Dan Auerbach—best known as half of The Black Keys—will embark on a winter tour beginning November 5 in Columbus, OH. The tour, which includes shows at New York City’s Webster Hall, Nashville’s Cannery Ballroom and Philadelphia’s Theater of the Living Arts, arrives on the heels of Auerbach’s critically acclaimed solo debut Keep It Hid, recently released on Nonesuch. The album received wide praise from The New York Times, NPR’s Fresh Air, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and Pitchfork. Opening for Auerbach on the fall dates are Justin Townes Earle and Jessica Lea Mayfield. Please see below for tour details.
Keep It Hid was produced and engineered by Auerbach at his studio Akron Analog and features him playing a variety of instruments, including drums, guitar, percussion, and keyboards. Many of Auerbach’s friends and family play on the album, including his uncle James Quine, who contributes vocal harmony and electric guitar on the track “Street Walkin.” Other musicians include Jessica Lea Mayfield, who sings on the track “When the Night Comes,” and Bob Cesare, who plays drums on “Whispered Words,” a song originally written by Auerbach’s father. Of the recording process Auerbach states, “I wanted a live, organic sound. Nothing was too plotted or planned, just a lot of spontaneity.” The record was mixed by Auerbach’s good friend Mark Neill at Neill’s Soil of the South studio.
With his Black Keys bandmate Patrick Carney, Auerbach has recorded five critically acclaimed full-length albums, beginning with 2002’s The Big Come Up. 2008’s Attack & Release debuted on the Billboard Top 200 chart at #14, marking The Black Keys’ highest position to date. The New York Times called it a “savage, bitter concoction built on a snarling punk-rock riff,” while the Los Angeles Times called it “without doubt the Keys’ most dynamic effort yet.” Auerbach also has been busy with his own record label, Polymer Sounds, for which he produced the 2008 debut from Jessica Lea Mayfield With Blasphemy, So Heartfelt; Pitchfork praised Mayfield’s album as “fascinating and endlessly listenable.” On November 18, 2008, Nonesuch will release a DVD produced and directed by Lance Bangs titled The Black Keys Live at the Crystal Ballroom.
November 5 Newport Music Hall* Columbus, OH
November 6 The Majestic Theater* Detroit, MI
November 7 Phoenix Concert Theater* Toronto, ONT
November 8 Le National* Montral, QC
November 9 The Paradise† Boston, MA
November 11 Webster Hall† New York, NY
November 12 Theater of the Living Arts† Philadelphia, PA
November 13 Sonar* Baltimore, MD
November 14 Cat’s Cradle† Chapel Hill, NC
November 16 The Orange Peel* Asheville, NC
November 17 Variety Playhouse* Atlanta, GA
November 18 House of Blues* New Orleans, LA
November 20 Minglewood Hall* Memphis, TN
November 21 Cannery Ballroom† Nashville, TN
December 3 Turner Hall* Milwaukee, WI
December 4 First Avenue* Minneapolis, MN
December 6 The Bluebird* Bloomington, IN
December 8 Southgate House* Newport, KY
December 9 House of Blues* Cleveland, OH
Here he is performing the title track from his debut solo album, Keep It Hid:
Here’s a cool article from RollingStone.com detailing the Black Key’s recent studio experience with producer Danger Mouse:
Suma studios in rural northeast Ohio has an amazing history: In its 1970s heyday, it was the birthplace of both Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” and Pere Ubu’s Dub Housing. More recently, Akron locals the Black Keys settled down there with Gnarls Barkley’s Danger Mouse — the first outside producer that the avant-blues duo has ever worked with.
In the cavernous main room, Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney plunks away at a bass while singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach vamps on an electric piano. As the pair lock into an awkward waltz-time figure, Danger Mouse (real name Brian Burton) watches from the control room. “Keep playing it slow, then we’ll reverse it and speed it up,” Danger calls through the control-room microphone. The thus-twisted track is played back; Auerbach bellows, “When you work the streets, darlin’/Make sure your sneaker laces, they get tied” — and suddenly a song appears from what seemed like drowsy noodling.
In early 2007, Danger Mouse began work on a comeback album by rock & roll pioneer Ike Turner. Danger enticed the Keys (”One of my favorite bands,” he says) to write some songs for the project. The Keys turned in demos for Turner to learn, but when sessions bogged down, the project was temporarily shelved. The band eventually decided to make the tunes the heart of its fifth album, and Danger Mouse was the natural choice as producer. “Even when we gave the songs to Ike, they felt like Black Keys songs,” Auerbach says.
The result is the first Black Keys record that rewards headphone scrutiny, with enfolded layers of bass guitar, Moog fizz, bongos and female vocal harmonies (from Jessica Lea Mayfield, a local teenage singer discovered by Auerbach). Danger Mouse’s dusted arrangements and electronic touches are deftly incorporated, while Carney’s drumming sounds awesomely like Ringo Starr. “Same Old Thing” rides a woozy, Wu-Tang-y groove and features flute and bass harmonica from former Tom Waits sideman Ralph Carney, Patrick’s uncle. “Lies,” a song the Keys originally gave to Turner, is a fearsome slow blues perfectly suited to Auerbach’s woolly howl and Carney’s animal-like kit-bashing. “We wanted to make an album whose sounds are as varied as our musical tastes,” says Patrick Carney, whose tour-bus mixtapes run from early Cypress Hill to post-rock pals Six Parts Seven. “We used to record an entire album in fourteen hours,” says Auerbach. “This time we’d spend fourteen hours on one song.”
The finished album plays as an oddball tribute to its inspiration, Turner, who passed away in December. Danger Mouse remains philosophical about how it all turned out. “Hopefully people will get to hear a song or two that was finished from the sessions with Ike,” he says. “But it’s for the best that these songs became Black Keys songs. That’s what they were meant to be.”
Also, check out the bands MySpace page for a listen of their new single from these recording sessions for the upcoming release, Attack and Release.
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