In short
Podcast Episode Notes: The Black Keys on Broken Record
Episode Overview
- Podcast Title: Broken Record
- Hosts: Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam, Justin Richmond
- Episode Title: The Black Keys
- Release Date: [Date not provided]
- Description: Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney from The Black Keys discuss their upcoming album, *No Rain, No Flowers*, their recording process, and experiences growing up in Akron, Ohio. They also talk about their new venture into DJing.
Key Themes & Discussions
- Album Creation and Mixing
- The Black Keys have just about finished their album, with only mixing remaining.
- They are working with notable mixing engineers like Chad Blake and Manny Mariquin, emphasizing the importance of professional mixing in achieving their desired sound.
- The band reflects on their evolution in sound over the years, noting a shift to a fuller production style compared to their earlier work.
- Memories from Akron, Ohio
- Dan and Patrick reminisce about their childhood in Akron, highlighting the eccentric characters that influenced them.
- They share anecdotes about local figures like Alfred McMoore, an outsider artist, whose influence even led to the naming of their band, The Black Keys.
- DJing and New Musical Ventures
- The duo has developed a new passion for DJing, aiming to create fun and eclectic playlists that keep people dancing.
- They discuss the challenge of making unknown songs engaging for listeners at parties.
- Creative Process & Influences
- The band approaches songwriting collaboratively, often starting with song titles suggested by their collaborators.
- They discuss the impact of working with keyboard players on their sound, marking a new transition in their musical style.
- Touring Life and Industry Insights
- The conversation touches on the realities of touring today, including the financial challenges faced by bands.
- They reflect on the differences between promoting music now compared to the past, particularly with digital streaming changing the landscape.
- Covers and New Material
- The Black Keys are excited about covering "We Built This City" by Jefferson Starship for an upcoming compilation of songs considered to be "the world's worst songs," showcasing their playful attitude toward music.
Key Takeaways
- The Black Keys are in a transitional phase, mixing a new album while reflecting on their past experiences and influences.
- Their collaboration with industry professionals has helped shape their creative output, leading to a more polished sound.
- Nostalgia for childhood and local figures plays a significant role in their identity and artistic expression.
- The challenges of the current music industry landscape, especially regarding touring and financial viability, are prevalent issues for modern musicians.
- Their newfound interest in DJing represents a fun and experimental side of their artistry, allowing them to connect with audiences in a different way.
Conclusion The Black Keys continue to evolve as artists while remaining grounded in their roots and experiences. Their journey of creating *No Rain, No Flowers* reflects not only their artistic growth but also a deep connection to their past and the influences that shaped them. The episode provides a rich insight into the creative processes of the duo and the realities of the music industry today.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:05Pushkin. This is an iHeart Podcast. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speedtest. And they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.
0:48where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ukla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025. Every great music conversation goes beyond the surface. The influence that shaped an artist's sound. The moment that changed their creative direction. The story behind the story that fans never hear. Claude helps you discover those deeper connections. Upload interviews, liner notes, or music journalism, and Claude reveals patterns across an artist's entire journey, showing how influences become innovations. Whether you're a music journalist, passionate fan, or someone who loves understanding creative processes, Claude matches your curiosity about what really drives great artists.
1:29Try Claude for free at Claude.ai slash brokenrecord. Lexus is a company that believes in the importance of setting a standard, which I can appreciate as someone who holds themselves to lofty if not ridiculous standards, especially with the car I drive. The standard Lexus has set for themselves is to experience amazing. Lexus measures success by the feeling and emotions evoked in a driver, like exhilaration and joy. Amazing can only be achieved by knowing people on a deeper level. The standard of amazing results in a feeling in drivers that their car was built in anticipation of them. Machines that make you feel more human.
2:06Because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer.
2:17This is Broken Record. Real musicians, real conversations. Here's my conversation with Dan Arbach and Patrick Carney of The Black Keys. So you guys are finishing a new album. It's not quite done. It's basically, we just have to mix it. That's almost done. So we're going to LA in two weeks to tweak some mixes. And yeah, it's got to be sent to, often get pressed in like three weeks. So we're basically done with it. Just have to master it and mix it. Have you guys mastered anything out there? Or do you typically come out to LA to do that? I mean, we have stuff mastered all over. we have stuff mixed all over um but typically we don't attend a mix session this is like what this is like the first time we've ever done that just to kind of do final tweaks because it's so difficult to you know just sucks trying to explain stuff in the email so little tiny nuanced stuff is that in response to having been unhappy with any mixes recently or just was the album already mixed once and it wasn't the standard or no 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 uh maybe just an engineer at the studio but When we sent Brothers to Chad Blake, that was a real eye-opener.
3:51See what it's like to get something back from someone that's just a master at that craft. And so we've made a lot of albums with Chad. We did the last record with Spike Stent, and then we're working with Manny Mariquin on this album. Wow. Delta Cream, I guess this decade, from Delta Cream to now it's just four albums, it does seem like um 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 have kind of slowly uh moved away or not moved but slowly drifted to a sound that's like a it's a more complete production sound maybe or a more full production sound 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 yeah we did it we recorded it in december of 2019 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 that like july or august and then we didn't fix anything it's 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 it was more kind of back to you know being creative in the studio working with the studio as a tool to you know get kind of get creative and stuff and because that's you know part of the fun of it for us has always been recording yeah basically we put we built delta cream out in um spring of 2021 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 um when we when we had when we finished that album we just kept working so kind of like the basically you know from from that spring of 2021 till now we've just been in a constant state of recording so yeah like we we went from that dropout boogie into making what became ohio players you know which was we recorded like a ton of songs for that album we ended up releasing 19 and then um you know we put that out and then kind of ended up right back in the studio this summer uh and just once again it got another like batch of like 20 songs and we'll put you know like 11 of them out on this album 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 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 um 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 was the first time on Delta Cream so you know that was uh even though it felt like the big come up days and it was like something new at the same time you know have you guys recorded with the bass player live since then or no yeah a couple times uh our cover of uh forgot to be your lover that's right we uh we did that in la with uh tommy brennick on bass um and we did a couple other songs i think but i love it you know So it really, you know, now after 20 some years of playing drums, I understand why, you know, it's great to have a good bass player.
7:57Nice to lock in with the bass player. It's fun, yeah. Yeah, a lot of the songs on Brothers started with bass and drums. Yeah, that's right. So Brothers was basically cut that way. Because when we were making that record Black Rock right before that, we were doing like, you know, the music, and then we were having rappers come in. so we were making beats essentially. We were focusing on starting the tracks with a lot of them with just bass and drums. So when we went into Brothers, we just kind of maintained that method. And Mark Neal had an amazing Rickenbacker bass. It was like a Rick 4000 or something.
8:33It was awesome. It sounded so good. And so for Brothers, did you guys put guitar over those basic tracks then? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Wow. that's a um that's a unique wave i don't know that's a really unique wave doing it especially considering it's a guitar drum band you know without 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 um it was pretty messed up and mark neil brought like this uh 12 channel studer suitcase mixer So that's what we tracked through. So we were only able to monitor 12 tracks at a time. So I think there was a couple songs that had 13 tracks, and when we listened back, we just would not listen to the tambourine.
9:23But we couldn't hear the whole thing together, for the most part, until we got mixes. You had to trust the tambourine was coming through, right? 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 maximize everything. And he loved it, too. He's used to getting sessions that have a million tracks, and he loved mixing that record. He loved that there was only about 13 tracks versus the mid. Exactly. Delta Cream, same thing when he was mixing that. How come you guys sent that record to Chad? Instead of doing it yourselves.
10:06We're not Chad Blake. Yeah. Well, there's only one Chad. There's only one Chad Blake. Yeah. But if you guys had been doing it yourself before, it was just an experiment, in a sense? What, us doing it ourselves? This whole thing was an experiment. Yeah. Everything we did, we had no idea what we were doing, man. There was no frame of reference. We'd never seen anybody mix, you know? So we didn't know what mixing. Well, we kind of had. because we'd gone to like shitty studios in akron and made recordings on like an ad and saying 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 fucked up yeah 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 didn't know how to communicate.
11:04We were so used to using a reel-to-reel 8-track or a primitive digital recorder that we started dealing with looking at a real compressor and stuff. I just remember being mystified on why the VU wasn't hitting the red on a compressor, and it was going backwards. I was like, dude, things broken, bro. I'm sure they thought we were complete idiots. But it was frustrating because we kept wanting things to sound distorted and kind of gritty. And it was really hard to get those sounds in a real studio. It's been a lifelong search for those sounds, really, to be honest. That's half of the fun of it, though.
11:44Yeah. The sound on Ohio Players was really cool. I mean, there's live performances at the root of every one of those songs. Really? Absolutely, yeah. songs like on the game stuff like that were were kind of uh were live in the studio track we tracked that one with um bass bass guitar keyboards and drums live and a couple other ones from that session too so they really have a a great like live raw feel and those were recorded at torag world famous torag that is closed recently but we always wanted to record there and i think we may have been like one of the very last yeah to record there famous london's all analog studio the guy was uh really inspired by joe meek liam watson he ran it's a 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 did he work with joe meek was he around like when no joe meek died like like 68 or something he killed himself and his landlady right something like that yeah some tragic story yeah um were you guys were you guys around for um god who's the other great uh john peele did you guys ever do like a peel session oh yeah yeah we did a couple of them that was our first that was our first kind of big break outside of the U.S.
13:14was John Peele 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 2003. And yeah, we did our first Peele session there. And then a couple months later, we got asked to come to his house. His country estate. Yeah, he would do his show in the summertime from his house. We had this crazy year of 2003, just being really broke, but traveling a lot. And this one, we went and played some festival in Norway, then we flew to London, we got picked up, drove right to his house. I remember we were just so jet-lagged.
14:03I took a nap 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. Literally two months after that, it was a live thing again with Steve Malcolm and the Jicks in Brighton. And then we did a Peel session. When we put out Rubber Factory, we landed in London to do a tour there right at the end of October. And when we got picked up from the airport, our driver had a newspaper and the headline was john peele dead at 64 and we were supposed to head to appeal session like the very next day so we actually went to the appeal session still and they were like yeah at the bbc like we don't know what to do like i made a veil three right yeah small room yeah they're like you know we don't know what's happening but we know like he's like he was trying to john peele's trying to do his compilation of lonnie donagan songs so So we just spent two hours trying to learn these two little Lonnie Donaghan songs.
15:09But yeah, it took all the momentum out of our thing because that was our only supporter in the UK. Wow. He died. He went on a trip to Peru and had a heart attack. First of all, what was his record collection? That record collection must have been crazy. He was crazy. He had 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 78s and then over in this thatched roof big thing was like all his you know 45s and we we dug through his lps and looked for some stuff you know i wanted to hear like um let's work together by wilbur harrison and so we we searched for it 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 he he went back and he found it he had it fuck he had the he had all the versions he had everything i mean he had a million albums right wasn't that you know as soon as you send him on a task to find something he's like giddy it was awesome yeah that peel session at his house was live on bbc and uh his whole family was there and they made us dinner it was like you know it was really special you know and 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 be hanging out with that guy you know he was just kind of this cool dj and then 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 Peele.
16:58I mean, I mean, look, if you go back and look at his playlists and stuff, it's, it's incredible what he's exposing people to, especially like pre internet to be able to turn on the radio and have some guy playing you the residence. And then, you know, like, you know, a Howard tape single, pretty cool. And the continuity between, you know, he'd done it so long, just being able to present like Led Zeppelin in like 1970. And, you know, you guys in 2003 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 a appeal session you know because they sound always they sound pretty different from the records usually but they just sound um 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 his sessions but they were incredible you know i did it at made a veil when we were doing them i think that's where they did them yeah as a bbc their studios are incredible their 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 um bbc sessions always sound amazing because basically use a ribbon mic always you know i mean after those sessions we started to but yeah they would have ribbons on everything yeah now it's a cool thing you show up and then basically here's this world class studio you've got like six hours to record four songs 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 um the coolest uh john peele antidote is that he told us uh he was present in dallas when lee harvey oswald was killed in that parking garage at the police station because he was working for a radio station.
18:51And so he saw that in person. I guess he's in the film. Wait, wait. He was actually at the police station. Yeah, when Lee Harvey Oswald gets killed by Jack Ruby, he's one of the guys there. That's incredible. I'm going to go... Yeah, watch it in slow-mo. See if you can find him. Yeah, maybe somebody can find him in the pictures. Maybe he'll be in the files that are releasing the JFK files that are coming out. John Peel was involved. How does it feel? 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 out the way in which you want to promote a record or do you not spend much time thinking about it?
19:38Back then, I remember one of the first interviews we ever did with like a European, you know, one of the first interviews, period. We were at South by Southwest 2003, and we did a couple interviews. One of them was with NME. And then we landed in England a couple weeks later for the first time, and our publicist handed us the NME. And in this interview, we talked for like 30 minutes, and at the very end of the interview, the journalist was like, so do you guys take drugs? Have you ever taken any drugs? And we were like naive kids, and we were like, I was like, oh, I smoked opium once. and the headline of the fucking NME was like, Opium Fueled Blues Duo.
20:18And I was like, holy shit, this is insane. It didn't really help us sell any records, but it was a cool look. I kind of miss headlines like that. I miss magazines in general, kind of, sometimes for headlines like that. Me too. Yeah, I miss being able to pick up a music magazine. and it have something i want to see in it you know it's like back in the day like 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 magazine called ray gun which is like as a music magazine that lasted for just maybe a couple years but it was like the graphic design was so crazy like you could barely read the articles because they like lay 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 of what i know about music that kind of set me in the right direction like that's when i read about daniel johnson you know uh love is laughter and k records and all that kind of stuff 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 50 bucks on a bunch of records i saw in a magazine and then you know they all sucked and that was kind of a bus they usually sucks yeah yeah yeah i bought a lot of shitty records were there local like zines in akron or uh sort of but it seemed like a lot of that stuff was like geared towards hardcore punk which dan and i were never into never never had a stage no we we get along too well with It's our father's.
22:11We'll be back with more from the Black Keys after the break. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speedtest, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged. With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity, even in times of high demand.
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23:36They're in the late night studio sessions, the chance encounters, and the cultural moments that shaped entire movements. For music lovers who find themselves going down rabbit holes about their favorite artists, Claude, an AI thinking partner, helps you explore those deeper questions. Whether you're wondering about the connections between different scenes, trying to understand what drove a particular creative period, or exploring how social movements influenced sound, Claude works through these complex cultural puzzles with you. It's built for people who know that understanding music means understanding the human stories behind it.
24:09Claude doesn't just compile facts. It helps you see patterns across decades of music history, ask the kinds of follow-up questions that reveal deeper truths, and works through the nuanced relationships between artists, movements, and moments. Whether you're a music journalist, industry professional, or someone who just lives for understanding the stories behind the sounds, Claude matches your level of curiosity about what really drives great art. Try Claude for free at Claude.ai slash brokenrecord and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner. Lexus is a company that believes in the importance of setting a standard, which I can appreciate as someone who holds themselves to lofty if not ridiculous standards, especially with the car I drive.
24:51The standard Lexus has set for themselves is to experience amazing. Lexus measures success by the feeling and emotions evoked in a driver, like exhilaration and joy. Amazing can only be achieved by knowing people on a deeper level. The standard of amazing results in a feeling in drivers that their car was built in anticipation of them. Machines that make you feel more human. Because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. Your dads were friends too, weren't they? Our dads, I mean, we're neighbors. They're neighbors, yeah.
25:28Yeah. That's how Dan and I know each other, from just growing up around the corner from each other. And your dad was an art teacher or procurer of art supplies? Yeah, he was an antique dealer, and he collected folk art, outsider art. Yeah. He would, you know, he was like a picker. You know, 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 Pier Expo in Manhattan and set up a booth. And, you know, I'd go and help him and shit, and it was always fun.
26:15I loved 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 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 Ohio to New York City and, you know, loading and unloading the van for the shows and stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, and he, you know, he would introduce me to artists and show me the difference between different types of art. And, yeah, absolutely. Has anything you've gotten from him made it to any artwork, Blackie's artwork or ARCs?
26:59I don't think so. But I mean, no. I mean, one of the guys that he would help facilitate in Akron, this artist named Alfred McMoore, my dad would bring him crayons and art supplies and pipe tobacco and bring him stuff he needed. and he would try 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, was this outsider artist, you know, so. He would call our houses like every day, multiple times a day.
27:49demanding pipe tobacco and it's crayons and he'd say like you big if you don't bring me a two liter of coke some crayons you're a black key you're d flat and he'd make these five foot wide 50 foot long scrolls with crayon and pencil and so dan's father had like you know just a basement filled with scrolls. A hundred of them, maybe. Because he would give them... He was living in a halfway house. He had very little resources. So Chuck would give him some crayons, paper, stuff, then get these scrolls and sell some, give him some of the money. But yeah, they're pretty incredible. He would draw a lot of highway patrol people in high heels.
28:47big chandelier earrings chandelier because he's got the boots yeah it was so cool they were they were like these long stream of consciousness they'd be like uh funeral processions you know people in open cat cadillacs and like all these different jesus was playing like rock and roll guitar and they're amazing really i mean alfred would wear about 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 you show up to random funerals and cry this is the person that my my dad brought over to the house to spend time with his sons expose expose us to his artwork alfred no i mean his artwork was so beautiful but like impossible to display like where where do you put a 50 foot roll of artwork do you guys still have some of those uh-huh oh yeah man my dad got him to do a couple small pieces and they're okay but the the rolls are actually where it's at yeah i yeah i got one uh little small one it says it says mcmore mclest and that's where that's what we named our publishing company after mcmore mc glass that's great is he still is he still around no he died in 2009 i think did he did you guys ever play him any of your music i don't believe so 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 you know were there other people like characters like that around town Yeah, there's a lot of I feel like there's a lot of characters in Akron There's the purple man Remember that guy?
30:39His house is purple, his car is purple Akron's full of that kind of stuff There's like It's kind of like Then there was a guy we called Eep In Highland Square And
31:00The 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 he dressed the window up in like inflatable dolls really really out there yeah there's a that's why 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 Saturdays sometimes to this place called Glenn's Train Shop. And it was this building covered in ivies in the middle of like the worst neighborhood at Akron back in this lot. You'd walk in there and just be this guy just smoking with like, you know, 10 ,000 boxes of vintage trains just mean as hell.
31:52Total. Like that's what Akron. that's the classic did he did he deal them or was he just collecting them he's like what gauge do you want he's like he's like he's like judge you by the gauge of the train that you wanted the real trains are O gauge apparently that's what you want the real trains are what O gauge the big ones I don't know what that means I know sounds about right I bet Neil Young knows I was gonna say Neil Young probably knows this guy oh yeah um why did you call the wait why was one guy called eat this is what he said all the time that makes sense
32:36nashville's got to be filled the characters too right yeah it's just filled it's filled to the brim that when we first moved to town we both we both moved like to the same area here and uh we were neighbors with harmony corinne so we hit it off with him right off the bat and through harmony we met like you know david berman and and also you know introduced to the the original kind of cast of eccentrics which you no longer see any of them anymore but most of them were in gummo or something you guys have been there over a decade now right they're 15 years you mentioned the uh the cover of forgot to be your lover earlier what made you guys cover that song i was scared to click on it to be honest because it's such like a perfect record the original you guys's version is really good too yeah no it's uh just it was just one of our favorites you know and we were in the studio we're hanging out we were just inspired to do something like that 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.
33:49But it felt good when we cut it, you know. We had our buddy Kelly Finnegan and Tommy Brennick in there with us. Kelly sings harmony, and it just felt good. Yeah, we did that Never Gonna Give You Up on Brothers, you know. I think we've done some soul songs before, you know. Those types of songs are a pretty big influence on us. Oh, yeah. It's just such big, you know, like Forgot to Be Your Lover. It's just such a big record, you know? Yeah, one of those perfect records. From like the opening riff, the drums on it are perfect, the opening line's perfect. Yeah, absolutely. We mostly just wanted to hear Tommy play that opening riff.
34:38Yeah. That's pretty much the reason we cut it. No, that was Tommy. How much time do you spend listening to music these days? I probably listen to like an hour, at least a day of music. What's moving you these days? Man, I'm kind of all over the map, what I'm into right now. But we've been doing these record hangs where we play in 45s. So that's kind of got my algorithm going, trying to find these kind of trying to find like songs that feel like hits but weren't hits it's kind of like the ultimate goal but I've 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 what are his opinions?
35:40I mean, he's got good taste. But it's funny. He'll hear something and like it, and he's aware enough to think that he should be embarrassed by liking it. So he'll keep it a secret. Because he'll think like I will make fun.
36:09Smart kid. 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 11. What about you, Dan? Do you listen to a lot of music or not work-related? 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. It's just like chill out for an hour and search for music. Because I swear to God, every single day, I can find something that blows my mind if I search hard enough. It's true. So, yeah. Honestly, as soon as we started doing these record hangs, I think I started listening to way more music on average.
37:02Same. Who organizes the record hangs? We do. we just kind of pick like cities where it will make sense when we're on the road or cities we think it'll be fun to do so yeah we just had a 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 minute yeah it's kind of fun just to pop in somewhere unannounced and spin some records did you guys spin records like that out and about like before that or no? A little bit. A little bit. A little bit. Yeah. Back when I did the ARC stuff, I would spin records with Richard Swift and Leon a few times, here and there.
37:50And 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 both kind of got hooked on it, really. Yeah, it's addictive. you know i'm with dan on that like i've definitely probably spending like 10 uh i don't know at least another 30 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 music in the last probably two years than i had in the previous 10 years. Really? For sure. Not just like history of music, but just like kind of maybe how to make it.
38:42Well, 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 fascinating how much a hit, I mean, I guess we all know it because we know hits that kind of aren't that great, but it's fascinating how much a hit really has nothing to do with how good a song is necessarily you know there's all these 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 we love that yeah like the song could have 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 i think that's the biggest thrill is 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 yeah if it doesn't work we're turning it off 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 it's got to have like the right mix there's so many of these songs where you they like they seem like they're gonna be it then you get the record and the mix is just it's fucked up the drums aren't there it doesn't work yeah it sucks it's a lot of 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 10 15 percent of them actually are as good as you thought they were pretty consistent pretty consistently yeah like the vocals are like 25 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 or like the drums are great but then there's like the hi-hat is like something is just messing all up we can live with that as long as we can live with some of it but yeah do you find that it do you find through digging though that some do you ever find yourself lost in the sense of like after 30 minutes an hour of listening to something you you kind of don't know what's good anymore oh yeah that happens to me when it when it comes into this specific thing, I've definitely purchased a few records and I'll get them like, why the fuck did I buy this record?
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41:13And I was like, really be like, what was going on here? And I was like, you know what it was? It was 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. You can get yourself worked up about the smallest thing about a record. The smallest reason why you need this record is enough to buy it. I've definitely bought a record the other day because the snare drum sounded so bad in a good way that I was like, maybe Dan and I should sample this. What record was it? Oh, man. His last name is Washington. I forget.
41:48It's a decent song, but the snare drum's real messed up. It sounds like a broken four track. It's cool. Do the record hangs impact the way you guys make records in the studio? a thousand percent 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 yeah i think there's a couple songs on the new album that definitely exists because of the record hangs
42:30what tracks are those i've only been able to hear two but yeah and one of the songs you're i mean both of them were one of them was a rough mix you heard which one was that i mean if they sent you no rain no flowers that was the title track that was the wrong mix yeah yeah that's like part of the thing it did sound very different from the night before i heard the night before and it sounded the the production wise it did sound very different well it's like you know it's the thing that's interesting thing about like we started this album in the very very end of july and and um really got going on it like in september but when you're like
43:15writing recording you know that much work in that in that much 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 weeks of getting away from the record to get back to the place where we could start mixing it start getting it finished that's where we are now but um yeah there's like there's like one song on it that's just a kind of cumbia influence because dan's been playing a lot of cumbia at the record hangs um but yeah i think that it's an interesting thing trying to figure out how to put an album out in 2025 versus 2005 because it used to be like the biggest difference is it's like yeah of course there's press and stuff that you could do there's things to do but really it was like it really felt like back then like your album came out then it was like okay now like now people are finally going to 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 the minute your album comes out it's like unless you have a couple of hit songs on it it's just what's coming out next week you know yeah the weird thing about that though from the you know listener perspective and just thinking about music as a consumer i I guess, is it automatically puts all new music in the same frame, in the same context as old music.
45:00In the sense of when the Ohio Players comes out, I'm sort of guilty of the same phenomenon. I listen to it and I pretty quickly move on, but then I also find 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. Cause it's like, you have this whole, everything's at your fingertips now. So I'm like listening to, you know, whatever Aretha records I never heard before really, or, you know, and then 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.
45:35Um, it makes them feel like classic records a little sooner than it 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 you know i heard something a couple weeks ago 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 there's more music released every single day in 2024 as there was in the entirety of 1989.
46:13I don't know if that's true, but... Could that be true? It feels like there's some sort of... It kind of feels like that. That's Pat's truth. I've chosen to believe it. Also, I have other feelings about UAPs and things like that that I've chosen to believe. What are those feelings? I don't know. They change day to day. What are they today? I haven't thought about it yet today, so I'm like... No, but you know what? There's just so much good music that's been made, and it's like...
46:55If you're a 15-year-old now and you have Spotify, I wish I could have experienced... you know, I wish I could have had my teenage 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 20s 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 a hundred CDs just fall on the ground. We'd be picking them up, crazy box sets, things.
47:32Just like every single dollar he was making was going into buying music to try to hear it, see what was there, you know? I was going to say, forget time. The amount of money, when you had no money, you'd spend, you know? Yeah, well, you know, I think Dan spent all of his money on that. But yeah, you know, like that choice you have to make when you're like a 14-year-old kid and you're just getting into Led Zeppelin and you go look at the record store and you could end up hating Led Zeppelin if you picked the wrong record right there. If you walked out with presents, you might never like Led Zeppelin.
48:13But if you got Led Zeppelin 1, 2, 3, or 1, 2, 4, Houses of the Holy, then I imagine you'd end up buying presents eventually. you would get there that'd be last yeah did you were the record i'm trying to think were the 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 i wonder if they had that record in through the outdoor i wonder if that has some sort of reference to their catalog but yeah i mean like here it's just today um one of our uh engineers at the studio asked me if i was into Spaceman 3.
48:53And I was like, actually, I was like a hip teenager. I bought a Spaceman 3 CD when I was like 15 and 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 Spaceman 3 a little bit and it's been 30 years. but there's a lot of times I think if you get the wrong album you could maybe not see the light but I think that's cool I end up respecting bands that have catalogs like that 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 70s all the way up to The Wall 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 you're 12 you never heard of the rolling stones i'm gonna buy rolling stones record there's just good advice i'm gonna pick up yeah if you like you know the advice is like 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 and what there is what is that stones record whether they're like laying down and they got a like neon on or sport coats i owe it to them to never listen to that bad though i don't know the cover is just so bad they've got such good record it's not bad i just have a thing about digital 80s reverb and so i just i hate the whole i think maybe because my parents got divorced right in mid 80s i just i fucking hate like people are like oh man like you like this band it kind of sounds like bruce hornsby like you fucking just kill me right now because i don't want i don't want to remember what 1986 felt like that's amazing yeah digital reverb brings back too many painful memories it fucking does dude i really can't hear it that's amazing sorry man no nostalgia for that i do like dire straits a lot though that brothers and arms but it's like that's a lot of reverb on that or on the on the snare it's tasteful but like that you know i can't go i can't go later in the 80s than that do you have prejudice prejudices like that dan like musical oh god yeah not not out of other kinds absolutely he's got the same prejudice uh that's the thing 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 we spend so much time thinking about it's like you know not everything's created equal yeah not you know for each person it's different but yeah it's like if you tell if someone's like i'm really into wine it's like well what does that actually mean it means they're a complete fucking snob about what wine or drink it's like us about music you know we're the same oh i really love food like oh do you want some ruffles no motherfucker.
52:27I like good food, you fucking idiot. It's a good call. We'll be back with the rest of the Black Keys shortly. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at an OOCL speed test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged.
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55:01Lexus is a company that believes in the importance of setting a standard, which I can appreciate as someone who holds themselves to lofty if not ridiculous standards, especially with the car I drive. The standard Lexus has set for themselves is to experience amazing. Lexus measures success by the feeling and emotions evoked in a driver, like exhilaration and joy. Amazing can only be achieved by knowing people on a deeper level. The standard of amazing results in a feeling in drivers that their car was built in anticipation of them. Machines that make you feel more human. Because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing.
55:38Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. 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. um you know like but pretty quickly i guess if you if you think about the blues it's like muddy waters howlin wolf might be like the yeah two strains maybe and it's like i think i'm just more on that side of things and i don't know yeah first blues album i ever heard was electric mud so i love i love how i love how wolf and i love muddy waters but i i like the bastardized version of it all that's but i and i'm just now kind of getting into the other shit dan's way into like mississippi fred mcdowell all kinds of shit that i'd never heard he exposed me to all this stuff 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 one-man bands, two-man band kind of stuff.
56:55Joe Hill Lewis and Dr. Ross, the Harmonica Boss. Stuff like that. Those guys were my favorites. How did you start discovering that stuff? My Uncle Tim was really into blues music and has really great taste. He's a fucking snob, too. He hit me to some really cool stuff early on. But right when we were starting to get serious about music, that whole Fat Possum record label kind of came to be and started to have their moment. And it was really, you know, it had a major effect on me. Because for the first time, I loved blues music, but it was all like antiquity. It wasn't like current. But then the Fat Possum stuff came out and it was like, oh, these guys are real.
57:45You can go to the, and they come to like the rock club in Cleveland. and I can go see him. You know what I mean? So it was like, it was just such a game changer. And so I started to really get influenced by that scene in particular, which was very raw. And stuff like Seidel Davis is really hard for people to listen to. It's very out of tune. But, you know, it's also very beautiful and potent. Yeah, which I guess is even more so. So, I mean, again, we were talking about the way a record's mixed. When you think a record's going to 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.
58:33Sometimes I try to wonder what would they sound like if they had been recorded like a Steely Dan record. Like, fuck, I don't know if I want to hear that. It's like, yeah, a lot of blues music got messed up because it got recorded too well. You know what I mean? I think jazz, too. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, something about that kind of music that's heavy on the improvisation. It's really nice to get it in a place that's not actually a recording studio to where the room is kind of alive and less of like a science laboratory. You know what I mean? And I think that's why some of the best recordings are live recordings, field recordings.
59:15Like, my favorite Fred McDowell recordings were always the ones recorded at his house, you know? Stuff like that. Yeah, the jazz. Definitely prefer jazz recorded at a, like, live at the Village Vanguard type of shit. It always sounds so much better. Whatever magics in, like, those Fred McDowell records recorded at home, is that ever in your mind when you're recording stuff? Like, it would be, I want something like that. I don't want to go for that. You're not going to get it, I guess. I mean, that's why we went to Muscle Shoals. That's why, you know, that's probably why we recorded in an old tire factory instead of going to a studio.
59:59It was all because of that. I think we've made most of our decisions based on that. And when I'm producing records, too, I've recorded a bunch of records in the houses when it was just as easy to record in a studio. When it was easier to record in a studio, just because it was musically more appropriate. I was way into music from Big Pink when I was 16, 17. And my dad told me they made this record in the basement of this house on the cover. Ever since then, I was like, that's the coolest. You can do that. So yeah, I mean, I got a four-track when I was 13 years old. And started fucking around with one in my basement, making absolutely terrible shit.
1:00:54But yeah, the first time Dan and I jammed, he came down. And at that time, I had this Marantz, pretty nice cassette four-track. And I don't think Dan had seen a four-track yet. And we just kind of sat there and started fucking around and showing him that. and I would take it over to his parents house we'd sit up like in their tiled bathroom just to get different sounds sounded like shit sounded like dog shit but it was worth a shot we used to do shit like too like on thick freakness I don't forget what song it is but Dan wanted like a Leslie effect or something I just started swinging the microphone in front of the amp while we recorded.
1:01:41It actually sounded fucking cool. That's the kind of shit we would do. That made the record? Yeah, that's on the record. Did you get that first take? Probably. I forget what it's on. But yeah, it's there. That's pretty amazing. Yeah, Dan's Uncle Tim once brought over this Fender reverb tank. And then that became our whole identity for about two months. just putting everything through that shit. Our first effect. Yeah. How does the no rain, no flowers, I heard the wrong mix. How different is the final mix sound? I mean, you get the basic idea, I think. It's not that far. Okay. But, yeah. just a little bit more work to do it was pretty it's a it's a pretty different record for you guys like song i don't know sound or sonically it just sounded so different yeah we've we've never really written with uh piano players before that was one of the first times we've ever done that so that kind of that uh instantly was like different for us but natural you know it was We wrote it together with Rick Knowles in the studio here, and we worked really quickly together.
1:03:13So whatever it sounds like, it was pretty natural, the way that it unrolled. How did the writing go? Was it based off jamming, or was it based off of someone bringing something in? Rick likes to start with a song title. so he was asking if we had any song titles and that was one that Dan had and you know, writing with a keyboard player like we worked with I guess a lot of keyboard players on this record to see the way that they choose to voice chords versus guitar obviously, it's all kind of a lot of it's pretty it's very fresh to us to hear what you can kind of get to and Rick's really good at that and he's a chord master so to sit there and watch a guy that's like master of his craft and been doing it for a long time it's like the thing is I've never sat in a room with a guy like that before we've worked with musicians that are writers that we're friends with but to work with someone whose sole job is that it was like
1:04:25you know it was like going to songwriting school a bit it was just to see how they how they choose to work and then then to see how they entertain you know the the way that we want to move the song forward and like to 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 a couple days ago and we're sitting there still he's passionate enough about this the shit 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 shit you know but you know you weren't like tweaking songs still a couple days ago right we're still tweaking shit still oh yeah what's my impression was 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 depends It depends on what it is.
1:05:22It's like 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 it rough together. Another two hours the next day. And there's four hours all in on a song, and it's maybe very close to done. That's one way that we can do shit. And then another way is this method. It's like get with the 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 start getting into, start trying to figure out how to do this. And then maybe there's multiple approaches to it.
1:06:04But once you get to a point where you have 17 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 this overdub or two, you know, you're talking about five hours of work to touch all the songs a little bit. So the record, it can take time. What song did you guys decide to cover?
1:06:30We're going to let it be a surprise, I think. Yeah, it's a surprise. Yeah. All right. All right. We just cut it yesterday. We haven't even had time to think about it yet. 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 this city. Written by Bernie Taupin. You guys made a documentary, right? We didn't, but there has been one made. Is that coming out, not coming out? Sounds like not too exciting. No, I think it's come out, yeah.
1:07:15you know we've um we've just been fucking grinding in the studio bro i think since between you know we i think we've you know we've been really on this creative streak right lately 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 know yeah we're getting ready to not be able to like go in the studio very often and there's lots of shows coming up so got it i'm trying to get it in while we can yeah is that a is that a fun shift to make going from the studio to on soar you know i think i think tour is fun playing shows is fun it's just about i think we you know like if you like drink too much tequila like you might never want to like taste it again 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.
1:08:22So even though we have like, it's only like maybe 50 or 45 shows, it's still like, you know, and now that we have kids, you know, Dan's had kids for, you know, 17 years, but I've only ever toured like twice with kids. and I was like, you know, it's a little bit, it's hard to get away. But then I guess once I'm away, it's kind of good. I get more sleep. But I think we're excited about doing some shows. We're going to open up the set list. I feel like it's a thing that you got to do. It's the thing that the fans want. And so just make the most of it. And I think one thing we've talked about is just really kind of opening up our set list.
1:09:06you know when we kind of did this transition like started moving into the arenas around um brothers el camino it was like you know getting into this whole different thing that we never not only had 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 now doing something that we'd 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 were they fun show like were they fun to play arenas yeah absolutely yeah any show any show can be fun 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 or we're on a stage and there's like a football field between you and the front yeah like at a festival you know there's where it's like you know the energy from the crowd is uh there is crucial crucial that's like the most how does that get decided 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 different city to city like are you guys allowed to dictate like how like front the first 10 rows are seated or not or you know i mean if you're playing an amphitheater 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 but there's certain rooms were just you know designed to to be that way like the oregon theater in chicago um brixton academy in london the zenith barrel lands like there's these rooms that are like four to six thousand seat like the anthem in dc the rooms that are like four or five six thousand seat big rooms big theaters with an open floor those are the those are the those are the that's the sweet spot for us is there a world where you guys would say like we're only ever gonna play those or primarily well i don't think enough of them exist to you just be playing the same 10 cities but those are the most fun you know i think it's almost worth it to just do a couple nights and those versus hitting some stuff where you might miss energy.
1:11:49But at the same time, part of the fun of this job is traveling. It's just about how much you do. It's like, it can be fun to hit up some of these off-the-beaten-path cities and stuff. It's just about how long you're out there for. you know but i'm excited about um like our first leg of this tour is like three weeks that's like that's the ideal amount 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 20 years it's like you're not going to make any money but it's really important to get over 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 does it go dog did you find that out yeah i did find it out we just have to do one more tour and they'll tell us they're always like one more tour dude we had done this tour this is in 2012 dude that's the year they gave us like agita that tequila taste of tour it was like we were on the road all year and we had just finished playing Reading Festival right outside London.
1:13:12And yeah, we were about to go home for a month off and then we had to still do the West Coast of the US and Australia. So we still had like four weeks of touring left and we'd just gone all year. And our agent comes back, he's like, I need you to come back in December. We're like, where? Come back where? He's like, you got to do more Europe, December. we had just played three nights at this place Alexandria Palace so we sold like 30 ,000 tickets in London plus we had just played the writing festival, direct support to Foo Fighters so we'd already sold 30 ,000 tickets in the city and he's like, I need you back you gotta really prove you know, you gotta really it's gonna
1:13:55set the tone you gotta do like a marquee show so we need you back two nights we went back to london the two nights at the o2 arena so in like one year we sold like 55 000 tickets just in london um and i still don't know if we made money on that tour actually i don't think that we did can't you can't you audit that kind of thing it's sketchy dude in hindsight would you go back like is that was that the problem just what's that thing no no i think that that's the problem with the that happened like it can happen is just like you got to know when to say when like the other day just the other day like you know our manager called and was like we got you know we have this tour that's already too long to go to europe and they're like we got an offer to go to to add on to this one more show and i'm just like it doesn't really matter how much it's going to pay or what what it is it's like you can't you can't do that that's the time slot that's the thing because it always gets you by the balls but 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 her face kate nash i saw like she's to get you did an interview about like you know touring what touring looks like for her and um you know i think people who aren't in the industry like see that and i was like what you What's she on about?
1:15:24But no, what she's saying is 100 % accurate. What did she say? She said she's going on a month-long tour of Europe. Everything is basically sold out, and she's not making money. That's the reality of what this touring has become. Because once all the money went away from the recording side, then the people that 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, Taylor Swift's tour did like, what, like$6 billion? Yeah. People are going there to get the money. The cost of like renting a bus is like 4X what it was 10 years ago.
1:16:04You know, you got your commissions, your taxes. You know, what people expect to get paid to go on tour with you is also way up, you know, as it should be because inflation is crazy. So then the only thing that hasn't gone up but has maybe gone down is the fees that are coming into the band. you know ticket price is up hotels are up all the all the vendors are up everything's way out of control but like uh the amount of money that hits the you know the actual musicians is way down yeah we're excited about this album but yeah i was gonna say this try to say this earlier but 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 for us it's kind of like i for me at least it's the most exciting thing about making music is like people kind of get to that's like the one perk of this is like people get to experience music for the first time together and i feel like you know we're giving the first peak 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's thoughtful and fun for the fans so yeah we got a lot of cool shit to share this year i mean i think i think the reason why we never got into are 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 it's been like since literally the first time we officially like kind of started this band it was like we were make we made a recording um 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 what are you gonna put a studio in your bus like a fucking idiot like come on why would that make you a fucking idiot just like sleep on your bus it's gonna sound like shit there's a fucking diesel engine below come on it's like you can't 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 or no i just heard i'm gonna start doing
1:18:24don't be a fucking idiot just sleep man um well good luck on the road thank you thanks look forward to hearing the record and hope you guys make some money, you know? Me too. Thanks, man. Thanks, dude. Later, y 'all. See ya. That was Dan Arbok and Patrick Carney of the Black Keys. Their new album, No Rain, No Flowers, is out later this spring with a worldwide tour starting in May. You can hear our favorite songs from Dan Patrick and the band on a playlist at brokenrecordpodcast.com. To see the video version of this episode, visit youtube.com slash broken record podcast. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at the broken record pod.
1:19:10You can follow us on Twitter at broken record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolanay. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats.
1:19:47I'm Justin Richmond.
1:19:52The more you learn about your favorite artists, the more you want to know. Claude helps you keep digging, finding new threads and rabbit holes to explore. Whether it's discovering deeper meaning behind a detail in an interview or figuring out the influence behind an artist's particular era, Claude thinks with you to find the next clue. If you can't get enough of the stories behind your favorite music and artists, Claude will help you discover new layers you didn't know existed. Try Claude for free at claude.ai slash brokenrecord. This is an ad by BetterHelp. We've all had that epic rideshare experience.
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From the publisher
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.
