Black Keys drummer gives shoutout to Shake It Records, Southgate House

With two new albums released over quarantine, “Delta Kream” and “Dropout Boogie,” Akron delta-blues rockers the Black Keys join Band of Horses at Riverbend in early September. The duo of Dan Auerbach (guitar/vocals) and Patrick Carney (drums) came to prominence in 2010 with their breakout “Brothers” and the hit single “Tighten Up,” producing three Grammys. I recently spoke with Carney about the band’s relationship with Cincinnati, the early development of their sound and about the group’s decision to commercialize their music.

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Question: Do you have any stories about coming through Cincinnati?

Answer:It's one of the first cities we played outside of Cleveland and Akron. The guys that ran Shake It Records helped us out a lot early on, and we played in-store in like 2002. We came through there a lot that first year – almost always the Southgate House. It was an amazing venue, and we got to play there with, like, Sleater-Kinney. Our first show there was way up top with the Deadly Snakes. It was like a million degrees.

Q: Was there something about your hometown, Akron, that gave your band its sound?

A: In an inadvertent way. Akron had the perfect recipe for a young person to find themselves getting into music. When we were teenagers, we didn't have the internet. We didn't have much to do. And the weather was pretty horrible from basically November through March, and getting into the basement and playing music was the only thing my friends and I would do.

As far as the sound goes, it's another thing. Dan and I somehow luckily found each other growing up right around the corner from one another. We were into different music, but in the Venn diagram, there was a shared interest in esoteric electric blues, and he was the only person I'd met out of all my friends that was into it. I was the only person that he'd met that was also into it. We found that we bonded over that sort of playing, trying to emulate that kind of music.

Q: You released a couple albums over the pandemic. How has your process changed over the past 20 years since “The Big Come Up”?

A: When we first started the band, we really didn't know what we were doing. I'd never even really played drums until we started the band. I was playing guitar. We learned by emulating other sounds and songs. That first record is very special to us because we got this record deal, quote unquote. This company would put our record out if we made one and they liked it – they weren't going to give us money or anything. So it was all on us to teach ourselves how to even make a record.

By the time we got a few records down the road, we decided that it was most interesting for us to make music that basically couldn't get played by a two-person band. That's when we started trying to write songs with bass and lead guitar. We wanted the sound to stick to what we'd been cultivating. But part of that process is learning to not be afraid of changing and evolving. Once we crossed that hurdle, the whole world opened up to us.

Q: I'm really interested in your collaboration with Danger Mouse. How did you meet and what did you learn from collaborating with him?

A: We met him in 2007. He reached out and asked us if we would collaborate with him and Ike Turner on this Ike Turner comeback record. There's a version of “I Got Mine” and one of “Lies” that have never been released that sound very cool – with Ike singing and playing guitar.

Anyway, we wrote some songs and it was just taking forever and we basically called Danger Mouse. It was like, would you take these songs and produce a record with us? He said yes, and we made “Attack and Release.” And from there, the relationship grew into him not just producing, but also collaborating on writing. We learned a lot from him, and he's still a very close friend.

Q: You were hesitant to license tunes at first. But the first time I heard your band was “Tighten Up” on the FIFA soundtrack. Is “selling out” a thing of the past now?

A: When we were coming up, if a band put a song in a commercial, they would get kind of ostracized. The Shins had done a McDonald's commercial, Modest Mouse had done a Nissan commercial and they all took s***. We didn't want to get called out but eventually got to the point where we realized, hey, these people are offering us money to put a song in this commercial – which is great. People are actually going to hear our band.

I'd been a Nick Drake fan. I thought he was this obscure dude to be interested in. Then he had a song in a Volkswagen commercial. He became like a luminary legend because everybody loved that song, “Pink Moon.” We got hip to syncing songs and commercials and we started doing it. I think we helped open the door for bands to take that money and get that exposure.

I feel so lucky to get to make music and play it for a living and to support my family doing it. If a band writes a song and they’re worried about being called sellouts and they don't put their song in a commercial and therefore no one gets to hear their song, how unfortunate is that? One of the biggest influences on me when I was a kid was the movie, “The Great Rock and Roll Swindle,” the Sex Pistols movie. The whole movie is basically them scamming record labels and taking money from them. That’s punk rock.

The Black Keys: The Dropout Boogie Tour - with Band Of Horses & Early James

When: 7 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 3.

Where: Riverbend Music Center, 6295 Kellogg Ave., Anderson Township.

Tickets: $39.50-$69.50.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Patrick Carney, Black Keys drummer, on Dropout Boogie Tour