Patrick Carney is calling from L.A., but Ohio is never far from the mind of The Black Keys drummer. Enjoying a day off from rehearsals for the Keys’ tour behind their ninth LP “Let’s Rock,” Carney’s eating sushi and counting down the hours before his home team, the Cleveland Browns, takes the field for Monday Night Football. (After our conversation, the Browns went on to clobber the New York Jets, 23-3.)
Carney and singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach — the other half of the Akron-born, Nashville-residing garage-blues power duo — have ended their longest hiatus since becoming a band in 2001. They’ll play Bridgestone Arena for the third time in their career on Tuesday, with Northwest indie-rock greats Modest Mouse supporting.
The conversation around the issue of tour burnout and its toll on musicians’ mental and physical health has reached a fever pitch in the years since the Keys last hit the road. The indie world is still reeling from the recent suicide of reclusive cult hero and onetime Nashvillian David Berman, who was set to begin a long tour for his first album in 10 years. Rock’s 1-percenters aren’t immune either, as the prescription-painkiller-related accidental deaths of Prince in 2016 and Tom Petty in ’17 taught us.
“It’s a treacherous existence at times,” Carney says. “There’s a fine line between the joy in playing music and being up in front of people, and the necessity to have to do it and being afraid to say no to gigs. [Not saying no] resulted in three out of five years where we were on the road the entire year. That fucks your head up. It creates almost a dread about traveling, or about touring.”
Tenacity is ingrained in the Keys, who emerged independent of any real music scene in post-industrial Akron. They achieved stratospheric success in part by always answering when opportunity knocked. But putting out albums roughly every other year and continuing to tour at a Black Flag-like rate even after graduating from clubs to arenas — for 2011’s Grammy-winning, Danger Mouse-produced El Camino, they played 129 shows — they were beginning to push their luck, and knew it.
“That run-up into making El Camino, touring all of 2012 and 2013, was one of the most exciting times in my life, honestly,” Carney says. “But when we did some festivals in 2014, it was apparent to me that it was extra-taxing on Dan.”
So they hit pause on the band in 2015. Since then, Carney and Auerbach, who both moved to Nashville in 2010, have become increasingly embedded locally. Auerbach built out his Easy Eye Sound Studio (a vintage-gear mecca modeled after Muscle Shoals’ FAME) and accompanying label. He cut his second solo record Waiting on a Song in ’17, and took on production projects with artists ranging from doo-wop revivalists Shannon and the Clams to New Orleans legend Dr. John — even an album by The Pretenders, led by Akron native daughter Chrissie Hynde. Auerbach also has a co-write on Purple Mountains, the masterful final record from the late Berman: “Maybe I’m the Only One for Me.”
Though Carney isn’t the workaholic Auerbach is, it’s been an eventful time for him too. In April, he and pop singer-songwriter Michelle Branch got married. Their son Rhys just celebrated his first birthday. The 39-year-old has also put in work producing bands. Projects that came out this year include Nashville power-pop outfit *repeat repeat’s Glazed (they’ll open the Bridgestone show) and neo-soul singer Jessy Wilson’s Phase (she’ll be along for the Great Lakes and Northeast leg of the Keys’ tour). Prior to those, he wrote the theme music for the Netflix series BoJack Horseman and made a record with twee-pop pioneer Calvin Johnson, 2018’s A Wonderful Beast, on which he played nearly every backing instrument.
Besides his time in the producer’s chair, Carney has also spent time on the road with Branch supporting her 2017 LP Hopeless Romantic, which he co-wrote and co-produced. But it’s been more a labor of love than a means to an end. The tour, Carney says, was reinvigorating, and “made me really appreciate the road [and] the success I’d achieved a lot more.” With everything happening on the home front lately, he sees that the Keys’ hardcore-touring days are in the rearview.
“For me, my priorities are my family, then The Black Keys, then producing,” says Carney. The Keys’ fall tour of the U.S. and Canada runs just more than 30 dates over the course of 11 weeks. “It’s a big step down from the 120 shows we did [for El Camino]. We cut it in a quarter. One of the things about being in a band that’s as fortunately successful as [us] … it’s the only position I can think of where you’re expected to go promote your record on, like, five different continents. This time … we’re just going to stay here and ease back into the road.”
Talking to Carney, it can be easy to forget that he’s a world-famous rocker. Think of the biggest music nerd you know — that’s his vibe. “Let’s Rock” also feels like a familiar old friend. The blown-out sound of vintage Keys records like 2003’s Thick-freakness may be gone, but the 12-song set, tracked at Easy Eye and featuring exactly zero synthesizers, marks a slight return to those lean, workmanlike early days. It’s a midcareer, back-to-the-source record in the vein of the Stones’ Tattoo You or Elvis Costello’s Brutal Youth, and it’s the most vital and alive they’ve sounded in some time. That bodes well for the band’s first proper Nashville concert since December 2014.
“I’m excited to play,” Carney says. “I’ve had a few anxiety-type dreams, but I think it’s just because we haven’t toured in so long. It’s good to walk away from music, at least for me. … I go through phases where I won’t even listen to music — I just watch baseball incessantly, for hours and hours a day. I’m just as passionate about that as I am about music, which is strange. It’s just really relaxing for me. But when baseball season ends … I go back to getting excited about music. I wait for those moments, and I try to take advantage of them.”
