge the big ones?

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Well, I don't know what that means.

Speaker 4 (27:16):
I know, well, sounds about right. I bet Neil Young
knows I was gonna say.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
Neil Young probably knows this guy. Oh yeah, why did
you call the what was the one guy called?

Speaker 4 (27:29):
This is what he said all the time.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
That makes sense. National's got to be filled the characters too, right.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yeah, it's just filled to the brim.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
When we first moved to town, we both moved like
to the same area here, and uh we were neighbors
with Harmony Krinn, so we hit it off with him
right off the bat, and through Harmony we met like,
you know, David Berman and and then also you know,
introduced to the original kind of cast of eccentrics. What

(28:08):
you no longer see any of them anymore, but most
of them were in Gummo or something.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
You guys have been there over a decade now, right,
they're fifteen years You mentioned the cover of Forgot to
Be Your Lover earlier? What made you guys cover that song?
So I was scared to click on it, to be honest,
because it's such like a perfect record, the original you
guys version is really good too.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah. No, it's just it was just one of our favorites,
you know, and we were in the studio, we were
hanging out. We were just inspired to do something like that,
and you know, we really didn't think too much about it,
and we really didn't even know if it was going
to be on the record or not, you know, but
it felt good when we cut it. You know, we
had our buddy Kelly Finnigan and Tommy Brenneckan there with us.

(28:56):
Kelly sings harmony, and it was just felt felt good. Yeah,
we did that. Never going to give you up on Brothers.
You know, I think we've done some soul songs before.
You know, it's those types of songs are pretty big
influence on us.

Speaker 4 (29:15):
Oh yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Just such big you know, like Forgot to Be Your Lover.

Speaker 4 (29:20):
It's just such a big record, you know.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
Yeah, one of those perfect records.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
From like the opening opening riff, the drums on it
are perfect, opening lines, perfect.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
Yeah. Absolutely. We mostly we mostly just wanted to hear
Tommy play that opening list.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yeah, yeah, that's it's pretty much.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
That was the reason we cut it. No, that was Tommy.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
How much time do you spend listening to music these days.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
I probably listened to like an hour at least a
day of music.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
What's what's moving you these days?

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Man, I'm kind of all over the map what I'm
into right now. But you know, we've been doing these
record hangs where we playing forty five's, so that will
you know, that's kind of got my algorithm going trying
to find these kind of trying to find like songs

(30:18):
that I feel like hits but weren't hits.

Speaker 4 (30:22):
It's kind of like the ultimate goal.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
But I've got, you know, got I've got a little
I've got a six year old boy who's into music
and opinionated, so a lot of the stuff I'm like
trying to play him stuff, see what he's into.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
What are his opinions.

Speaker 4 (30:41):
I mean, he's got good tastes. But uh, it's funny
when he when he'll he'll hear something and like it,
and he'll he'll he'll he's like aware enough to think
like that he should be embarrassed by liking it.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
If so, he will like not he'll keep it a secret,
like if he thinks because he'll think like I will
like make fun.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
Smart kid.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, I know, I mean his intuition's spot on. But no,
you don't get made fun of for what you listen
to in my house till you're eleven.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
What about you, Dan, Do you listen to a lot
of music or like not work related?

Speaker 3 (31:24):
Yeah, I mean yeah, i'd say similar, you know, especially
digging for records you know, online. It's kind of become
like one of my favorite things to do is just
like chill out for an hour and like search for music,
you know, because I swear to God, every single day

(31:47):
I can find something that blows my mind if I
if I search hard enough.

Speaker 4 (31:52):
True.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
So yeah, honestly, like as soon as we started doing
these record hangs, I think I started listening to way
more music on average.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
Same who organizes the record hangs we do.

Speaker 4 (32:09):
We just kind of picked like.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Cities where it will makes sense when we're on the road,
or cities we think it will be fun to do.
So yeah, we just had to meeting the other day
to kind of pick out like the next couple months
of it, and then some of them are kind of
last spin it, you know.

Speaker 3 (32:29):
Yeah, it's kind of fun just to pop in somewhere
and unannounced and spend some records.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Did you did you guys spend records like that out
like out and about like before that or no, a little.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
Bit, a little bit bit. Yeah, you know, back when
I did the ARC stuff, I would spend records with
Richard Swift and Leon a few times, you know, here
and there, and and then I started doing it on
my own just a little bit, and then shortly thereafter
invited Pat to do it with me, and then we

(33:00):
both kind of got hooked on it. Really.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
Yeah, it's addictive, you know, I'm with Dan on that. Like,
I've definitely probably spending like ten uh, I don't know,
at least another thirty minutes a day extra listening to
music because of this. I'll go down rabbit holes and
uh trying to find stuff. And I've learned more about

(33:27):
music in the last probably two years than I had
in the previous ten years really for sure, not just
not just like hit history of music, but just like.

Speaker 4 (33:39):
Kind of maybe how to make.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
It well, you know. I mean that's an interesting point,
because I mean to your earlier point, like finding songs
that sound like they could have been a hit or
should have been. I mean, it's it's just it's it's
fascinating how much a hit I mean, I guess we
all know because we know hits that kind of aren't
that that great. But it's fascinating how much it hit

(34:00):
really has nothing to do with how good a song.
It's necessarily you know, it's all these.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
Oh yeah, absolutely, man. That's why we feel like we
can play records for like three hours and like they're
jams and people will be dancing for three hours straight
and they won't know a single fucking song, you know
what I mean.

Speaker 4 (34:17):
We love that.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
Yeah, like this song could have Like there's nothing that's
like more annoying than just somebody going up and just
playing hits off iPod, you know what I mean, off
a computer. But like, oh my god, it is fun
to be like be able to like see the crowd
move to a song they don't know. You know. It
really is satisfying.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
I think that's the biggest thrill. It's because it's not
playing something obscure to be obscure. It's like it's got
to have this. It's like this perfect combination of like.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah, if it doesn't work, we're turning it off.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yeah, it's like it's a you know, because it's got
to not only does it have to like groove and
have the right production.

Speaker 4 (34:57):
It's got to have like the right mix.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
There's so many of these songs where you they like
they seem like they're going to be it, and then
you get the record and the mix is.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
Just it's fucked up. The drums aren't there, it doesn't work.

Speaker 4 (35:08):
Yeah, sucks. It's a lot of it.

Speaker 3 (35:11):
It's weird. Yeah, you'll spend hours and hours and hours
searching for songs. You'll find like songs and you get
them sent to your house and like, only like ten
fifteen percent of them actually are as good as you thought.
They were pretty consistent, pretty consistently.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah, Like the vocals are like twenty five percent too loud.
The drums are just like almost good, loud enough but
not there, and then you put it on the club
and it doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
Or like the drums are great, but then there's like
the high hat.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
It's like something, it's just messing all up.

Speaker 4 (35:43):
We can live with the as long as we can
live with some of it.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
But yeah, do you find that it do you find
through digging though that some do you ever find yourself
lost in a sense of like after thirty minutes an
hour of listening to something you you kind of don't
know what's good anymore.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
Oh yeah, that happens to me when it comes into
this specific thing. I've definitely I purchased a few records
and I'll get them like why the fuck did I
buy this record?

Speaker 4 (36:14):
And I was like, really, be like what was going
on here?

Speaker 2 (36:17):
And I was like, you know what it was, is
like I just put so many hours into looking for
something that I think I just wanted to buy something
so I could have something to show for it.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
You can get yourself worked up about the smallest thing
about a record that the smallest reason why you need
this record, you know, is enough to buy it.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
And then I've definitely bought a record the other day
because the snare drums sounded so bad in a good
way that I was like, maybe Dan, I should sample this.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
What record was it?

Speaker 4 (36:45):
Oh Man?

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Because his last name was Washington, I forget. It's this
decent song, but the snare drum's real messed up. It
sounds like a broken four track.

Speaker 4 (36:56):
It's cool.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
Do the record hangs im like impact the way you
guys make records in the studio.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
One thousand, Absolutely no, I mean we're spinning records and
and and like seeing what what gets the crowd moving
definitely influences us when we get in the studio and
what we want to try to do. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (37:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
I think there's a couple of songs on the new
album that definitely exists because of the record.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
Hangs mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
What tracks are those? I've only been over to here too.

Speaker 4 (37:34):
But yeah, and one of the songs you're I mean,
both of them are. One of them was a rough mix.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Which one was that?

Speaker 2 (37:41):
I mean, if they sent you no Raino Flowers that
was that was the title. That was the wrong mix. Yeah, yeah,
that's like part of the thing did sound very different
from the night before.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
I heard the night before and it sounded the production wise,
it did sound very different.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Well, it's like, you know, it's the thing that's interesting
thing about like we started this album and the very
very end of July and and really got going on
on it like in September.

Speaker 4 (38:12):
But when you're like.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
Writing recording, you know that much work that in that
bunch of a condensed period of time, you know, it
takes it takes a few Like we kind of finished
tracking mostly in the middle of December, but then I
think it took us like a couple of weeks of
getting away from the record to get back to the
place where we could start mixing it, start getting it finished.

Speaker 4 (38:39):
That's where we are now.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
But yeah, there's like one song on it that's just
a kind of Cumbia influenced because dances. We're playing a
lot of Cumbia at the record hangs. But yeah, I
think that it's an interesting thing trying to figure out
how to put an album out in twenty twenty five
versus two thousand and five, because it used to be

(39:01):
like the biggest difference is it's like, yeah, of course
there was press and stuff that you could do.

Speaker 4 (39:05):
There's things to do, but really it was like it
really felt like.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Back then, like your album came out then it was
like okay, now like now people are finally gonna get
to hear it, and like there was this life to
it like where it was like you know, and it
kind of feels inverted now where it's like with a
minute your album comes out, it's like unless you have
a couple of hit songs on it, it's just what's

(39:35):
coming out next week?

Speaker 4 (39:36):
You know. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
The weird thing about that though, from the you know,
listener perspective and just thinking about music as a consumer,
I guess is it automatically puts all new music in
the same frame, in the same context as like old music,

(40:00):
like in the sense of like when a new when
when the Ohio Players comes out, I'm sort of guilty
of the same phenomen on. I listened to it, and
I pretty quickly move on. But then also fine, just
as quickly as I move on, I pretty quickly come
back to it. But I mean, you know, I'm usually
listening to old stuff because it's like you have this
whole everything's at your fingertips now, So I'm like listening

(40:22):
to you know, whatever Aretha records I never heard before really,
or you know, in the Nat King Cole and then
I'm listening and then it's like I'm back to listening
to the Ohio Players. And so in a weird way,
I also feel like it makes new records, it makes
them feel like classic records a little sooner than it

(40:43):
used to, you know, whereas before I used to just
burn records out after a year, and then I'm like,
I don't know if I ever need to hear that again.

Speaker 4 (40:51):
You know, I heard something a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
I don't know if it's true, but the mere thought
of it gave me a slight existential crisis, which was
that there's more like that. There's more music released every
single day in twenty twenty four as there was in
the entirety of nineteen eighty nine. I don't know if
that's true, but could that be true? It feels like

(41:19):
there's some sort of It kind of feels like that,
you know, I've chosen to believe it also, you know,
I have other feelings about UAPs and things like that
I've chosen to believe.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
What are those feelings. I don't know they changed day
to day.

Speaker 4 (41:39):
What are they today? I haven't thought about.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
It yet today, So I'm like, no, But you know
what there is there's just so much good music that's
been made, and it's like, you know, it's like if
you're a fifteen year old now and you have Spotify,
like I just I wish I could have experienced it,
you know, I wish I could have had my teenage

(42:06):
years when there was something like Spotify. The amount of
time Dan and I spent looking for music when we
were teenagers and up through our twenties, it is insane.
Like when Dan used to come over to my house
or that I lived in with some friends where we
would do like started the band his minivan. He'd pull
up with his minivan and open the side door to
get his amp out, and just like literally one hundred

(42:27):
CDs just.

Speaker 4 (42:28):
Fall on the ground.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
We'd been picking them up, crazy box sets things. Just
like every single dollar he was making was going into
buying music to try to hear it, see what was there,
you know, And.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
Asn't I say, forget time the amount of money when
you had no money you'd spend you know.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, well you know I think Dan spent all his
money on that. But yeah, you know, like that choice
you have to make when you're like a fourteen year
old kid and you're just getting into like lead uppein
and you go look at the go to the record store,
and like, you know, you could end up hating LEDs up.
And if you picked the wrong record right there, if

(43:08):
you walked out with presence, you might never like leads
up on. But if you walked if you if you
got like leads up on one two three or one
two four, Houses.

Speaker 4 (43:20):
Of a Holy I think then I imagine you'd end
upuying presents.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Eventually you would get there, that'd be last Yeah, did
you were the record? I'm trying to think, were there
groups like that for you or artists like that for
you where you just heard the wrong thing first and
then just had the wrong impression for far too long.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
So I wonder if they had that record in through
the Outdoor. I wonder if that as some sort of
reference to their catalog. But yeah, I mean, like here,
it's just today. One of our engineers at the studio
asked me if I was into Space Spend three, and
I was like, actually, you know, I was like a

(43:59):
hip teenager. I you know, I bought a Spaceman three
CD when I was like fifteen, and I it was
way over my head. I really didn't get it. But
then I got into Spiritualized and I'm just now getting
into Spacement three a little bit. And it's been you know,
thirty years. But there's a lot of times I think

(44:23):
if you get the wrong album, you could maybe not
see the light.

Speaker 4 (44:28):
But I think that's cool.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
I end up respecting bands that have catalogs like that,
Like Pink Floyd is that band to me too. There's
just a lot of evolution from the first record through
the you know, I guess through the mid seventies all
the way up.

Speaker 4 (44:43):
To the Wall.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Then there's groups like the Rolling Stones where it's like
there's a lot of output for a certain period and
then like a limited output. But it's it'd be, it'd
be the odds are against you picking a bad one.
I guess you know, if you're at the record store
and you're twelve, you never heard of the Rolling Stones,
a bi Rolling Stones record, there's.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Just good advice to pick up, yeah, if you like
you know, the advice is, if you're gonna buy a
record from a classic rock band, just avoid any album
where they're wearing like a pastel sport jacket, if they're
wearing like pastel, like muscle shirt, if they're dressed like
Miami vice, skip the record and you're gonna be good.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
And there is this what is that Stones record where
they're like laying down and they got a like neon
on or sport coats.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
I owe it to them to never listen to that
bad though. I don't know, the cover is just so bad.
They got such good it's not bad. I just have
a thing about digital eighties reverb, and so I just
I hate the whole I think maybe because my parents
got divorced right in mid eighties. I just I fucking
hate like people are like, oh, man, like you like
this band. It kind of sounds like Bruce Hornsby, like

(45:54):
you fucking just kill me right now because I don't want.
I don't want to remember what nineteen eighty six felt like.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
That's amazing. Yeah, Digital REAVERB brings back too many painful men.

Speaker 4 (46:06):
It fucking does, dude. I really can't hear it. It's amazing. Sorry, man,
no nostalgia for that.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
I do like dire Straits a lot though, that Brothers
and Arms, but it's like that's.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
A REAVERB on that or on the on there.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
It's tasteful, but like that, you know, I can't go.
I can't go later in the eighties than that.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
Do you have prejudices like that, Dan, like musical? Oh god, yeah,
not not.

Speaker 4 (46:37):
Absolutely. He's not the same prejudice, that's the thing.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
Yeah. No, I'm picky, man, I'm picky about I mean everything.
I mean. That's like when people say that you guys
are influenced by blues, It's like, yeah, but like what
blues are we talking about? You know what I mean?
Or like what hip hop are you talking about It's
like we start getting into specifics. I mean, we love
music too much to just generalize. Really at this point,

(47:01):
we spend so much time thinking about it. It's like,
you know, not everything's created equal. Yeah, not, you know
freeze person is different.

Speaker 4 (47:12):
But yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
It's like if you tell if they get someone's like
I'm really in the wine, It's like, well, what does
that actually mean? It means they're a complete fucking snob
about what win to drink. It's like us about music.
You know, hear the same, Oh I really love food.
It's like, oh, do you want some ruffles? No, motherfucker? Like,
I'm like, good, you want. It's a good call.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
We'll be back with the rest of the Black Keys.
Shortly you mentioned it, like, do you just like how
general the label blues can be? Like I feel like
when people think blues, like the reactive thought is like
Muddy Waters. But you know, I don't know if it's sacrilegious.
I'm not really I don't really like Muddy Waters. No,

(47:56):
you know, Like, but pretty quickly, I guess if you
if you think about the blues, it's like Muddy Waters.
Howland Wolf might be like the yeah, the two strains maybe,
And it's like, I think I'm just more on that
side of things, and I don't know.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Yeah, the first blues album I ever heard was Electric Mud,
So I love I love How, I love Al Wolf,
and I love Muddy Waters, but I like the bastardized
version of it all. That's right, But and I'm just
now kind of getting into the other shit Dan's way
into like Mississippi, Fred McDowell, all kinds of shit I'd

(48:33):
never heard.

Speaker 4 (48:33):
He exposed me to all this stuff.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
Yeah, man, I loved like the raw, early primitive kind
of blues like stuff from Memphis before they actually had
like bass, you know, where it's just kind of like
guitars and drums, a lot of like one man bands,
two man band kind of stuff. Joe Hill Lewis and
Doctor Ross, the Harmonica Boss, stuff like that. Those guys

(48:58):
were my favorites.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
How did you How did you start discovering that stuff?

Speaker 3 (49:02):
My uncle Tim was really into blues music and has
really great taste. He's a fucking snob too, and he
hit me to some really cool stuff early on. But
you know, right when we were starting to like get
serious about music, that whole fat Powesome Records record label
kind of came to be and started to have their moment,

(49:23):
and it was really you know, it had a major
effect on me, you know because for the first time
these you know, I loved blues music, but it was
all like antiquity, you know, it wasn't like current. But
then the Fat Possum stuff came out and it was like, oh,
these guys are real. You can go to the and

(49:44):
they come to like the rock club in Cleveland, and
I can go see them, you know what I mean.
So it was like it was just so such a
game changer, and so I started to like really get
influenced by that. That scene in particular, which was very
raw and stuff like Siddell Davis is really hard for
people to listen to. You know, it's very out of tune,

(50:07):
but you know it's also very beautiful.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
Yeah, which I guess is even more so. I mean, again,
we were talking about the way a record's mixed, where
you get when you get you think the records is
gonna be great, you get it and it's mixed weird
and it sucks. But then there's records that are mixed
terribly and you wouldn't want them any other way.

Speaker 4 (50:30):
Yah.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Almost times they try to wonder what would they sound
like if they had been recorded. Well, that's sort of like, fuck,
I don't know if I want to hear that.

Speaker 4 (50:36):
You know.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
It's like, yeah, a lot of blues music got messed
up because it got recorded too well, you know what
I mean. It's like I think jazz too Yeah, maybe, yeah,
something about like that kind of like you know, music
that's heavy on the improvisation. It's really nice to get
it in a place that's not actually a recording studio,

(50:57):
to where there's like a the room is kind of
alive and more less of like a science laboratory, you
know what I mean. And I think there's that's why
some of the best recordings or you know, live recordings,
field recordings, like my favorite Fred McDowell recordings were always
the ones recorded at his house, you know, stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (51:20):
Yeah, the jazz definitely preferred.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Jazz recorded at a like live of the village vanguarden
type of ship always sounds much better.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Whatever magics and like those Fred McDowell records recorded at home.
That does that ever in your mind when you're recording
stuff like it would be I want something like that
I want to go for that, you know you're not
going to get it, I guess, you know.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
I mean that's why we went to muscle Shoals, you know,
that's why you know, that's probably why we recorded in
an old tire factory instead of going to a studio.
You know, it's all because of that. I think we've
made most of our decisions based on that, you know.
And you know, when I'm producing records too, you know,

(52:07):
I've recorded a bunch of records in that houses when
it was just as easy to record in a studio,
when it was easier to record in the studio now,
just because it was like musically more appropriate.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
You know.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
I was way into a music from Big Pink when
I was like sixteen seventeen, and my dad was, you know,
told me like they made this, you know, record in
the basement of this house on the cover, and ever
since then, I was like, that's that's that's the coolest
you can do that. So yeah, I mean I got

(52:40):
a four track when I was thirteen thirteen years old,
started fucking around with one in my basement, making absolutely
terrible shit. But yeah, the first time Dan and I
had jammed, he came down, and at that time I
had this Morant's pretty nice concept four track, and I

(53:00):
don't think Dan had seen a four track yet.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
We just kind of sat there and.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
Started fucking around showing him that, and I would take
it over to his parents house to be set up,
like in their child bathroom, just to get different sounds.

Speaker 4 (53:15):
Sounded like shit, sounded like dog shit, but it was
worth a shot.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
We used to do shit like too. I got think freakness.
There's I'll forget what song it is, but damn wanted
like a Leslie effect or something. I just started swinging
the microphone in front of the amp while we recorded.
It actually sounded fucking cool. That's kind of shit we
would do, put like broken the record. Yeah, that's on

(53:45):
the record.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
Was it like a first did you get that first take?

Speaker 4 (53:49):
Probably?

Speaker 1 (53:52):
I forget what song is, but it's there. That's pretty amazing.

Speaker 4 (53:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Dan's uncle Tim Wants brought over this like Fender reverb tank,
and then that became our whole identity for like about
two months, just putting everything through that shit.

Speaker 3 (54:07):
Our first effect.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
Yeah, how does the no Rain, no Flowers? I heard
the wrong mix? How different does the final mix sound?

Speaker 3 (54:22):
I mean you get the just the basic idea I think, yeah,
it's not that far okay, but yeah, just a little
bit more work to do.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
It was pretty It's a it's a pretty different record
for you guys. Like the song I don't know sound icenically,
it just sounded so different.

Speaker 3 (54:44):
Yeah, we've we've never really written with piano players before.
It was one of the first times we've ever done that.
So that kind of that instantly was like different for us,
but natural. You know, it was like we wrote it
together with with Rick Knowles in the studio here and

(55:04):
it was like we worked really u quickly together. So
it's just whatever sounds like it was. It was pretty
natural the way that that it unrolled.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
You know, how did the writing go. I mean, was
it was it based off jamming or was it based
off of someone bringing something in?

Speaker 2 (55:25):
Rick likes to start with a song title, so he
was asking what if we had any song titles, and
that was one.

Speaker 4 (55:31):
That Dan had.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
And you know, writing with a keyboard player like we
worked with. Yeah, Like I said, I guess a lot
of keyboard players are on this record, and to see
the way that they choose to voice chords versus you know,
guitar obviously, it's just it's all kind of a lot
of it's pretty. It was very fresh to us to
hear what you can kind of get to, you know,

(55:52):
and Rick's really good at that and it's a chord master.
So to sit there and watch the guy, it's like
master of his craft and been doing it for a
long time. It's like, you know, the thing is is that,
I mean, I've never sat in a room with a
guy like that before. You know, we've we've worked with
musicians that are writers that we're friends with, but to

(56:14):
work with like someone whose sole job is that it
was like, uh, you know, it's.

Speaker 4 (56:23):
Like going to songwriting school a bit.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
It was just to see how they how they choose
to work, and then then to see how they entertain,
you know, the way that we want to move the
song forward, and like, don't get that collaboration thing happening.
Like that's the cool thing with Rick is that we
we wrote these songs with Rick like four or five
months ago, and you know, he was in the studio

(56:45):
a couple of days ago and we're sitting there still
he's passionate enough about the ship that he still wants
to make sure that we're getting everything, you know, and
he has ideas and we have ideas, and so it's
it's a it's a cool thing to see the see
the process all the way through with someone that gives
a ship.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
You know, you know, you want like tweaking songs still
a couple of days ago, right, we're still tweaking ship still.
Oh yeah, was my impression with that? You guys worked
pretty quickly, But is it like I guess, working pretty
quickly and then going back to something you know, like
that's not It.

Speaker 4 (57:18):
Depends on what it is. You know.

Speaker 2 (57:19):
It's like we we record. We decided to do a
cover of this song two days ago, and so we
spent like three hours. We spent two hours tracking the
basics and then getting a rough together, then another two
hours the next day, and there's four hours all in
on a song and it's maybe very close to donn.

Speaker 4 (57:40):
That's one way that we can do shit.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
And then another way is like this this method where
it's like, you know, get with a songwriter and with Rick,
maybe we'll write in two or three songs in a day,
and then there's like you know, then you started to
get into that start trying to figure out how to
do this, and then maybe there's multiple approaches to it.
But once you get to a point where you have

(58:03):
seventeen songs going, it's like if you go in for
a day of work, even if you only want to
do a little bit on like half those songs, whether
it's just overnumber two, you know, you're talking about five
hours of work to touch all the songs a little bit,
you know, so the record takes it can take time.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
What song did you guys decide to cover.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
We're gonna let it be a surprise.

Speaker 4 (58:29):
I think, Yeah, it's a surprise.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
Yeah, all right, all right, we.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
Just cut it yesterday. We haven't even had time to
think about it yet.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
Yeah, all right, I'll tell you what it is. We're
doing a compilation of songs considered the world's worst songs,
and we're trying to make them good. And this is
We Built this City. It's our cover of Jefferson Starship
We Built the City, written by Bernie Tappin.

Speaker 4 (58:56):
You guys made a documentary, right, we didn't, but some
but there has been one made.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
Is that coming out? Not coming out? Sounds like not
too exciting? No, I think I think it come out? Yeah,
you know, we've we've just been fucking grinding in the studio.

Speaker 4 (59:16):
Bro.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
Yeah, I think since between you know, we I think
we've you know, we've been really on this creative streak
right lately.

Speaker 4 (59:26):
So we've just been focused on that, you know. And
now we're about to put this out and we're gonna
go on the road a bit this year, and uh, you.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
Know, yeah, we're getting ready to not be able to
like go in the studio very often. There's lots of
shows coming up, so got it.

Speaker 4 (59:43):
I'm trying to get it in while we can.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
Yeah, that is that a fun shift to make going
from the studio on tour.

Speaker 4 (59:50):
You know, I think I think tours fun. Playing the
shows is fun.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
It's just about I think we you know, like if
you like, are drink too much tequila, like you might
never want to like taste it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
Again.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
We almost got there kind of with touring before. So
it's like there's a little bit of that, you know,
a little bit of that sense memory of what it
feels like to be on the road for an entire year.
So even though we have like it's only like maybe
fifty or forty five shows, it's still like, you know,

(01:00:26):
and now that we have kids. You know, Dance had
kids for you know, seventeen years, but I've only ever
toured like twice with the kids and now, so like,
you know, it's a little bit it's hard to get away.
Well then I guess once I'm away, it's kind of good.
I get more sleep. But I think I think, I

(01:00:47):
think that we're excited about doing some shows. We're going
to open up the set list. I feel like it's
like it's it's the thing that you got to do.
It's the thing that the fans want, and so they
just make the most of it. And I think one
thing we've talked about is just like really kind of
opening up our set list.

Speaker 4 (01:01:03):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
When we kind of did this transition, like started moving
into the arenas around brother Zell Camino, it was like,
you know, getting into this whole different thing that we
never not only I'd never experienced, but Dan had only
ever been to like one arena show and I'd never
been to arena show. So it was like we were
now playing our job, was not doing something that we'd

(01:01:24):
never even experienced. Yeah, and so it was kind of
I feel like with the lights and the whole thing,
it's like I feel like we started kind of like
maybe losing sight of the catalog that we've created.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Were they fun show?

Speaker 4 (01:01:38):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
Were they fun to play arenas?

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:01:42):
Absolutely, Yeah, any show, any show can be fun.

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
Yeah, it's all. It all depends on the audience. Play festival,
you know, it really helps when there's an open pit
in the front. You know, Yeah, when the when you're
in an arena and it's seated, or when you're in
a theater and it's seated, it's like it's hard, it's
not so much so so much fun to play rock
and roll in those kind of places.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
Or we're on stage and there's like a football field
between you and the front.

Speaker 4 (01:02:07):
Yeah, like festival, you know there's where there's like.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
You know, the energy from the crowd is there is
crucial crucial that's like the most How does that get decided?

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
I mean, obviously a festival that's kind of out of
I mean, that's just up to somebody somewhere. But when
it's like a black Key show and you're going you
know to a different city to city, like, are you
guys allowed to dictate like how like front the first
ten rows are seated or not?

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
Or you know, I mean if you're playing in an
ample theater, you're kind of stuck with whatever's there. If
you're in an arena, you get a little bit of choice,
you know, to a certain degree.

Speaker 4 (01:02:48):
But there's certain rooms where it's.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
Just you know, designed to to be that way, like
the Oregon Theater in Chicago, Brickson Academy in London, the
Zenith Barrow Lands, like there's these rooms there are like
four just six thousand seeds, like the Anthem and DC.

(01:03:10):
The rooms that are like four or five six thousand
seat big rooms, big theaters with an open floor.

Speaker 4 (01:03:16):
Those are those are those are the that's the sweet
spot for us.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
Is there a world where you guys would say like
we're only ever going to play those or primarily.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Well, I don't think enough of them exists to you
just be playing the same ten cities. But those are
the most fun, you know, I think it's almost worth
it to just do a couple of nights in those
versus a you know, hitting some stuff where it's you know,
you might miss energy. But it's the same time, part
of the fun of this job is traveling. You know,

(01:03:49):
it's just about how much you do, and it's like
it could be fun like, you know, to hit up
some of these you know, off the beaten paths cities
and stuff. It's just about how long you're out there for,
you know. But I'm excited about our first Legacy tours,
like three weeks. That's it's like, that's the ideal amount.

(01:04:12):
We have to go to Europe for a month. That's
that's a little bit much. And it's like funny because
every time we go to Europe, and this has been
the case except with the exception of one or two
tours for twenty years, it's like you're not going to
make any money, but it's really important to get over

(01:04:32):
there and do this thing. I was like, well, who's
making this money? Because we're earning it, like it's coming in.
There's like millions of bucks, bro, But where.

Speaker 4 (01:04:42):
Does it go? Dog?

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
Did you find that out?

Speaker 4 (01:04:46):
Yeah? I did find it out.

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
We just have to do one more tour and then.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Yeah, we will tell us they're always like one more tour.
We had done this tour. This is in twenty twelve, dude,
that's the year that gave us like that's tequila taste
of tour. We were on the road all year and
we had just finished playing writing Festival right outside London,
and yeah, we were about to go home for a

(01:05:11):
month off and then we and then we had uh
to still do the West coast of the US and Australia,
so we still had like four weeks of touring left
and we just gone all year and our agent comes back.
He's like, I need you to come back in December.
Right where come back way? He's like, you got to
do more Europe December. You got to And we had
just played three nights at this place, Ali Alexandria Palace,

(01:05:33):
so we sold like thirty thousand tickets in London. Plus
we had just played the Writing Festival direct support to
food Fighters, so we'd already sold thirty thousand tickets in
the city. And he like, I need you back. You
got to really prove, you know, you got to really
like this is gonna you know, uh, it's going to
set the tone. You know, you got to go to
you gotta do like a Marquee show. So we need

(01:05:56):
you back. Two nights. We went back to London, the
two nights at the O two Arena. So in like
one year we sold like fifty five thousand tickets just
in London.

Speaker 4 (01:06:10):
And I still don't know if we made money on
that tour.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
Actually I don't think that we didn't.

Speaker 4 (01:06:16):
You can't you audit that kind of thing. This sketchy dude, what.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
In hindsight would you go back?

Speaker 4 (01:06:24):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
Is that was that the problem? Just what's that saying?

Speaker 4 (01:06:27):
Though?

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
No, I think that that's the problem with the that happened,
Like it can happen. It's just like you got to
know when to say when. Like the other day, just
so today, like you know, our manager called and was like,
we got to you know, we have this tour that's
already too long to go to Europe and they're like,
we got to offer to go to to add on
to this one more show. And I'm just like, it

(01:06:48):
doesn't really matter how much it's going to pay or
what it is. It's like it can't it can't do that.
That's the time slot. That's the thing, because I always
gets you by the balls. But be like, you know,
the next tour, next time you go back, it's always happens.
But you've learned now, Well that's why if you look
like the interview with What's your Face Kate Nash, I

(01:07:10):
saw like she's did an interview about like you know,
touring what touring looks like for her. And you know,
I think people who aren't in the industry like see
that and are like, what, you know, what's she on about? Like,
but no, what she's saying is one hundred percent accurate.
You know what did she say? She says she's just
going on a month on tour of Europe. Everything's basically
sold out. She's not making money. That's that's the reality

(01:07:32):
of what this touring has become because they you know,
once all the money went away from the recording side,
then the people that like suck the life out of
suck the money out of the music industry, they have
to go into the live side because that's where all
the money is, and they saw people making it tons
of money. I mean the Taylor Swift's tour did like
what like six billion dollars. Yeah, people are going there

(01:07:54):
to get the money. The cost of like renting a
bus is like four x what it was ten years ago.
You know, you got your commissions or taxes, the the
you know what people expect to get paid to go
on tour with you so way up, you know, as
it should because inflation is crazy. So then the only
thing that hasn't gone up, but has maybe gone down

(01:08:16):
is the fees that are coming into the band.

Speaker 4 (01:08:19):
You know, ticket.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
Prices up, hotels are up, all the all the vendors
are up. Everything's way out of control.

Speaker 4 (01:08:26):
But like.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
The amount of money that hits the you know, the
actual musicians is way down.

Speaker 4 (01:08:33):
Yeah, we're excited about this album.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
But yeah, I was gonna say that trying to say
this earlier, it was just like, you know, part of
this whole thing is like figure out how to like
how to like roll record out, how to like you know,
and so for us, it's kind of like for me
at least, it's like the most exciting thing about making
music is like people kind of get to That's like
the one perk of this. It's like people get to
experience music for the first time together. And I feel like,

(01:08:57):
you know, we're giving the first peek in this record
in February, and the record doesn't come out until way
later in the year. But I think that the reason
is just so we can find a few more other
special moments to introduce these songs in a way that
thoughtful and fun for the fans.

Speaker 4 (01:09:11):
So yeah, we got a lot of cool shit to
share this year.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
I mean, I think I think the reason why we
never got into writing on the road is because we've
always been like a band that writes and makes music
centered around creating a master essentially, you know, like it's
always been about the recording since day one.

Speaker 4 (01:09:30):
It's been like since.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
Literally the first time we officially like kind of started
this band, it was like we were making we made
a recording, and then after that it was like, when
we get together to make music, it's it's it's it's
based around that. So on the road, it's like we're
gonna put a studio in your bus, like a fucking idiot, Like,
come on.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
Why would that make you a fucking idiot?

Speaker 4 (01:09:54):
It's just like sleep on your bus.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
It's gonna sound like shit, there's a fucking diesel engine below.

Speaker 4 (01:10:00):
Come on, Like, you can't.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Tell me that what you're doing is so valuable. I
have to be recording eight hour. I have to have
my studio with me on the road in the bus.
Do you know anyone that does that?

Speaker 4 (01:10:17):
No, just I M start doing.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
Don't be a fucking idiot man, just sleep man. Well,
good luck on the road, Thank you, Thanks, look forward
to hearing the record, and uh, I hope you guys
make some money.

Speaker 3 (01:10:36):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:10:37):
Me too, Thanks man, Thanks dude.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
Later y'all see it does Dan Arbach and Patrick Carney
of the Black Keys. Their new album, No Rain, No
Flowers is out later the spring, with the worldwide tour
starting in May. You can hear our favorite songs from Dan,
Patrick and the band on a playlist at broken Record
podcast dot com. To see the video version of this episode,
visit YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast and be

(01:11:04):
sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod.
You can follow us on Twitter Broken Record Broken Record
is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help
from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tollinay.
Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you
love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to

(01:11:25):
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And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate,
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by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond,