The Black Keys' Patrick Carney: The Cream Interview

To kick off

(out yesterday!), we caught up with Nashville neighborhood rock stars The Black Keys, who dropped their eighth studio album, Turn Blue, back in May and headline Bridgestone Arena for the second time on Monday.

Yesterday, I posted my Q&A with Keys frontman Dan Auerbach. And today, as promised, here's my chat (an abridged version of which appears in print) with Keys drummer Patrick Carney.

I caught Carney at his home studio deep in the maze of mansions that is Forrest Hills. On a rare day off from road, the analytical and opinionated drummer was in relaxed mood and happy to wax at length about how, despite going from indie-rock stardom to arena-rock stardom, he still identifies as an indie-rocker; how he doesn't know exactly how or why The Black Keys made it, but that he wishes many of his favorite, equally deserving rock bands — including locals like Turbo Fruits and Bully — could also enjoy such success. He also talks about the pressures of performing on live television; what its like to have his tweets go viral; what's really wrong with Spotify; how growing up in a struggling city like Akron, Ohio makes him appreciate living in boom town New Nashville and more.

Nashville is a town of music geeks.

Yeah, totally, in a good way.

Is that something that drew the band here?

You know, I’ve always like Nashville. I don’t really know too much about it. Dan decided he wanted to move here, and I was in New York and I was ready to get out of New York. The idea of being in a smaller town, having a car again, those kinds of things, and just being closer to him, seemed to all make sense. And the fact that our management’s here. I had some friends here, not many, but it wasn’t really the music thing, it was just circumstance. But I like it here. And I have lots of friends that are musicians and stuff, but I don’t really partake in the Nashville scene in most ways, I guess. I’m fans of lots of bands from here; I’m friends with lots of bands from here, but I’ll rarely go to a show. And it’s just because we’ve been working so much. When I'm home I just zone out, or I work on stuff. It was the same way in New York. I would go to very few shows there.

When you last talked to the Scene, it was right when you moved here, and Nashville's been changing culturally in a lot of ways since then. The Black Keys are constantly referenced as part of that in all these culture pieces you read. Have you observed the city changing? And did you expect to be kind of lumped in with the renaissance?

I didn't expect that at all, really. But yeah, the city's changed. I've lived here for four years, and yeah, there are more restaurants, more people moving here — it seems like on a daily basis I hear of somebody else I know moving here. When I first moved here I lived in the 12South area, which I remember going to back in the day, when we first started coming here, and it was nothing like it is now. The only thing there was, like, the Taproom and this awful restaurant called The Mirror. For some reason we ate there once — it was disgusting. I left that neighborhood right when they started to build that big huge apartment complex. The traffic was already getting bad and stuff, but I love that neighborhood and I go there, I have a lot of friends that live there, but it seems like that's going on all throughout the city, which is awesome. I just think the city needs to watch out, because I notice the traffic is just getting, like, L.A. style, where it [takes] three hours [to get somewhere] because the streets aren't wide enough. Nashville isn't a place that needs to be super big, I don't think.

I enjoy what's going on here a lot, because Dan and I grew up in a town that was the opposite. [Akron] was just shrinking, shrinking, shrinking, still shrinking. Living in a town [that was] going through really hard times attracting businesses to come or keeping young people around. I just remember through my 20s being adamant about never leaving Akron, because all of my friends were leaving, and then it just hit me when I was 29, I was like, "I've gotta get the fuck out too. I've gotta go see some other shit." I miss Akron. But in a lot of ways Nashville reminds me of Akron.

As far as the music scene around here getting recognized, there are a lot of great bands. It's a weird time for music, for new bands it's a really hard time, I think. In a way it reminds me of, like, 1997, '96, all the way up until, like, The Strokes and The White Stripes and bands like that started breaking in 2001. Because I just remember, like, 16 through 20 during that period, and the bands that I loved, I would go see them in Cleveland and they would have 50 people, 80 people [at their shows]. I remember going to see Modest Mouse and there'd be, you know, 120 people at the DIY spot, and I just think [now] it's similar — rock comes in waves. And I feel like the way everything happens now is just so different, with the mystique being gone, most of the time. You know, there are a lot of great bands from here, young bands, like that band Bully — I'm a big fan of that band, [but] I still haven't seen them live. ...

They just got signed to Startime International.

I'm glad. They should! Yeah, I think it's a weird time, because a band like that could make a record and get played on the radio and whatever; things could happen quickly. I mean, that's ultimately what happened to us in the past few years — we got played on the radio and things just took off. And that's what happened with every band that blew up from back in the day — The Strokes and The White Stripes and The Hives or whoever.

Right now, there aren't very many bands standing where you guys are on the battlefield. You're one of a handful of contemporary rock bands that can play arenas. Why do you think that is, that there are so few?

I think there's always been just a few bands that can do it, and I don't know why it is and how it's determined what bands get to that point. And very few bands, including us, will probably ever be able to stay at that level, it's just a fleeting thing for the most part.

Do you care about that?

I think it's cool that it happened to us. I don't think that we deserve it more than any other band. I'm enjoying it while it lasts, you know? Dan and I have never been embarrassed or afraid of taking things as far as they can go. I think that's kind of the fun of being in a band. When you start off making records in a basement in Akron and [you're] lucky when 20 people come to see you, when you're playing, like, The Forum or whatever, you kind of feel like you've accomplished a lot. I think there are a lot of bands that can get to that level. It's just, the hard part is records are selling less and less, and when it becomes less profitable for a label to invest in a band, then it just becomes a harder problem — that's I guess what's going on.

Do you and Dan usually prefer to be interviewed separately?

We’ve been doing separate interviews off and on for the past couple years. I think Dan and I are very similar but we’re also very different. I think sometimes it’s good for us to do interviews separately because you get to see the different perspectives. For instance, we’re talking about Nashville music. Dan’s much more involved, for various reasons; you know, when I moved here I was never invited to, like, sit around with an acoustic guitar and write songs with people or whatever, and honestly, I would never do that, it’s just not my scene. I’d rather just get in a space and jam. And also, like, as a drummer in Nashville, you’re viewed differently. I mean, honestly, you can’t play me really one song in the history of country that I would be, like, talking about how great the drum track is.

Yeah, what’s the DEVO, “Satisfaction” drum track of country?

Yeah. And not to knock the drummers in Nashville, because they’re all technically fuckin’ good, it’s just that’s what that type of music typically calls for. So that’s why I gravitate in Nashville to, like; the band I’m probably closest friends with, aside from Kings of Leon, and The Whigs, who live here, is Turbo Fruits. … So it’s cool to talk to Dan because he gets asked to produce stuff for that show Nashville, and that kind of stuff. So he has a different take on the city, I think.

Do you still feel like an indie-rocker?

Me? I am still an indie-rocker. Going back to talking about Modest Mouse, I was a fan of that band when I was 16 and the Interstate 8 EP came out, and then watching them evolve and watching them get to the record that came out in 2004 and seeing them blow up, it made me super stoked for them.

Yeah, that’s one of the great things, to see something break through instead of slip through the cracks …

Because it’s so rare to see something that deserves to. There’s a lot of other bands that deserve to as well, but to see anybody get to that point, that was an inspiration to me. I feel more aligned with that kind of storyline than a lot of other rock bands.

Something that always strikes me about The Black Keys success is that, in a time when you don’t just have giant pipelines like radio and MTV, there isn’t as much mass repetition …

There’s just more smaller outlets.

So with The Black Keys, it’s almost like you guys sort of spread your tentacles to all those outlets for exposure and became kind of ubiquitous. You’re not a band that got to the arena level by having some breakthrough, Top 40 torch song; you don't have a "Use Somebody." Your set list isn’t a greatest hits mix. It’s the general sound of the band that people are familiar with.

Yeah. We’ve never had a Top 40 single. “Lonely Boy” I think went to somewhere in the 70s for a week.

That’s kind of amazing to me. You’d think any band that makes it that big, especially now, would have to have one.

Well we’re not a Top 40 band. Our shit doesn’t work — we’ve been told this by radio people — that our songs just don’t work in that format, which I think is a good thing. But I do think it would be cool if Top 40 wasn’t playing so much garbage. … You get a Top 40 fan base, it’s not the [type] that will usually stick around. Kings of Leon had a Top 40 song, but really they have six albums and toured a lot and their main fan base isn’t coming from that shit anymore.

Honestly, I think us putting so many songs in commercials and shit — because, I mean, for a long time nobody paid attention to what we were doing, no one fucking cared — [helped].

That’s exactly what I’m talking about, just the sound of the band becoming ubiquitous via placements and whatnot.

Yeah, it’s kind of become that way. Back when we were starting out, we really wanted to be accepted by our peers, or who we perceived to be our peers at the time, then [we started] to realize there’s camaraderie between bands; it comes from friendships, it doesn’t come from [acceptance]. Sometimes.

There are a lot of cocksuckers in the rock ’n’ roll business. Eventually we got to the point where we were like, ‘Who the fuck cares that we turned down an ad?’ Who the fuck gives a shit, you know what I mean? We can talk about it in the press, but it’s fuckin’ stupid. Well what happens if you say yes to an ad? The Shins did a McDonald’s ad; The White Stripes wrote a song for Coca-Cola; and Modest Mouse had a Nissan ad. The first ad that we got offered was a Nissan ad.

At the same time, there was a Nick Drake song in a commercial and a Ween song in a commercial, just random shit from the fringes …

And of course, with Nick Drake, it was one of those things, like, I know what the feeling is: I had a Nick Drake record that; not many people were listening to Nick Drake in, like, 1997, but when that Volkswagen ad came out, everybody got into it and it’s actually cool, he deserves to be fuckin’ listened to. But I know that feeling of being like, ‘Oh shit, what the fuck?’ It sucks when you’re a kid in high school and it feels like something that’s special to you is now being shared with everybody. But you know, that’s a really backwards mentality. Imagine if everybody wanted to listen to Kraftwerk — you’d probably have a lot of cooler music out there. And that became the way that we started viewing things, because we tested the waters with the Nissan ad and eventually we started getting shit [for it] in the mid 2000s, and that lasted all the way up until a couple years ago, where every time Pitchfork would mention us, they’d be like, ‘The most [licensed band],’ they’d just go in about how we put songs in shit. But like, if I put on the TV and I saw a Sky Ferreira song on a commercial, I’d be fuckin’ stoked. I think [for us] it was just that kind of not being afraid to say yes to stuff.

If anything, you guys are an example of how that stuff doesn’t really matter, as far as on the creative end.

You’ve just gotta do what you wanna do. I mean that’s the bottom line. There are the rules of indie rock, that we’re all familiar with … but I remember it being fucking cool that Modest Mouse signed to Sony, just like I think it’s cool that the Sex Pistols made a million dollars fucking over major labels. To me, that’s punk rock.

Modest Mouse, Guided by Voices, Superchunk, Pavement, those bands are indie rock regardless of what label they’re on.

And Pavement was on Capitol.

Built to Spill …

On Warner!

Yeah. For, like, most of their career.

You know what? I have experience with the smallest of indies and the biggest of majors, and there’s no difference. We get treated fairer than ever on Warner Bros. … Built to Spill might be the most quintessential indie-rock band of all-time, and they’ve been on Warner since late 1997. Yeah, [indie] is just an expression. To me, identifying as an indie-rock guy, whatever the fuck that means now, [means] identifying with a band that controls their own destiny, and that’s basically what Dan and I have always done.

In the process of a career as a musician, you’re going to fuckin’ do stuff that makes you uncomfortable, because you [can’t always] just say no. You can’t just assume [you know] what it’s going to be [like]. Like playing the Grammys, to me, was a huge thing. I was really conflicted about that.

Why?

Well I still am [conflicted] about it. It’s not anything against the awards or whatever. It’s just, I don’t know how much we have in common with the mainstream, really. We’re not really a mainstream band. We’ve sold a lot of records — I don’t even know how that happened — but if you put us on; I don’t really know.

But isn’t playing the Grammys an example of infiltrating?

Yeah. Totally. That’s why we did it. I’m glad we did it. The main reason I didn’t want to do it was because I was fucking scared. Playing in front of millions of people, live on TV, it’s like the worst fucking thing.

Does that ever get easier?

Not really. Not to me.

Do you get nervous playing arenas?

Not really. Not anymore. Uh, a little bit.

How much different does it feel doing a Black Keys show in an arena?

I always do get a little bit nervous before anything we do. Live TV for me is the hardest, just because it’s not like a show. You’re in a studio, there’s no energy and it’s just like 4-3-2-1, now everybody who’s tuned in at home is gonna talk over your performance [and] probably make fun of you. [Laughs.] I don’t know. But in arenas, yeah, they feel not much different than playing in a theater to me, nowadays. On the first arena tour it took me a little while to, like, not be freaked out. You know, you’re, like, backstage at Madison Square Garden and you see pictures of Jimmy page on the wall and shit and it’s, like, [intimidating]. I just always pay attention to all the awful shit that probably happened in the same arena. We played The Forum [in L.A.], and maybe Zeppelin played there, like, 12 times. But maybe, you know, Disney on Ice performed there a thousand times! So who the fuck cares, you know? Also, it’s important just to remember that the people show up there to have fun, not to fucking judge you.

Does it ever freak you out when you tweet something and it goes viral?

Yeah, because everybody has an opinion, everybody is entitled to their opinion, the problem is, like, if I say something — or if anybody says something and it gets taken out of context, like what I said about the Michael Jackson record or Justin Bieber or whatever — all those things were completely taken out of context, to a certain degree. And it’s like, my least-favorite thing, as a fan of music, when I do look at a music website — whether it’s, like, Nashville Cream or looking at Pitchfork or NME — and it says, ‘So-and-So Slams So-and-So.’ Bullshit. That’s not really what the fuck just happened. Somebody expressed a fucking opinion because you asked them about it, and now here you are generating clickbait making somebody look like an asshole. That’s how ideas are exchanged. Like, Steve Albini should be able to say whatever the fuck he wants to say because it’s interesting; it’s his perspective, whether you agree with it or not. I do wanna hear what he has to say, even if I don’t agree with it.

It comes to a point where people are just afraid to speak their mind, and you start saying shit that’s just, like, so middle-of-the-road. I’ve read interviews with people where there’s literally no thought expressed, it’s just playing-it-safe. To me, that’s really fucking boring. So I’d rather deal with the [fallout] pissing off some somebody. Like when I chimed in about Spotify a couple years ago. At the time, that was a pretty unpopular thing to fuckin’ talk about. It’s still unpopular.

Look, I don’t use Spotify. If I was a 16-year-old kid, I would use Spotify all day long, because it’s available. It’s there; it’s free; it’s a different fuckin’ world. And of course a 16 year old is going to be pissed off when somebody’s saying that you shouldn’t use this service. And I think it’s not about the service. It’s not about Spotify. It’s about the things that aren’t being discussed. And as soon as an artist raises the question about how Spotify compensates artists, it’s an instant backlash towards the artist. There’s no dialogue about, like, what the fuck is fair? Is it fair that the company and record labels go in together to exploit their back catalog for stock options, without paying the artist fairly? No, that’s not fair. And I think Taylor Swift not putting her album on Spotify is cool.

There’s a lot of artists that don’t have their shit on Spotify. I don’t think Zeppelin does. AC/DC doesn’t. Everybody starts pulling their shit off … the thing is, every time an artist talks about it, it’s them wanting to make more money. But really, it’s actually people like Taylor Swift — [who’s] going to have the biggest record of the year — [who should] point out that things aren’t fair, because, you know, there’s like six or seven writers on a Taylor Swift song or whatever, and a producer. And all those people make their money from the back end. She doesn’t make shit from her record sales. She’s gonna go on tour and make, like, $300 million. Her record will go out, sell 10 million copies and she’ll make $20 million. In comparison, it’s nothing. But at the same time, it’s the artist that doesn’t tour anymore; the artist that wrote a hit song 25 years ago [and] who has never toured, they live off those residuals.

Why is it that Spotify is valued at $7 billion? It has nothing to do with Spotify, it’s a goddamn fuckin’ app, it’s zeros and ones that allow you to listen to other people’s ideas. And I think that, yeah, if you have a good idea; the guy that started Uber is loaded and Uber is a great thing, because it actually gives employment to a lot of people — secondary employment, primary employment. What kind of employment is Spotify giving people? And I think a place like Nashville is a place where it hits closest to home — it’s a town of songwriters.

And a lot of them drive for Uber. Going back to Nashville bands, do you think that’s a “Nashville rock” sound at the moment?

You know, there are a lot of bands, I’m not super familiar with tons of them. Through the Turbo Fruits, through, like, those guys, I feel comfortable in that scene. At the same time, I’m supportive of it; there are a lot of great bands in Nashville. Natural Child. You know that label in Fullerton, Calif., Burger Records? Our friend Lee [Rickard] runs that label with his friend Sean [Bohrman]. I see that there’s something distinctly Nashville, in a way, that’s directly related to what’s going on there. I think there is a punk kind of rock ’n’ roll sound here.

And I think the problem is, rent is getting more expensive here; people aren’t fucking signing bands; labels are fucking cheaping out, and these bands take it all on their own to get things going.

Bands do get booking agents and managers sooner, it seems, than they used to.

[Bands] do here?

Yeah. Like a lot of those rock bands, they start putting the rest of their team together when they start gaining traction, then maybe they sign to a label.

That’s the thing about [other cities], though. Most bands don’t make it because they don’t think it’s cool to try. And that happened in Cleveland and Akron with a lot of my friends’ bands. It’s like they don’t want to look thirsty.

But Nashville’s all about the hustle, even if you’re an indie-rock band or a punk band. Like JEFF the Brotherhood, they fuckin’ hustled.

And that’s why there is a scene here.

In that sense, maybe that’s why The Black Keys fit in here.

I like to be supportive of bands, I try to be supportive of bands. I’ve just seen it just not be effective for various reasons. There’s a lot of luck; there’s a lot of bullshit. Honestly, the hardest thing for me is to see somebody who has a lot of talent, and has done everything right, not make it. It makes me really fucking sad to see somebody’s dreams not come to fruition, because that’s what happens most of the time.

Is it similar to the feeling of growing up in Akron around so much urban decay?

There’s a type of person who feels like they deserve everything they’ve gotten. And then there’s a type of person who has something called empathy, and realizes that anybody else could’ve gotten what they have. No one’s really entitled to it. There’s a lot of luck. There are a lot of great fuckin’ bands out there that deserve [to make it]. My least favorite thing is to see someone talk about shit in a way that seems like they fuckin’ earned it. I’ve seen bands put out 10 records that deserve to be huge, playing arenas. They earned it, just as much as the next guy. That’s the thing about the music industry. I helped Turbo Fruits with their new record, just [producing] a few songs, and I watched them for the past year just fucking try and figure out how to get a label [to put it out]. And the record’s fucking good!

One of my favorite bands in America is this band the Royal Bangs. I put out their first two records and I produced their last one, and just watching a band that deserves success, like Turbo Fruits, or JEFF the Brotherhood, or Bully, or Royal Bangs — bands struggling and not getting the attention they deserve, I can’t help but just wonder what the fuck really is going on? I have Sirius[XM] radio in my car — there’s one indie-rock station and only about 10% of the programming is interesting shit. The outlets are getting smaller, like you said. Even looking at Pitchfork, they cover a lot of shit I could give two shits about, and I just start wondering, like, ‘Why does Pitchfork need to cover Miley Cyrus?’ You start realizing that it’s all about money, and it’s OK for Pitchfork, or whoever else, to get their fucking clicks, and as soon as the artist starts talking about Spotify playlists not paying royalties, it becomes a whole different issue. Bedhead just put out, like, a greatest hits album or whatever. That was one of my favorite bands when I was 16 — that record Bedheaded. And I think about a band like that, and that’s why nowadays it reminds me exactly of, like, 17 years ago, when a band like Bedhead — a great fucking band, a cool band, lots of bands like that — nothing happened like it should have for them, and I hate seeing that. I think ultimately the focus has to go back to that — music has to be valued a little bit more.

I see this happen a lot, and this is a pattern that really drives me nuts: "Check out this new band, they're so fucking great!" Blah, blah, blah, EP gets a great review, first album gets a great review. Second record comes out [and does nothing]. And you know, making the second record for any band is a difficult process, especially if your first record got some notoriety, because you want to evolve, you're an artist, but you don't want to lose your audience — you ultimately have to just do what you want to do. I think that's something people have a hard time wrapping their heads around nowadays — you judge an artist's career not by their first record, but by their career, and you have to let that happen.

I don't read record reviews, but I look at the numbers, and I just want to throw my phone half the time. Why is this dipshit grading this record? You don't need to write 10,000 words about an album, you know what I mean? You need to write about 150 words. Describe what the fuck the record is, but don't pass judgment. This passing judgment of things; this, like, "So-and-so passes judgment, slams so-and-so!" That's the same thing that happens a lot of the time in music journalism. It's just like, do your job — fucking describe it, get people excited about it. Because you know what, maybe you don't like it, then fucking find someone that does like it. It just gets to this point where there are battle lines constantly being drawn around different things, and it's like, that's not the scene I grew up in. The scene I grew up in was like, "Check out this special fucking thing I think you're gonna like, and that included everything from, like, Slanted and Enchanted to a Manic Street Preachers record. Half the time I didn't like it, but I didn't fucking make fun of it. I didn't pass judgment. I was all ears, and I still try to be. That's the thing. Kings of Leon are, like, good friends of mine. I see them get dragged through the sand for being successful, [and] it's like, "Fuck all you guys for doing that." What they just did is really hard to do, and it's really hard to stay sane during that, and they have. And most importantly, they're a rock band that's proving that a rock band is something worth investing in for a record label.

Do you think their success helped open up the door for your success?

Any band that has guitars and drums, and starts from the bottom, in any way, getting anywhere — first of all, the people in the band should feel grateful, which those guys do — everybody should look at that as, it should be nothing but motivation to prove that it's still possible to do it, you know? I think that there are a lot of bands doing really cool things in Nashville. It's cool to hear that a band like Bully got signed. I'd just really like to see a label really get behind that band, and numerous other bands, and make shit happen. ... One of the biggest revelations I had as a kid was seeing Nirvana on SNL when I was, like, 12. I'd just got a guitar for Christmas, and all I wanted to do was be in a rock band. And I think that those moments happen less and less nowadays.

You were talking in the beginning about changes and growth in Nashville, comparing it to your experience in Akron; you have a lot of people here who will sort of bemoan the way the city is growing and worrying that gentrification is going to sap the city of its cool and its character. Do you think in a way people might be taking Nashville's prosperity for granted?

There are pessimists, and there are optimists. With pessimism usually comes contrarianism. I've always been an optimist. ... You wanna go to Chattanooga and compare Chattanooga to Nashville? Fuck off. Chattanooga would give its left nut to have what's going on in Nashville. And Akron would too. And anybody who thinks that things were cooler when the bars were dive-ier and rent was cheaper can move to Chattanooga. There are a lot of places that they can go to. I'm not from Nashville.

That's very Nashville, though — to live in Nashville and not be from Nashville.

Yeah! So I just know, I talk to Harmony Korine — Harmony's from Nashville, loves this city. He's stoked. He's like, "I remember when I used to be able to buy crack right here. And now look, it's like fuckin' million-dollar houses, it's crazy." But you know, I think he'd much rather you not be able to buy crack in his neighborhood.