The Black Keys: Forever Cool.
Monday night I sat down with Patrick Carney of The Black Keys before they blew our minds to what appeared to be a sold out Wells Fargo Center. The place was packed and it was magic. Pat and I got to talking about many things. Obviously we talked about the brand new album "Lets Rock", and Cleveland musician Glenn Schwartz's influence on it. How the whole album sounds like a new genre called “Sex Rock”. We also talked about celibacy, magic mushrooms: (“I ate papa smurf’s house, and laughed at a bag of gumballs. And essentially that was my day, and it lasted about 10 hours”) being a dad, westboro baptist church and way more.
My favorite part of the interview was when Pat and I got into the topic about him constantly being depicted as controversial (which is always insanely miscued and something I never understood) whether by music blogs or the media. We went pretty deep into that part of the interview so I hope you gain some wisdom form Pat’s point of view because that led him to say one simple line in this interview that is a very important lesson: “I’ve enjoyed life a lot less when I’ve had to keep my mouth shut.”
Patrick Carney is a polarizing individual who has a personality that is so unique and unmatched. I swear he could have been a stand-up comedian. The sense of humor, the raw- realness… he spoke to every one of us in the room like we were no different than him. It was one of my favorite interviews I’ve been lucky enough to do, and I hope you watch this 13 minutes and understand just why. There’s a truth about The Black Keys that you don't see any more with bands. They’ve remained true to themselves and true to their audience while still dishing out the best damn rock and roll that people can still hold onto these days. You can still be popular and keep it REAL as f*ck. We are lucky The Black Keys are still around, because there’s a lot of false idols out there in the music world, and we should be grateful these guys are here to just rock.
If you have the time and want to continue to dive into more from The Black Keys, after this interview, I encourage you to watch Dan and Pat’s sit down on The Joe Rogan Podcast. It’s fantastic and they really take you into the belly of the beast (AKA the music industry).