THE MOJO INTERVIEW
Producing pop divas, bailing out Kimbroughs, he’s the old school soul in a 21st century rock star’s body, but how long can he put off the next Black Keys record? “I’m just going with my gut at the moment,” explains Dan Auerbach.
Dan auerbach is not playing ball. surely, three years since the black Keys’ eighth studio album, Turn Blue, capped an inexorable 13-year ascent by topping the us charts, it’s time he and his bespectacled sticksman partner, patrick carney, delighted fans and Warner bros accountants alike by returning to the high-profile day job. but as we join him mid-afternoon at hip soho members club the house of st barnabas, auerbach is instead touting his second solo lp – his first since the black Keys broke into the big-time with 2010’s bluesy masterpiece, Brothers. called Waiting On A Song, it’s the culmination of a parallel career he’s been cultivating since he built his easy eye sound studio in nashville, in the wake of Brothers’ success. Dressed down, as usual, in a ragged khaki army jacket and drainpipe jeans, this festival-headlining star sports the demeanour of an interloper in the elite lounge. he walks st barnabas’s rococo-plastered corridors totally unrecognised, on our way to the busy club’s one place of guaranteed calm – the chapel. “they only allow us in here for so long, right?” he asks mischievously, stroking his trim reddish beard and gazing up at the vaulted ceiling, as we settle on a cushioned pew beneath a stained-glass window to discuss Waiting On A Song, and all points preceding. early in our conversation, auerbach describes his own attitude towards fame and fortune as ‘blue-collar’, born of an upbringing in gritty akron, ohio, and then a near-comically unaspirational alt-rock apprenticeship. after he and carney unexpectedly emerged from the shadow of fellow lo-fi duality the White stripes with Brothers, they certified their mettle with 2011’s pop-radio smash, El Camino, some mammoth arena tours, and the ultimate vindication of 2014’s Turn Blue. but those few years of dramatic uplift and enormodome roadburn left auerbach feeling traumatised and unfulfilled. still only 37, he has resolved to plough the proceeds of the public’s recognition – in terms of money, and self-confidence – into his work at easy eye sound, both as producer/co-writer and bandleader for the estimable likes of Dr. John, chrissie hynde, lana Del rey, and now ‘solo’. Waiting On A Song was co-written with some of nashville’s most revered veteran tunesmiths, including titan of discerning politico country John prine. the album features backing from crack sessioneers including keysman bobby Wood and drummer gene chrisman from the american sound house band (key record: From Elvis In Memphis, 1969), and the mighty twangmaster himself, Duane eddy. Mark Knopfler also makes a digitally transferred but no less sublime contribution. auerbach’s guide into such rarefied company was one Dave ‘Fergie’ Ferguson,
backroom protégé of ‘Cowboy’ Jack Clement and engineer on Johnny Cash’s American Recordings albums. Discussing these new buddies, his eyes widen and his speech accelerates, like the cat who got the cream. Which, musically speaking, he has.
With many irons in different fires, you don’t have to wait on a song too long, do you?
I felt like I had to wait my whole life to be able to make this record. The stars had to be aligned for me. I’d never sat down with an acoustic guitar and tried to write a song with someone else, as they do in Nashville. I started doing it last summer, but I had to make a conscious decision to stop touring altogether, to really focus. That was hard for me, because all I know is touring. To say no to that, is to say no to a lot of money, which (laughing) is against my religion.
How did working with John Prine unfold?
Fergie took me to see him, at his annual Christmas show at the Station Inn. I grew up listening to bluegrass, so that’s like sacred ground to me, and John’s songs really hit me. It was shortly thereafter that I got together with him, and we had a good time, so we kind of kept doing it, and we wrote seven or eight songs together. We’d just sit in a room, and maybe I’m just dumb enough not to be intimidated, but we’d go back and forth, and try to make each other laugh. John’s amazing – it’s like these jewels fall out of his mouth.
People might assume it’s a country album, which isn’t quite the case…
They’ll have assumptions because it has my name on it, too. I’ve told people I listened to bluegrass and that was the first music I loved. Still it’s like, “Why did you move to Nashville?!” Well, I’ve been coming to Nashville since I was 18. Everybody’s got their own idea of what Nashville is, but I listen to Pete Drake, and some of the 45s that he did that are really out there, and The Everly Brothers. That’s Nashville to me. Harlan Howard, playing Busted completely unlike Ray Charles did it. And Cowboy Jack Clement, having Kenny Malone playing conga drums on all these fucking country records. People always go to just the mainstream country, and they forget all those beautiful weirdos. It’s like that side’s been washed over.
The Black Keys’ sound was lo-fi garageblues, but first you played country, folk and bluegrass, with your family in Akron.
On my mom’s side, they all played bluegrass. There wasn’t a lot of music in Akron. There was one record shop that closed. You had to make your own scene. Mom had a big family – three brothers and a sister, and they all played. They’d play mandolin, upright bass, harmonica and guitars, and they’d sing three-part harmonies. It was Stanley Brothers, Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, old blues songs. My Uncle Jack did a great version of Statesboro Blues [by Blind Willie McTell]. They would all sing [The Stanley Brothers’] Angel Band, doing the harmonies, and [Woody Guthrie’s] It Takes A Worried Man To Sing A Worried Song. It was awesome, and I just wanted to be a part of it.
But your mother didn’t play with them?
No, she was like the outcast in her family because she was into classical music, so she played piano solo. She’d always be playing Scott Joplin and stuff around the house. And my dad had a big record collection, so it was music – constantly! He’d blast out the Stones and the Allman Brothers in the car… Yeah, and scare my friends. They’d be like, ( jaw open, fingers in ears) “I’ve never heard music that loud before.”
At 18, you went on a pilgrimage to Mississippi to see bluesman Junior Kimbrough. Hoping for your own crossroads experience?
Me and my dad went down looking for him. On the way, we actually stopped in Nashville, and Memphis. In Nashville, we went to Robert’s Western World and saw The Don Kelley Band play. This guy Johnny Hiland, a blind [Fender] Tele[caster] player, was just rippin’ on guitar, and the guy on bass was Dave Rowe, who plays on Waiting On A Song. I remember him, because he did the talking to the audience. Anyway, we didn’t know, but Junior was real sick – he’d just lost his foot. We went to his juke joint, and his sons were playing, with R.L. Burnside’s kids, so we struck up conversation with Kenny Kimbrough. He was like, “Y’know fellas, we’re trying to get the music together for tonight’s show, but my brother is in jail, and we don’t have the money for bail – do you guys think we could borrow 60 dollars?” Like, (dumb tourist voice) “Sure!” So they went and bailed out David Jr, and then they played, with Gary Burnside on bass, Kenny on drums, and it was so good. Junior’s son David played and sang just like a young Junior. He was really fucked up on drugs, but really talented, and at the end they paid us our money back, which was real cool.
On another trip, you actually played with another second-generation blues legend, T-Model Ford, but Patrick didn’t go on those jaunts. How did you two start up?
I knew Pat from the neighbourhood – but not well. He lived a block from me, so we took the same bus home from high school, but we were sort of strangers to each other. You know how it is when you’re in different grades from someone – it’s almost like they don’t even exist. But then Pat’s younger brother and my younger brother were actually in the same grade, so they hooked us up. My younger brother said, “Hey, you know Pat has a drum kit in his basement? You should bring your guitar amp over.” That was the first time I saw a 4-track recorder, over at Pat’s. That was a big deal.
But he wasn’t into blues and country?
Pat didn’t know anything about that kind of music. At that point, he was a real ‘Listen to
Pavement at art school’ type dude – stuff that I had no idea what it was. But his uncle Ralph [Carney, sometime Tom Waits saxophonist] had introduced him to Captain Beefheart, and that helped us bridge the gap. I was basically just ripping off T-Model songs or Junior-RL type things, with Fred McDowell tunings, and Pat played along. From our first 4-track recording we got our record deal [with Fat Possum].
The first two Black Keys albums, The Big Come Up [2002] and Thickfreakness [’03], were very basic recordings of the two of you playing live. Looking back, when can you see songwriterly sophistication entering the picture? Maybe by ’04’s Rubber Factory?
No, we were still so isolated at that point. Our first tours were such a joke. It was so dismal, but it was perfect, because it made even the smallest step up feel so grand. I remember we played at a place called Chop Suey in Seattle, and it was sold out! It was like, 350 people – they must’ve played us on the radio, and maybe pushed us at the local record shop. But nowhere else was it good. We played the next night at the Satyricon in Portland, Oregon, and no one showed up, maybe three people, and they’d just done local clown wrestling the night before, where they threw cake on each other as the grand finale, and the stage was carpet, so the carpet was gooey, filled with cake. It was so gross.
Was it really a seismic moment when Danger Mouse [aka Brian Burton, hip-hop studio oddball] came in to produce 2008’s Attack & Release?
We’d never used anyone else, let alone anyone who was so familiar with how songs worked. We’d use a bunch of overdubs, and loops of bass, and Farfisa, but not in the way that he worked. Brian was very much about using ProTools as a writing tool, moving sections around on screen. At first it was a little startling, but it was a nice change of pace, because we’d made three or four records on our own, and there’s only so much you can do, recording yourself in a basement. But again, Brian’s not a traditional songwriter, so it was still all about the groove.
After that, you went off to make Keep It Hid, solo. Patrick said he was the last to find out about it. How serious was the ensuing rift?
Pat and I were always able to talk pretty easily about what was going on, I think. He was going through a dark period. He’d just gotten divorced. I don’t know if you’ve ever got divorced but it’s the ultimate grim. It’s grim while you’re awake, and grim while you’re sleeping. So I set up the sessions for Brothers at Muscle Shoals Sound, so we didn’t have to be in Akron – get out of town, and maybe get away from all the bullshit that he had to deal with. Whenever we get together, it’s always been about making music together. We don’t have to worry about anything else in our personal lives getting in the way. I think that’s been really helpful, helped us focus, and survive.
Do you have any theory why Brothers connected so massively? It was a really good record, but the reason it was so successful was because of one song – Tighten Up. We’d cut the whole record in Muscle Shoals, and it sounded fucking great, but then we were like, “Let’s go in the studio with Brian again, and just try to write a radio song.” We’d not once ever said, “Let’s write a catchy song!” You know, “This is our sixth record, why don’t we give it a shot!” I had the chord changes, and the basic gist of the song written out at my house on keyboard, and then Pat put that cool drum beat on it, and we added an intro, and fleshed it out. It got on the radio, and changed everything for us. What most people know is the ‘whistling song’.
Were you not best placed psychologically for Brothers taking off?
We were in as good a place as any. It’s so horrible, I don’t think you can ever be perfectly prepared for success. It’ll chew and spit out anybody. I certainly don’t think it would’ve been the same if we’d had that success on the first record. We’d seen all these bands headline Reading and Leeds, and then the next year nobody knows who the fuck they are, so we were more realistic about everything.
For El Camino, you explicitly set out to write an album full of radio songs, again with Brian. But you don’t like that album, do you?
It was a certain thing. I’m glad I did it, and I put my all into it, and Lonely Boy became the song that put us into arenas. I like it, but I certainly don’t love it. What it told us was that it was us, without a doubt. It was nobody else. It was us.
Were you not cut out for arenas?
By then I’d realised I just love to be in the studio, so it was really a challenge to be on the road that much. Every arena looks exactly the same. We were travelling with our own
“I don’t think you can ever be perfectly prepared for success. It’ll chew and spit out anybody.”
furniture for backstage, so the backstage room was identical, too. But being so bluecollar about what I do, it was very hard for me to say no to that money, because it was a lot of money. “Hey, I’m really tired, I feel a little burnt out” – you know, talking to my manager here – “so I think I feel like staying home.” “Well, we got this offer in…” (views invisible paperwork with raised eyebrows) “OK, what time does the bus pick me up?”
By the time you got to make Turn Blue…
The thing is, Brothers, El Camino and Turn Blue for me was all one thing, because it never stopped. (Deflated) I don’t even know, man. To be honest, it was such a blur. I’m fucked if I know. I remember being at Sunset Sound for a month, really grinding away. We definitely weren’t thinking about radio. We didn’t need to at that point. Fuck, where are we gonna play? How much bigger a place do we need?
It was your turn to go through a divorce just prior to recording. Did that define the album’s subdued mood?
It was totally miserable. Just like Pat had gone through a divorce earlier. It totally fucked him up, and it definitely fucked me up. It made everything more difficult, but we still made the record. It was like a snapshot in time of where we were. It started out with this big brooding weird guitar solo, and that’s where the fuck I was at the time, know what I mean? So at least it was honest.
Parallel to that, your career as a producer was taking off. You made a great record with Dr. John [Locked Down, 2012]. He told me you have “an old-school understanding in a young person’s body”. What do you think he meant?
I think it’s that I was raised on the same music that he was raised on – old blues records, and gospel, and really ancient songs. I heard all these old Jewish songs, like Itzhak Perlman, and all these classic love songs growing up. I was being programmed like a robot, early on, and I didn’t even know it, and I think it helps me relate to a lot of these guys in Nashville, too. I also love what they do so much that I really researched it, and figured out how they did it, and talked to people who were there. Everyone’s bummed out with the way the music industry is now. I go back to the way that records were made in the golden age – good musicians get together in a room to work out a song, and play it live, instead of piecing it
“I’d never worked with an artist like Lana Del Rey who had a label that could get downright nasty.”
together, like people do it nowadays. They miss a lot of heart, and magic moments.
Are you a Luddite in the internet era?
I’ve gotta say, in the last year, I stopped being on the phone, or on social media, or on music websites, and I feel so much better, like it’s made my blades sharper, and my own self can speak a bit easier. I don’t know that being ‘connected’ helps any artist. To really study your mind, you’ve gotta forget about all this micro-managing. Whenever I get together with young bands in the studio, that always seems to be one of the main hurdles – they think too much about shit, instead of just doing it. “Where does this fit in the world of music?” That’s their first inclination, and it’s not helpful, at all. Bobby Wood told me how in the ’70s, the American house band with Chips Moman were on 12 of the Top 20 pop records, and he said, “At that point in time, I never listened to the radio, I never read any of the trade magazines, and I worked seven days a week.” You’re just following your intuition, and doing what you love. When you produced Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence, you initially locked horns: was it about that kind of stuff?
Well, how shall I put this? It was the first time I ever worked with someone who had these pressures of people expecting certain serious things out of them. I’d never worked with an artist like that who had a label that could get downright nasty if you don’t have a single. Everybody expects her to be a star, and it’s a lot of pressure to be carrying around. But she put a lot of faith in me, and at the end of the day, she let me do my thing. I really love that album, every time I hear it.
Last year, you cut a Pretenders album with Chrissie Hynde. Is there a special bond between fellow renegades from Akron?
I actually met her in Akron. We played a show with Devo there, and I’d seen her around. She’d be out on the town, acting reckless, going bar-hopping while visiting her parents. She still feels very close to Akron, maybe more so than me, but that’s probably because I lived there longer than her.
She had a restaurant there, right?
A vegetarian restaurant in Akron – her team didn’t do the research! But she doesn’t give a fuck. She doesn’t care what anybody thinks. We did that record with a lot of the same people that are on this album. It’s basically the band I had around 2014-16, The Arcs, plus a couple of people.
Is Easy Eye becoming the mecca you’d always envisaged?
It sounds corny, but it really was like Field Of Dreams – “If you build it, they will come”, but I didn’t know who ‘they’ were at the time. Now all of these guys are in there with me, and they’re right at home. Once we started cutting last summer, we never stopped. We still haven’t stopped. I was with them last week, cutting.
Waiting On A Song is a very upbeat, joyful record. Anything we should read into that?
I knew I wanted a couple songs on there, like Waiting On A Song, and maybe Never In My Wildest Dreams, so then I just had to pick stuff that went with those, from 200-odd songs that we had. I had a bunch of downer songs – really crazy slow bloodthirsty songs about murder and pain – but these are the 10 that I chose, so I guess I was feeling happy.
In 2015, you got married again, to Jen Goodall, and had a second child…
Am I in love?! There’s definitely a lot of love in my house, but then there’s just as much love at the studio, and then when you factor in that I don’t have to tour – let’s just say it’s a pure joy cocktail.
Will any of the remaining 190 songs see the light of day?
Without a doubt. I’m definitely assembling another record. And now that I have my own label, it’ll make it a lot easier to release things. That’s sort of the reason I started the label, Easy Eye Sound. Aside from recording my own stuff, I did a bunch of producing this summer – some people that you know, some people that you should know. There’s young bands, solo artists, old musicians. You’re gonna flip over some of the stuff. It’ll start coming out in July – almost every month we’ll have a release.
Is working on The Black Keys again something you’re reluctant to put all this on hold for?
Last year was difficult. I had to turn down that money. I’d just finished doing a little bit of touring with The Arcs, which was fun, and low-key, and after that it would’ve been the natural time to go and do The Black Keys again. I just wasn’t ready to jump back into that world yet. I’m sure I’ll do it at some point, but I don’t have any plans to at the moment. I’ll have to at some point, because you can’t make money making records.
So have you got people on your back to do it?
Everyone’s a little curious, my manager, Pat… But I’m just going with my gut at the moment.
And Pat’s OK with that?
We talk every once in a while. We text all the time. He’s working on projects, doing his own thing. He’s got a new girl in his life [singer Michelle Branch, whose latest album, Hopeless Romantic, Carney produced].
Ah. So he’s in no hurry to disappear touring for months either?
Not yet. I guess he’s still in the great part of the relationship – the honeymoon period!