The Black Keys were formed in Ohio, USA in 2001 by the duo of Dan Auerbach on guitar and vocals, and drummer Patrick Carney. They came to prominence during the era that alternative acts such as The White Stripes were popular, and also paved the way a few years later for acts like Royal Blood.

These were minimalist groups where for the most part two band members took care of guitars, drums and vocals and often bass guitar was played either using octave pedals, or sometimes by a session bass player, particularly in a live setting.

Auerbach and Carney were influenced in their formative years by blues artists such as Muddy Waters and RL Burnside as well as bands like The Beatles. Patrick Carney’s uncle Ralph played saxophone as a session player on several Tom Waits albums.

The Black Keys formed as a duo, when the rest of the scheduled musicians didn’t show up for a session in the early 2000s. They recorded a demo that consisted of covers and improvised songs. They began to tour and record, playing anywhere they could get a gig and their hard work started to pay off when they played a set at the SXSW festival.

They were offered £200,000 to license one of their songs for a TV advert, but turned the offer down, fearing that they would be seen as selling out and not taken seriously as artists. After a lot of hard work on the touring circuit, as well as recording several albums’ worth of original material, the band began to get exposure on American TV, as well as playing Reading and Leeds festivals.

Towards the end of the noughties they scored an MTV video of the year award and were also able to work in the studio with high-profile producers and engineers, including Tchad Blake and Danger Mouse.

After much further critical and commercial success, the band went on a temporary hiatus in 2013, before returning in 2019 with a covers album. They continue to record and tour in 2024.

Our track is built on a classic riff in the key of E minor (E-F#-G-A-B-C-D), but the piece actually utilises the C# note instead of C natural, which means that the A chords are all A major (A-C#-E). This gives the overall tonality of the track an E Dorian flavour (E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D), and this provides more of a blues sound as opposed to the typical Minor tonality that you’d expect with this key signature.

The solo is primarily built on the E minor pentatonic scale (E-G-A-B-D) and is aimed at utilising melody and soundscapes over technique, in terms of importance. There is no rhythm guitar part under the solo, mainly because with the low octave harmony line it’s not necessary to further overcrowd the frequencies with extra guitar parts.

Have a look at the video to see the specific playing articulations, and aim to play the parts with good timing and accuracy.

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 7, Bass 6, Middle 6, Treble 7, Reverb 4

Dan Auerbach uses both classic and oddball electric guitars such as Gibson, Harmony and Guild. It’s sonically more Gibson than Fender, but if you are using single-coil pickups just roll the brightness down a little bit. There’s an aggressive fuzz tone on the track, as well as a Plex-style Marshall amp tone. You’ll also want to add a good amount of reverb and delay.

Video and tab

Performance notes 

Rhythm

The rhythm guitar part is not difficult to execute but needs to be played with some controlled aggression in terms of both chords and single-note lines. For the double-stop chords in bars 17-24 you will need to focus on your timing, primarily to avoid rushing ahead.

Lead

The solo has some aggressive string bends and vibrato, and is all about the tone and the way the notes are attacked. This isn’t the time for politeness, and the fuzz-toned percussive notes and string noises in the rhythm and particularly the lead part are very important as far as the overall effect of the piece is concerned.

Nat Myers is a Korean-American Kansan who is making waves as a badass bluesman.

With his snappy Dan Auerbach-produced debut album, Yellow Peril out in the wild, Nat has plenty of hours logged on the road, and when we meet he’s keeping Willie Watson company.

“Willie was one of the first fellas to take me on the road,” Nat begins, with his distinctive drawl. “We’re like two peas in a pod and I can’t get him to shut up right now. I love listening to him talk and he knows it.”

Solo performance

Although there are accompaniments heard on Yellow Peril, Nat’s preferred touring setup is him solo, a decision that suits his old-school sounding blues.

“Yeah, I’m just by my lonesome, sir,” he smiles. “People ask if I’m going to get a band and I’m like, ‘I got into playing this music because I don’t want no band!’ I know some shitkickers back home who I like running around with, but the goose ain’t worth the gander for anyone but myself right now. Maybe down the line…”

“Actually, one of my favourite things about blues guitar is the accompaniment,” he continues. “Not the person leading the solo but the one who knows the perfect bassline and keeps it simple. I’m an accompanist kind of man.”

The Mule’s presence

We jump into guitar chat, with Nat having switched from his Mule resonator to acoustic for these live dates. “The Mule just strikes people in a different way,” he tells us. “Even though they’re pretty common in the blues and folk communities, not a lot of people know what the fuck that thing is.

“So you pull it out and it catches attention, but it also twangs a little deeper and has this drag. It’s like what Lonnie Johnson said when someone asked him why he stopped playing acoustic: it’s because no-one fucking listens to you! But I’ve been playing smaller rooms with Willie and they’re much more oriented towards listening, so I can get the acoustic out again.”

The ramblin’ man

Nat has an innate desire to be free and outside, so a gigging blues musician is a good fit for him.

“Some of my first gigs were before I had a [driving] licence,” he says, “so I had to walk a mile or two to get to shows. I’m a ramblin’ man and I’ve been walking my whole life, but this is the first time I’ve been able to professionally ramble. I’m now able to make a cut from being out and about. 

“My dad’s and mom’s stories have unintentional odysseys: my mum is from Pusan [South Korea] and came to the States with $25 in quarters; my dad enlisted in ’69 and went to Korea, where he met my mom.

“My entire childhood was spent in fold-out campers and we would travel all across the contiguous United States. I’ve seen all four corners of the country, but it often seems like a dream to me.” 

Recording with Dan Auerbach

What also seemed like a dream was catching Dan Auerbach’s eye and having him offer to cut Yellow Peril.

“What’s really cool about Dan is he never waves the fact that he’s Dan Auerbach around,” Nat says.

“You just sit and talk about music and play music; it’s pretty blissful over at Easy Eye Sound [in Nashville]. We could have recorded at the studio, because it’s a great room, but moving it over to Dan’s 200-year-old house gave it this resonance that we were able to capture in this beautiful way.

“And we kept it raw. Maybe we could’ve cleaned up the audio, but it would have been less than what it is. Truth be told, it was a really great time.” 

Music as medicine: Exploring big issues with the pioneers of blues

The album’s title track hones in on racial unrest and political tensions experienced in the United States.

“I was getting into some Charley Patton when I wrote it,” he explains. “I always appreciated his ability to describe something like the boll weevil [infestation of the late 1800s and early 1900s] and cotton blight in this humorous way.

“The thing about Boll Weevil Blues, from Ma Rainey to Woody Guthrie [versions], is that they’re funny stories. They were performed to people who might have lost everything, but it allowed them to laugh at it.”

• Yellow Peril is out now on Easy Eye Sound.

Guitar duo Hermanos Gutiérrez return with the tantalizing, spaghetti western-esque track Barrio Hustle, which premiers today exclusively on Guitar World.

The instrumental guitar-focused track offers a glimpse into the world of their upcoming album, Sonido Cósmico, out on Dan Aurebach's Easy Eye Sound on June 14.

The music video paints a subdued retro picture, focusing on the two guitarists and their guitars of choice, a Silvertone 1446 and a Gretsch Chet Atkins, set against an old-school late night talk show set up. Their wandering guitars are backdropped by shimmering foil fringe curtains and a gritty filmic quality.

Speaking about why he opted for a 1963 Silvertone 1446, Alejandro Gutiérrez says, “I found it online on a website from Finland. Sounds strange and risky, so I knew it'll be a hit or miss situation. Chris Isaak used to play this guitar and holds it on one of his album covers. But with time I experienced it as a cool guitar for me. The mini humbuckers are very quiet and perfect for the silent moments of our live sets.”

He continues, “I was lucky to get a full treatment of Dan Auerbach's tech guy, Dan Johnson, during the recordings of our El Bueno Y El Malo, back in 2022. He refretted it, made a custom shape for my Bigsby, lowered the strings to a level where I can get the most of the guitar with my style of playing. It has a special sound, and I haven't found one with a similar feeling.”

His brother Estevan leveraged a 1960s Gretsch Chet Akins to add another layer to the song's tapestry. “Last year, I found the OG [guitar] in Switzerland in a garage store 20 [miles] from where I grew up,” he says. “The guy selling it was a collector. He bought it in the '70s in the US and barely played it. I played one chord on that guitar and bought it right away. The feeling of having found the perfect instrument sound-wise and shape-wise is an incredible feeling.”

Although they were raised in Switzerland, Alejandro and Estevan Gutiérrez still embrace their Ecuadoran roots through their West-meets-Latin-inspired music. This song in particular owes its sound to Peruvian Cumbia tracks from the '60s and '70s and salsa.

“The combination between catchy Latin-rooted melodies with the wah-wah effect sounded very visionary to me for that time period,” remarks Alejandro. “I tried to incorporate that sound for my part of Barrio Hustle, by playing tribute to those cumbia melodies from Peru.”

Estevan also sought to incorporate a subtle rhythmic hint of old-school hip-hop in this track. “My style of playing is a mix between fingerpicking, bass line and percussion,” he says. “My influence come from the Salsa tones that I love. But I'm also a huge fan of '90s old-school hip-hop. Sometimes I hear a bit of a hip-hop beat in my style of playing.”

Hermanos Gutiérrez recently supported fellow mood-makers Khraungbin on the first few dates of the latter's A LA SALA North American tour. The duo will soon kick off their Sonido Cósmico album tour with a show in Phoenix, Arizona, on July 31.

Johnny Cash's songwriting is set to take center stage on new posthumous album Songwriter, which will be released on June 28. The first taster track, Well Alright, just dropped today.

This collection contains music recorded by Cash in early 1993, while he was in between record deals. Fast-forward 30 years, and his son, John Carter Cash, rediscovered the songs.

“Dad’s advice with anything, whether it was life or making music, was always 'follow your heart,'” said Carter. This guiding principle led Carter to strip the recordings back to Cash's vocals and guitar. Together with co-producer David “Fergie” Ferguson, he reached out to the key musicians who would give life to the album.

The 11-track record features contributions by The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, who provided a bluesy guitar solo on the track Spotlight.

It also features close Cash collaborator Marty Stuart, who played with Cash in his backing band The Tennessee Three from 1980 to 1988, and Dave Roe, another close collaborator who went on to play bass on hundreds of albums before he died in 2023.

“Nobody plays Cash better than Marty Stuart, and Dave Roe of course played with Dad for many years,” said Carter.

“The musicians that came in were just tracking with Dad, you know, recording with Dad, just as, in the case of Marty and Dave, they had many times before, so they knew his energies, his movements, and they let him be the guide. It was just playing with Johnny once again, and that's what it was. That was the energy of the creation.”

The full tracklisting is below:

1. Hello Out There
2. Spotlight
3. Drive On
4. I Love You Tonite
5. Have You Ever Been to Little Rock?
6. Well Alright
7. She Sang Sweet Baby James
8. Poor Valley Girl
9. Soldier Boy
10. Sing It Pretty Sue
11. Like A Soldier

For Carter, Songwriter is all about putting the spotlight back on Cash.

“It’s not about selling Johnny Cash, he would be doing that himself,” he says.

“Bob Dylan says he's one of the greatest writers of all of American written music and I agree. I want to put that in the forefront. His writing voice specifically is a certain voice, that I think if America wants to know their history, that's a good place to look. Johnny Cash is definitely one true voice that we can listen to, specifically to his writings.”

Songwriter is available to preorder now. 

When Nat Myers received an email out of the blue from a man claiming to be the studio manager for Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound record label, he assumed it was spam and almost deleted it. 

It’s a good thing his curiosity got the better of him, because the offer contained in that email – to come to Nashville and “lay a record down that you can be proud of” – turned out to be entirely legit, and resulted in the making of Nat’s impressive country blues debut, Yellow Peril.

“It was very serendipitous,” recalls the Korean-American bluesman, whose musical career up to that point had largely consisted of busking on the streets of New York, playing “for tips gigs” at the Jalopy Theater and sharing homemade recordings of his songs online. 

“I had heard of Easy Eye Sound before,” he says, “because I’ve listened to a lot of Sharecropper’s Son by Robert Finley and I really like that record.” But he wasn’t even looking for a record deal at the time, let alone a deal with one of the most respected guitarists-come-producers working in roots-based music today. 

“It was very trippy, kind of like a David Lynchian daydream,” he says, reflecting on the surreal experience of entering Auerbach’s studio for the first time, where he would later return to collaborate with the Black Keys star himself, plus Nashville songwriting supremo Pat McLaughlin and country blues torchbearer Alvin Youngblood Hart. 

“It’s like a Black Lodge, but [with] good vibes,” Nat laughs. “They’ve got a little round table out the back and we just shot the shit, talking about the blues. That’s how it got going.”

Like Auerbach, Myers is a repository of knowledge when it comes to traditional styles, and studying the likes of Robert Petway, Elizabeth Cotten, Tommy McClennan and Memphis Minnie has profoundly shaped his authentic brand of pickin’ and storytellin’. His specialism is the Piedmont style, where the thumb holds down an alternating bass pattern on the lower strings and the index and middle fingers pluck syncopated melody lines on top. 

To this, he adds frenetic slide playing à la Charley Patton and allows himself to drag on the beat just enough to evoke the spirit of the Mississippi Hill Country masters – altogether successfully swerving “the hokeyness that’s associated with preservation”, as he terms it. 

“When it comes to how I’ve learned, it’s a lot of watching and a lot of closing my eyes after and really meditating on those songs,” explains the highly skilled self-accompanist, who considers himself “self-taught to the extent you can be in the 21st century”.

At just 32 years old, his life experiences are, of course, worlds apart from the musicians he looks to for inspiration. But, if it weren’t for the lyrical content, which anchors Yellow Peril squarely in modern times (its title track refers to the appalling rise in Asian hate that occurred during the Coronavirus pandemic), you could be forgiven for thinking Myers’ debut was a remastered field recording from a bygone time. 

This is partly because, when the time came to record, the whole crew decamped from Easy Eye HQ and set up a makeshift studio at Auerbach’s century-old Nashville home, capturing ambient background noise and Myers’ foot stomp on the hardwood floor as well as his guitar and vocal parts. 

Recorded direct to tape, he cut all 10 tracks in three days, using only one guitar: a steel tricone resonator made by Matt Eich of Mule Resophonic. Auerbach contributed slide to Undertaker Blues using a 1935-1940 brass-bodied Dobro, which Nat describes as having had “the most peculiar sound” – one he likens to the trumpet playing of W.C. Handy.

Reaching for the instrument we hear the most on Yellow Peril, he tells us: “I got this guitar through really deep friendships I’ve forged and I thought it was only right that I cut my first record on it.”

Being a left-handed player, Myers also finds the vintage reso market “very limited,” so having access to a masterfully built modern instrument with an old-time feel seems like an apt solution for the kind of artist he is.

“People often tell me that my big mistake was not learning guitar right-handed,” he smiles. “But I counter them and say, ‘No, my big mistake was not learning guitar upside-down!’”

• Yellow Peril is out now via Easy Eye Sound.

As far as guitarists go, legendary power trio the James Gang are most associated with Joe Walsh, the iconic six-stringer who would go on to find international fame with the Eagles. Before Walsh, though, James Gang's electric guitar slot was occupied by Glenn Schwartz.

Schwartz's story is a fascinating one – after he left the James Gang in 1967, he eventually joined a religious commune, and would only surface again on the music scene decades later, playing a uniquely raw and singular strain of blues that never caught on commercially, but proved to be significantly influential, particularly to a young Dan Auerbach.

Shortly before his passing in 2018, Schwartz began collaborating with Auerbach, with whom he would go on to record a number of songs.

One of those tunes, Daughter of Zion, also features Walsh, and appears on a new compilation from Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound label titled Tell Everybody! (21st Century Juke Joint Blues From Easy Eye Sound).

Dating back to Schwartz's days playing religious music, Daughter of Zion certainly makes his influence on the Black Keys clear. Outfitted with a monster groove, the song features hypnotic, Stones-like interplay between the three guitarists, who look to compliment one another with their licks, rather than compete for attention.

Auerbach himself isn't coy about the musical debt he owes to Schwartz, calling him his “biggest rock 'n' roll inspiration.“ 

“There would be no Black Keys without Glenn Schwartz, that's for sure,“ Auerbach said in a statement. “I really miss him. He was a sweet man who loved the lord and loved music so much. I really respected his conviction.“

Set for an August 11 release, Tell Everybody! also features tunes from other underrated guitar legends like RL Boyce, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, and Robert Finley, alongside younger players such as Nat Myers and Auerbach himself.

To preorder the album, visit Easy Eye Sound's website.

Dan Auerbach is a man of perpetual motion. If he’s not in the studio tracking with the Black Keys he is out on stage with them, touring in support of their new album, Dropout Boogie. Or else his phone is blowing up with someone looking for his services to produce their album – and not just anyone, neither. Cats like Marcus King have him on speed dial. 

There is no question, the man Auerbach’s time is in demand, so that’s why we doubly appreciate it when he takes some time out to take a trip down memory lane, and discuss five of his favorite tracks from the Black Keys discography. Here goes…

1. I Got Mine – from Attack & Release (2008)

“This was always a fun one to play live. That’s just the sound of the basement – Pat and me in the basement where we used to play. The intro was probably influenced by some sort of James Brown thing. 

“But that riff, I don’t know where it came from, to be honest with you. It was a pretty simple little thing. I’m not sure if there was any one particular influence, more so than others.”

2. Ten Cent Pistol – from Brothers (2010)

“That was at Muscle Shoals Sound [in Alabama]. It feels like that song could have been on the new record [Dropout Boogie]; it’s got a lot of improvisation in it. We were listening to lots of funk, including Mulatu Astatke, the Ethiopian funk guy. We did a lot of solos with the octaves like that, and we were definitely influenced by that on that record.”

3. Little Black Submarines – from El Camino (2011)

“We wrote it with Danger Mouse [Brian Joseph Burton]. We started it on acoustic guitar, and it wasn’t until we got into the studio to record it that we decided to have that ending section, where all the drums and everything kick in. That was fun – getting to be able to do that, and have a song that had a journey to it.”

4. Tighten Up – from Brothers (2010)

“We cut that in New York City and co-wrote it with Danger Mouse. He even started the verses, the stuff on the piano, just coming up with chord changes. They had a grand piano there in the studio. We put that one together fairly quickly, and we also used a drum loop of Pat playing. 

“We had him go in and he played until he got a loop that he really liked, and then we started to layer it together. There’s one solo at the ending [starting at 03:05] with a weird phaser-type sound. That was just a Boss pedal that they had at the studio sitting on a shelf. They didn’t have a lot of pedals – but that was one of them. I just was like, 'Yeah, let’s give it a shot.' 

“It was the first time I ever used that pedal, and it was the main sound on this song that became our first radio success. Pretty funny.” 

Editor’s note: We’re pretty sure Auerbach is referring to the Boss PH-3 Phase Shifter, which he has often used in tandem with a Boss OC-3 Super Octave as part of his live rig.

Here are some Tighten Up outro-solo settings for both pedals, courtesy of GW Associate Editor Chris Gill:

Boss OC-3 Super Octave

Guitar Input, Direct Level: 4, Oct 1 Level: 5, Drive Level: 5, Mode: Drive, Mono Output > PH-3 Input

Boss PH-3 Phase Shifter

Rate: 4.5, Depth: 10, Res: 9, 8-stage setting

5. Lonely Boy – from El Camino (2011)

“We cut it in Nashville, at [my studio], Easy Eye Sound. I’m playing my ’54 Strat that I bought when I was on tour one time. I’ve always loved playing it; it’s got all the original electronics. And I used it all over that record. That started with another pedal that I’d never used before – and haven’t used since! [It’s] that little [pitch-shifting] pedal that bends the note down [most likely a Boss PS-5]. 

“I just plugged it in to see what it was and immediately came up with the riff for the beginning of Lonely Boy. We just started improvising the parts. It’s a very raw, simple song, but we just started jamming on it. And it just started from that cool little pedal sound we were getting.”

• Dropout Boogie is out now via Nonesuch.

If you’re looking for the most sizzling fuzz tones in modern blues, you’ll definitely want to be keeping an eye on Marcus King. 

This year’s sophomore Young Blood album sees the 26 year-old American partner up once again with producer Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys for some truly stunning and wonderfully crackly results...

We heard you tracked most of Young Blood with your ’59 Les Paul.

“Yeah, that’s what you’re mainly hearing, though there was ’69 Black Beauty in the mix too, going into this old Gibson amp me and my dad have had for years. It’s all been reconstructed into a plywood box, so it’s a small amp that looks big. 

“We’d run it in stereo with either a Supro or an AC30. I don’t know what year but I don’t think anything in Dan’s studio was newer than at least 30 years! Everything was period-correct for what we were trying to achieve. Basically, I wanted this record to sound like a tattoo gun!”

So did you get to raid Dan’s fuzz pedal museum?

“[Laughs] Yeah, I had a look around! He does have this wonderful collection of vintage gear. A lot of the fuzz sounds came from this vintage Tone Bender that he gifted to me after the record was done. The Tone Bender was his recommendation and it worked out great. I used my Tru-Fi Colordriver a lot too. 

“I love Dan’s playing. It’s not about what he says; it’s about what he doesn’t say. You pay as much attention to the space in between the notes as you do the notes themselves. He always takes time to breathe. That’s how I approach live improvisations. It’s meditation. Just let yourself get there.”

Who were your main influences when it came to your leads on this album?

“I want my guitar to sound like a jazz singer – people like Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday. I love the break-up from the ribbon microphones used on those early recordings. So I can almost recreate those sounds using fuzz pedals. If I can phrase anywhere near as good as Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner or Bob Seger, I’m doing it right. 

“I also take inspiration from lyricists like Method Man and Tyler, The Creator. People who have a really good flow and mean what they say. If you ever find yourself writing a blues solo with a pen and manuscript, you might as well take a lighter and set it on fire. Just play something from the heart and in the moment.”

You often jam with Mastodon’s Brent Hinds, who – like you – is occasionally prone to using Banker Custom Guitars.

“Actually, we did use my Banker Explorer a little on this album for some doubling here and there. And yeah, me and Brent have guitar showdowns, but they’re more like hoedowns! We have a lot of fun together. 

“I got together with him and Matt Pike [Sleep/High On Fire] recently for some chicken pickin’ stuff, which we’re all into. My dad played Top 40 country for a while in the early '90s, so there was a good bit of chicken pickin’ in my house growing up, but with Boss distortion and chorus on it. Seriously man, country guitar has some wild tones!”

• Young Blood is out now via American Recordings.

Welcome to Guitar World’s weekly roundup of the musical highlights from the, erm, world of guitar. Every seven days (or thereabouts), we endeavor to bring you a selection of songs from across the guitar universe, all with one thing in common: our favorite instrument plays a starring role.

Hermanos Gutiérrez feat. Dan Auerbach – Tres Hermanos

What is it? The latest single from brother duo instrumental act Hermanos Gutiérrez and the second to be lifted from the pair’s forthcoming record El Bueno Y El Malo, which also boasts the six-string expertise of The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. The guitar triumvirate of Estevan, Alejandro and Dan is truly a force to be reckoned with – so much so, in fact, that Auerbach has been dubbed “the third brother” in Tres Hermanos. Sounding like something from a Western epic, the track is an instrumental accomplishment, rammed with silky slides, mysterious trills and a gorgeously crafted main melody.

Standout guitar moment: Tres Hermanos spends the first 30 seconds finding its feet, though the guitar interplay that crops up immediately sets the tone for the track completely: haunting, emotive, melancholic… choose your poison. Let's hope the three write more songs together in the future.

For fans of: The Black Keys, José González

– Matt Owen 

Buddy Guy – Gunsmoke Blues (featuring Jason Isbell)

What is it? The somber lead single from the legendary guitarist’s forthcoming album, The Blues Don’t Lie. Guy might be 86, with a legacy that’s been sealed for decades, but he sure isn’t stuck in the past, recruiting one of Americana/roots music’s biggest names and turning his lyrical sights on America’s ever-growing epidemic of gun violence for this powerful song.

Standout guitar moment: A game of guitar one-upmanship this duet is not – Guy and Isbell engage in a candid conversation throughout with their lyrical, piercing and atmospheric licks, conveying together the song’s atmosphere of dread and tragedy as much as its lyrics.

For fans of: B.B. King, Eric Gales, Johnny Winter

– Jackson Maxwell

Black Lava – Soul Furnace

What is it? The title track from the Australian extreme metallers' debut album, Soul Furnace, combines elements of black metal, death metal post-metal, and Mastodon-style enormo-riff metal, and holds it all in uneasy equilibrium. It taps into the bleak desolation of a country in unending pandemic lockdowns, but it also finds a way to express that bleakness in a way that is sweet music to the ears of those who enjoy a taste of nihilism and a soupçon of apocalyptic thinking in their metal.

Standout guitar moment: It has to be the riff that Ben Boyle builds towards around the 3:30 mark, a hulking great motif to expel the tension of the dissonance that's gone before. 

For fans of: Tombs, early Mastodon, Deathspell Omega

– Jonathan Horsley

Fit For a King – End (The Other Side)

What is it? The second single from Fit For a King’s just-announced seventh studio album, The Hell We Create. Dealing with the personal story of frontman Ryan Kirby’s wife nearly dying from a stroke, End (The Other Side) is as visceral as you’d predict, with an instrumental bedrock of aggressive drop-tuned electric guitars and ground-pounding double kick-driven drumming bolstering Kirby’s gut-punching vocal monologue.

Standout guitar moment: The Texas troupe go for the classic heavy-verse-melodic-chorus arrangement that’s heard so often in modern metalcore, and a wonderfully slotted-in lead guitar line in the choruses makes a crucial element of the sonic tapestry.

For fans of: Like Moths to Flames, Miss May I, Bury Tomorrow

– Sam Roche

Strigoi – King of All Terror

What is it? Strigoi is a blackened death doom project headed up by Paradise Lost guitarist Gregor Mackintosh and his former Vallenfyre bandmate Chris Casket, and King of All Terror, from their forthcoming sophomore album, Viscera, is a shapeshifting genre-masher that shifts air on a hefty backbeat before settling into a pure doom misery groove in what seems like no time at all. 

Standout guitar moment: There are none of those epic leads that Mackintosh dispenses liberally across Paradise Lost's grand compositions – there's just no time for that – but the monochrome riffs not to mention Mackintosh's ungodly electric guitar tone are essential for those weaned on the pristine misery of Gothic, Icon, et al.

For fans of: Paradise Lost, Vallenfyre, Godthrymm

– Jonathan Horsley

The Wombats – Is This What It Feels Like To Feel Like This

What is it? Despite only releasing an extended LP in January this year, English indie rock outfit and festival favorites The Wombats are already churning out more music. Is This What It Feels Like To Feel Like This is the first offering from a forthcoming EP, and is irrefutable The Wombats at their head bop-inducing best: it’s speaker-rumbling guitars, infectious guitar hooks and a lung-bursting chorus line aplenty. They say quality over quantity, but such a notion doesn’t seem to apply to The Wombats at the moment.

Standout guitar moment: The Wombats are no stranger to a crowd pleasing guitar hook, and they’ve continued their fine melody making form with aplomb here, conjuring up a particularly catchy chorus line that’s assembled from some neat hammer-on and pull-off action.

For fans of: Circa Waves, Sundara Karma, The Kooks

– Matt Owen

Todd Rundgren – Puzzle (feat. Adrian Belew)

What is it? This beautiful, philosophical and distinctly David Bowie-esque song is the lead single from the pop-rock chameleon’s star-studded forthcoming LP, Space Force. Cosmic, classically tuneful and just a little weird (in only the best way, of course), Puzzle features Talking Heads/David Bowie/King Crimson textural guitar master Adrian Belew, and is all you could ask for from a Rundgren tune. 

Standout guitar moment: Belew’s appearances on Puzzle are few, but boy does he make them count. Peep the absolutely glorious tone he gets in his wailing contribution to the song’s intro – now that’s how you make an entrance.

For fans of: David Bowie, Talking Heads, Steve Vai

– Jackson Maxwell

Miss May I – Free Fall

What is it? A crushing new single from Miss May I’s forthcoming album, Curse of Existence. Expertly arranged and brutally delivered, Free Fall is touted as an anthem for those seeking to take a leap of faith despite feeling as though they don’t have the courage.

“When you reach the edge of a journey you have struggled to travel through and you back out before the final step, this is your chance to take that leap off the edge and see where the journey takes you,” says vocalist Levi Benton. “I know the popular term for this is ‘imposter syndrome’ and for anyone who has felt the relief of pushing through, this song is your anthem.”

Standout guitar moment: No moment stands out in particular, simply because B.J. Stead and Justin Aufdemkampe’s guitar lines are stellar throughout.

For fans of: Fit For a King, Bury Tomorrow

– Sam Roche

Rhet Miller – Go Through You 

What is it? A dream pop-tinged new offering from indie rock artist Rhett Miller, who props up his vocal swells and effortless lyrical flow with a smattering of sun-splashed six-strings and recurring licks that flirt with fuzz throughout the track’s runtime. The album that Go Through You is lifted from will arrive later this year, and was inspired in part by the relationship between David Bowie and Brian Eno. As far as sonic inspirations go, it's not a band one to have.

Standout guitar moment: The tone employed here is particularly tasty, and is utilized to its full potential during a brief jolly up the fretboard at the 1:52 mark.

For fans of: Daniel Donato, Beck, Fountains of Wayne

– Matt Owen

Demi Lovato – 29

What is it? The latest single from the pop superstar’s forthcoming rock and punk-inspired album Holy Fvck is more subdued than previously released singles Skin of My Teeth and Substance, but is shaped by a series of shimmery Shadows-esque clean guitar lines underneath Lovato’s retrospective lyrics.

Standout guitar moment: The ethereal tremolo which flavors the track’s opening riff is refreshing to hear from an artist of Lovato’s stratospheric caliber.

For fans of: Machine Gun Kelly, WILLOW

– Sam Roche

Lande Hekt – Backstreet Snow

What is it? The second preview we’ve heard from the Muncie Girls bassist/singer’s upcoming album, House Without A View, Backstreet Snow is effortless-sounding indie-pop of the first order.

Standout guitar moment: The song’s jangly central riff is one of those that can get stuck in your head for days. 

For fans of: Courtney Barnett, The Radio Dept., Stella Donnelly

– Jackson Maxwell

Daeva – Arena at Dis

What is it? A black-thrash track to strip the paint off the wall, from an album that is sure to be on many a shortlist for best underground metal album of 2022, the evocatively titled Through Sheer Will and Black Magic. The song, as with the album, is wall-to-wall action, taking the some of the sounds and steel of classic '80s metal and putting it through the black metal chaos machine. 

Standout guitar moment: Steve Jansson (Crypt Sermon) keeps the riffs coming but the solo at 1:50-ish does what all good metal guitar solos do, offering an exhilarating power-up for a song that's already in the red in every sense.

For fans of: Aura Noir, Devil Master, Midnight

– Jonathan Horsley

Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney of The Black Keys have revealed some of the tonal secrets behind their trademark blues belter, Howlin’ For You.

The duo recently spoke to Rolling Stone's The Breakdown about the making of their 2010 breakthrough album, Brothers. During the conversation, Auerbach explained that the uniquely raw fuzz tone of the album's hit single, Howlin’ For You, was due in a large part to a Supro Martinique electric guitar.

“I was playing that guitar right there, that Supro,” explains Auerbach of the instrument he is thought to have acquired around 2007. 

“It has like a DI sound that’s really weird and we used it a bunch on that record. It’s got three positions. Forward is this pickup [the neck], back is this [the bridge pickup] and when you go here [the final setting] there’s a piezo pickup, which I think is under the bridge. 

“It’s sort of like an acoustic pickup, which is not intended to go through a fuzz pedal, you know? [laughs]. Which is what we did and you get this weird, buzzy, thin, cool sound and we used this a bunch throughout the record.”

The Martinique was originally built in the 60s (though later reissued) and featured a semi-hollow ‘reso-glass’ body, a mahogany neck and two Vistatone single-coils. The ‘piezo’ Auerbach refers to is a Silversound under-saddle pickup – an early take on the concept.

“We made the record without Pro Tools,” adds Carney. “There was no grid… We had to get things tight and laid out. There was no going in there and fixing it. The timing of the tremolo was a complete headache, trying to get analog tremolo and analog recording to sync.”

In the accompanying video, Auerbach and Carney play back the original takes and you can hear some nice details, like Auerbach’s improvised scratch vocal echoing across the track.

The instrumentation on Brothers is also revealed to have been influenced somewhat by some of the band’s smoking habits at the time. 

“We were dabbling in this weed that was real brown… It looked like a Merit Ultra Light, ground up,” recalls Carney. “It was new for me and we called our day-to-day manager in Nashville after smoking this shit and we’re like, ‘Can you bring down… a… harpsichord?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, what’s going on down there?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know – Dan and I have been smoking some weed lately…’”

“We never claimed to be professional,” chimes in Auerbach.

“It has a life of its own nowadays,” concludes Carney of Howlin’ For You. “I wish we’d have known at the time we were working on it that that was what a hit feels like. It would have been a lot less stressful writing other songs!”

Head to Rolling Stone for the full Black Keys interview on The Breakdown.

Blues guitar master Marcus King has announced his second solo album, Young Blood.

Like his previous solo effort – 2020's El Dorado – the record was produced by fellow bluesman and The Black Keys leader Dan Auerbach, who revealed in a statement that every song was recorded live, something that's “rare in this day and age."

“Music runs so deep in Marcus's blood he might not even realize how born to do this he is,” Auerbach says. “He's the real deal. Marcus has Southern soul as part of his foundation. If you're going to play rock 'n' roll with Marcus, you have to understand that element. It's just who he is. These songs are live performances. The whole damn thing is live – the solos and everything.”

Kicking off proceedings, the 26-year-old blues wizard has shared the album's first single, the swaggering and anthemic Hard Working Man. Crunchy palm-muted chugs sit underneath King's perfectly blues-tailored vocal lines, before he lets rip with a suitably show-stopping solo from the 1:54 mark. Check it out below.

“We tour almost 200 days of the year, and even when I'm home, I'm doing something,” King explains. “Working hard is just the way I was raised. It would make my grandfather proud to know I'm a hard-working man and I've worked for everything I have. It's an anthem for the people. You've got the folks who work all week and spend their hard-earned money just to come see us. It's a real blessing.”

Thematically, Young Blood is about “looking at tough times in your rear-view mirror," as King explains.

“I was going through a lot during the album with addictions, breakups and addictions because of breakups,” he recalls. “I was overindulging in everything. It's not a big secret to my friends. I was in a real rough place for a while. I was trying to process the death of family members and I was on the wrong medications.”

King – with Auerbach – sought to create an album that sought to harness the sounds of the classic blues-rock power trios of the '60s and '70s.

Recorded at Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound in Nashville, Tennessee, Young Blood features Chris St. Hilaire on drums and Nick Movshon on bass. Its songs were written by both King and Auerbach in collaboration with Desmond Child and Angelo Petraglia – known for their work with Aerosmith and Kings of Leon, respectively.

Young Blood arrives August 26 via Rick Rubin's American/Republic. You can preview its track list below, and preorder it here.

1. It’s Too Late
2. Lie Lie Lie
3. Rescue Me
4. Pain
5. Good and Gone
6. Blood On The Tracks
7. Hard Working Man
8. Aim High
9. Dark Cloud
10. Whisper
11. Blues Worse Than I Ever Had

The Black Keys have announced their 11th studio album, Dropout Boogie, launching its bouncy, groove-driven first single, Wild Child.

Arriving May 13 via Nonesuch Records, Dropout Boogie follows last year's Delta Kream, a collection of blues covers that saw Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney pay tribute to the likes of R. L. Burnside, John Lee Hooker and Big Joe Williams.

Dropout Boogie sees the duo return to original material, and features guest appearances from the likes of ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, Reigning Sound's Greg Cartwright and Kings of Leon collaborator Angelo Petraglia.

The album will drop one day before the 20th anniversary of the band's debut LP, The Big Come Up. All of its material was written in the studio, with many first takes captured and used, harking back to the “stripped-down blues rock of The Black Keys' early days making music together in Akron, Ohio basements”.

“That's always been the beauty of the thing Pat and I do,” Auerbach says. “It's instant. “We've never really had to work at it. Whenever we'd get together, we'd just make music, you know? We didn't know what we were going to do, but we'd just do it and it would sound cool. 

“It's the natural chemistry Pat and I have. Being in a band this long is a testament to that. It was a real gift that we were given. I mean, the odds of being plopped down a block and a half from each other in Akron, Ohio – it just seems crazy.”

The album's first single, Wild Child, is characterized by The Black Keys' uber-accessible brand of blues-rock, with Auerbach's catchy vocal lines and crunchy electric guitar powerchords taking center stage. Check it out below.

After conceiving initial ideas for the album at Auerbach's Nashville studio, Easy Eye Sound, he and Carney got things going with the help of Gibbons, Cartwright and Petraglia. The latter two contributed to the album's first single, Wild Child.

“Living in Nashville and making records here has opened both of our minds to that experience a little bit more,” Auerbach says. “I knew Pat would love working with both of these guys, so we decided we’d give it a shot. It was the first time we’d ever really done that. It was fun as hell. We just sat around a table with acoustic guitars and worked out a song ahead of time.” 

“The cool thing with Greg is that he wants to approach stuff with a story in mind – there’s a plot, almost,” Carney adds.

The story of Billy Gibbons' inclusion on the record began over a decade ago, when Auerbach and Carney jammed with the ZZ Top legend while he worked on an album with Rick Rubin in LA.

“We never even really wrote one song – we just had some ideas we put down,” Carney remembers. “We really just wanted to hang out with him. We stayed in touch, and Dan invited him to the studio once we started working on this album.”

The band will support the record on a North American tour – their first in three years – commencing in July. The trek will make stops in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and more, before wrapping up in Dallas, Texas on October 18.

Dropout Boogie is available to preorder now. For more info on The Black Keys' upcoming North America tour, head to their official website.

“It’s been a long journey and a late start, but I feel as though my journey towards guitar had been guided by Sister Rosetta Tharpe from much earlier on,” explains British-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Yola, halfway through a conversation with Guitar World on her career to date. “And now I’ve been cast to play her in the Baz Luhrmann Elvis movie…”

Before her triple Grammy-nominated solo debut, titled Walk Through Fire and released in 2019, Yola – who also landed a Grammy nod for Best New Artist in 2020 –had lent her rich soulful vocal to projects like Massive Attack, Bugz In The Attic and Sub Focus. This year’s second album, Stand For Myself, sees her once again working with producer/co-writer Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys) – the partnership yielding some truly magnificent results. 

There are big plans for 2022, as well, with the release of the Elvis biopic that also features Hollywood superstar Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker and Texan blues giant Gary Clark Jr. as Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup. Given her deep admiration for the Godmother Of Rock And Roll, it’s an opportunity Yola has been throwing herself into…

“I’ve been learning all her parts and through that learning to solo, which I’ve never done before!” says Yola, with a nervous laugh. “I was terrified! I was playing rhythm with some level of confidence and then suddenly thrown into the next level, soloing like one of the greatest guitar players of all time… who also sings all over her solos. You have to completely divide your brain! 

“And I figured I was scared of the last thing, so let’s do it. That’s part of the reason why I took the role. Gibson very kindly sent me a replica of her Les Paul Custom, that looks like an SG but is pre-SG, and I started learning how to solo on that thing. It feels really natural to move on and really helped me get those skills down.”

It’s incredible just how much Sister Rosetta Tharpe pioneered – she was well ahead of her time.

“She was pre-everything and the genesis of all music we now hold dear. She discovered Little Richard. Then there are people like Prince, who was so influenced by Little Richard. So without her, you wouldn’t have Prince. Little Richard was wearing a whole load of makeup, ripping his clothes off and shredding in the way he learned from Sister Rosetta, but piano-style. 

“It was done in a very provocative way, he was very of her. But do you think a buttoned-up executive in the south of America would have thought, ‘Yes, this guy!’ Given what we know about the conservative nature of that area in that time… no way.”

What both of them managed to accomplish in the careers, especially when you factor in the odds against them, is truly mesmerizing.

“After Little Richard had been discovered and started doing amazing things, they saw the talent because they could see the money in the fame that’s already happening. Before then, hell no! Sister Rosetta was a queer Black woman in the south. She was perfectly placed to discover someone like Little Richard. 

“It’s a great explanation as to why rock and roll in the '60s and '70s had such a queerness about it, even from straight men! There was something so camp about it all. Where did that come from? Its roots are as Black and queer as heck.”

Your new album is very summery and uplifting in feel, even when what you’re singing about might not be…

“Yeah, I wanted it to have that kind of energy. Even in the context of some of the things that I’m saying, my pessimism is hopeful. Or my realism is hopeful, so I’m rooted in realism but not without hope! I wanted that to come across so that the listener can live in both worlds, being uplifted by something but also slapped quite squarely in the face by it, too.”

Which was the hardest track to put together, in that regard?

“I think the truths I unveiled were ones I was ready to do. I was not in a space of discomfort necessarily, if anything some of these truths were overdue rather than ones I was stretching for. Break The Bough is about the death of my mother. That’s probably the most difficult relationship I’ve had in my life, and the most difficult thing for me to be able to talk and sing about. But it was definitely due, given that she died in 2013.

“There was enough distance from the funeral, which is when I started writing. I was riding my motorcycle back to my house from the funeral and the bassline came into my head. It felt incongruous because it’s such a party bassline [laughs]. I was wondering why the hell there was that massive party bassline in my head as I was crying on my motorcycle, trying not to crash. 

“But it was there so I went along with it. Then the lyrics started coming as I was getting close to my house. So I sat on my bike idling, writing these words out. I was wondering why this nursery rhyme was coming out – the whole ‘Rock a-bye, baby, on the tree top’ thing. How terrifying and morbid is that?” 

It must have been a very emotional time for you…

“For that first line I was visualizing my mum’s casket going down and it reminded me of the children’s song. When I sing of ‘mangoes on the tree, sugar cane and shoeless feet’ it’s all the idyllic things to any Bajan of her generation, who had been hoodwinked out of living in paradise to come and live in some backwater in rainy old England.

“They didn’t show the rainy parts in the video, obviously. It was just the sunny days to say, ‘It’s just like Barbados, of course, come over to Weston-Super-Mare!’ It was a one-way ticket. 

“So there’s sadness in there, in that I’m saying ‘Get on back from whence you came’ and that was my way of saying, ‘You sucked at this whole life thing, you kinda hated it but it’s fine… you got ill which also sucked.’ Motor neurone disease is a horrible way to die.

“There was nothing but cruelty in her life so maybe her death was a great relief, if nothing else. I’m also thinking about how people say [racist] things like, ‘Go back to where you came from!’ but in this case that would have been great, because it was bloody Barbados!” 

Do you remember the exact moment you decided to pick up the guitar?

“This ties in quite neatly, in fact, because it was the death of my mother that made me realize I needed autonomy. I needed to be able to be my own person and stand for myself. I started this record with Break The Bough. 

“A moment of realizing that my mother had lived and tried to be part of something that was doing her wrong every which way it could do her wrong. She was living for it and it did her no favors at all. The will to be the master of my own destiny was the motivation for picking up the guitar. 

“It was something that I felt I was being called to, more than piano or other instruments. And it was portable. It embodied freedom. From my knowledge of Sister Rosetta Tharpe back in my late teens and early 20s, I knew there was a great lineage that was being obscured from everybody for the sake of appropriating yet another thing that black women were at the forefront of. I felt a sort of duty to claim the guitar.”

You mainly seem to play Fender acoustics these days, but what did you start out on?

“At the time I was playing a brand-new Martin, just a cheap £350 one with a 000-sized body. That was my workhorse for a little while. By and large what I did was just learning a few chords. I realized from playing country songs that the whole three chords and the truth paradigm meant I could get through a lot of songs without knowing a lot of chords! That became a real in-point for me. 

“My mum was obsessed with country, as she was disco, so I had some early exposure to Dolly Parton and artists like that. Then I was in a house fire, which only gave me superficial burns but I was wrapped like a mummy for a while. When the bandages came off, I decided to take my guitar playing more seriously…”

What kind of aspects did you choose to focus on?

“I worked on getting my strum right, learning more chords and getting used to playing confidently. For a lot of that time I was still utterly terrified. I’d essentially been told I didn’t have the inclination to play guitar so I shouldn’t bother by previous collaborators who were desperate to make sure I didn’t have all of the intellectual property – even though I kinda already did as a topliner writing lyrics and melody. 

“They managed to convince me that playing C, D and G was really challenging and I shouldn’t try it. I now realize how much of a mindfuck that was, trying to keep me dependent. I never thought I’d be having this conversation with Guitar World. 

“I didn’t see myself as a guitar player. I was programmed into seeing instrument playing as a male exploit. It seems unfortunate that patriarchy plays a big role in the story of guitar playing and instrument playing. But the guitar, to me, means freedom.”

What’s your main rig looking like right now? 

“Right now I’m playing this gorgeous Fender [Noventa] Jazzmaster with three P-90 pickups. I play that through this JHS Chorus pedal, but not in chorus mode – I use another setting that has its own sound [Vibe]. 

“I have an arrangement with this guitar – I’ve started playing it for the majority of the set. Fender also kindly made me a Custom Shop American Classic Telecaster, with some pickups of my choice put in, but it hasn’t arrived yet. These will be my main babies going forward, because this album rocks harder.”

The closing title track has some pretty dazzling fuzz tones. We’re guessing Dan Auerbach’s pedal collection might have come in handy there!

“The main co-writer on that song is a British woman called Hannah Vasanth. She has a studio in Hackney, where it was first written. I was in Bugz In The Attic with her. We toured for years, I’d stay at her house. Then she went to play with Rihanna [laughs].

“It was inspired by a song by Rotary Connection called I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun – and that particular version rather than the one by Nuyorican Soul. It has a fuzz guitar that’s an absolute beast sound, just absolutely gorgeous. This idea was in my head and the lyrics started coming down in the studio. Interestingly, this song started out on keys, not acoustic...”

That’s surprising! At what point did the electric guitars come in?

“We did this programmed demo with beats and that’s what I played to Dan Auerbach and Natalie Hemby, who were the other two co-songwriters. They felt it was epic and wanted to find a way of not screwing it up. We were careful to keep the energy me and Hannah put into it, but also give it more form. When we got to the studio, we did that – they added in a bridge and gave it a more traditional structure so it functioned as we wanted it to. 

“We started tracking and wondering what the hell to do. So I played that Rotary Connection song, and nobody had heard it before because it’s pretty out there. We wanted to take the spirit of that song, without taking the song itself. It started sounding more rock rather than jazz or soul. It hit harder. 

“That fuzz tone was right in Dan’s wheelhouse. He actually said, ‘I’ve got just the fuzz!’ and I said, ‘Of course you do, buddy!’ Fuzz is totally his thing and I knew he’d be able to find it in three seconds.”

And which one did he pick?

“No idea. And even if I did, I couldn’t tell you under pain of death. Dan guards his settings and decisions as closely as he can. If he wants to tell, he will. But he probably won’t… because he’s just not that guy. [laughs]”

• Yola's new album Stand For Myself is out now via Easy Eye Sound.

Demi Demitro, frontwoman for Boulder, Colorado-born rock band The Velveteers, has a unique voice on the guitar. She has a power with the instrument. It’s as if it becomes dancing fire in her hands when she wields it on the band’s new record, Nightmare Daydream.

The new 12-track album rattles and shakes, and was produced by none other than Dan Auerbach, frontman, of course, for the blues-rock band, The Black Keys. Lately, Auerbach has been discovering and producing a number of acclaimed acts from his Nashville studio, from Yola to Robert Finley to now The Velveteers.

We caught up with Demitro to ask her about her relationship to the six-string, developing her skills as a teen, and how she and her band began to collaborate with Auerbach in Music City.

When did you first find guitar as an instrument, or even as a concept, and once you got your first one, what did holding the instrument inspire in you?

“There were always guitars laying around my house growing up. I come from a very musical family. I always just looked at them; I would never pick them up. And then one day, I think I was probably 13 or 14, and I just picked it up and started strumming it. Then my dad taught me how to play E minor. 

“So, he taught me how to do that and I started writing songs with literally just E minor. Tons and tons of songs. Then a couple years later, I picked up the electric guitar and I feel like that was when everything really clicked for me. Because all of a sudden, I was able to have my own voice. And it was the first time in my life where I genuinely felt it was my voice coming through. 

“I think the first guitar I played that was an electric guitar was a Danelectro, or something, and I don’t know, just being able to have it be loud and have a fuzzy sound and being able to choose what effects I wanted, it was a really cool moment for me. And it’s what made me want to be in a band.”

Was that unique for you at the time? Did the guitar offer you a type of control that maybe you didn’t have elsewhere?

“Oh yeah, totally. I grew up doing musical theater stuff. And it wasn’t really something I wanted to do. It was just something that was there and I was like, 'Okay, I have to do this.' In musical theater, you have a director. And the director tells you how to act and how to play the part and all that.

“So, I think when I found guitar, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m the director of this.’ I get to choose how I want to sound, I get to choose how I want to present myself. So, it definitely felt like I was getting control in a way that I didn’t really feel like I had before.”

As a teenager, you spent hours and hours a day woodshedding. What were the biggest discoveries you made during this time?

“Whenever I would get a blister, I would feel really accomplished! Because I would be like, 'Oh, I’m practicing enough now.' When you first start playing, you don’t really have callouses, or anything. So, every time my fingers would hurt, I’d be like, 'Yeah, I’m doing something right!'

“But I would say one thing for me now looking back on it that helped me develop more of my style was playing on not-the-best-guitars and learning how to work with a guitar that, you know, only has two or three strings. Because oftentimes that would be what I was playing on and it would really force me to be creative. 

“I was left with these [guitars] that didn’t have six strings, so I just had to figure out a way to make it work. I think that definitely helped me writing riffs and just learning how to be as creative as I could be.”

What instruments do you find yourself playing these days? 

“I play an Eastwood Sidejack Baritone. That was the first guitar I ever got that was my own guitar. I decided really early on that I wanted – originally, I really wanted to be in a two-piece band and that’s what we started out as. So, I was like, maybe if I play a baritone guitar that will help me get a tone where it kind of sounds like guitar and bass.

“So, I started doing that and it was really hard to play at first because the baritone is such a big guitar. But I’ve been playing that guitar ever since. Recently, I just got a vintage baritone guitar, I forget what brand it is. It’s a Japanese brand and it was pretty cheap, but I do like cheaper guitars because I think they can be fun to play. Again, it’s that thing where not having everything be perfect forces you to work with what you have and be creative like that.”

How did you and Dan Auerbach meet? Did he show you different ideas on guitar, different techniques, pedals?

“Well, about a year and a half ago, I think it was February 2020, and we were just sitting on our couch. We got a call saying that Dan Auerbach had heard our music and wanted to bring us out to Nashville to meet. So, then a couple weeks later, we were headed out to Nashville. We headed to Dan’s studio and we all just talked about music and bands that we liked.

“A couple months down the line, we were getting ready to record an album with him. So, it was all very surreal for us. And a dream come true. But yeah, recording was super-cool. Dan just has so much gear and so many cool guitars and an insane amount of pedals. So, it definitely felt like heaven. 

“I remember recording the album, Dan had this amp that I think he got specifically for the record. I might be wrong, but I think he did. I’m pretty sure it was called a ‘Vamp’ and he was telling me they’re pretty rare and that Marc Bolan used to play through them, which I thought was super cool because I’m a huge Marc Bolan fan. 

“I forget what pedal it was, but he had this really, really cool fuzz pedal, a vintage fuzz pedal that I played through a lot [most likely a Tone Bender – Ed]. That was awesome.”

Did he a play a lot for you – was he like, “Check out this riff!”?

“Yeah, he would do that all the time. We did writing sessions together and he was always pulling out some crazy guitar that I was, like, 'What is this?' I’ve literally never seen a guitar that looks like this! He was always playing cool stuff and coming up with amazing ideas.”

The Velveteers recently opened for Guns N’ Roses. That band’s fans have some pretty high expectations. What did you use to make sure that was a big performance?

“It was a crazy experience. I used my typical setup, which is a Fender Twin. And I was playing through an Ampeg; I split the signals between my Fender and the bass amp to get a heavier sound. And then I was just using my typical pedal setup – I play through two octave pedals and a homemade fuzz pedal and a delay.”

Were there any big memories made from that show, now that you’re a little removed?

“It was very surreal getting to play to such a big audience. I think that’s the biggest crowd we had ever played for. Just being on a stage that big when you’ve never been on one before is just kind of crazy. If you move too far to one direction, you can’t really hear anything. You have to stay in front of the monitors. So, that was interesting. 

“And just playing with Guns N’ Roses, obviously their fans are very demanding. So we were worried that maybe people wouldn’t dig it but I think it went over pretty well!”

Given that the guitar has, along with a lot of work on your end, helped you achieve such great things, what do you love most about the instrument and the music you make with it?

“I would say that I love music and playing the guitar because of the feeling it gives me when I’m able to create something that I’m excited about. It’s unlike any other feeling I’ve been able to experience before. I think it’s awesome when people are able to own their creativity and, for me, guitar gives me the space to do that. 

“I think the 16-year-old me who was sitting in my room, playing my guitar on my bed, pretending that I was Kurt Cobain would only dream of getting to do some of the things I’ve gotten to do. So, I’ve very grateful for it.”

• The Velveteers' new album Nightmare Daydream is out now via Easy Eye Sound.

If you're going to make an authentic Mississippi Hill Country blues record – as The Black Keys did with the swampy Delta Kream – there are only a handful of people still alive who played with masters like R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. One of them is 68-year-old guitarist Kenny Brown. 

Brown grew up in Nesbit, Mississippi, and learned to play guitar from Mississippi Joe Callicott, who lived next door, when he was 10. He also absorbed the music coming from picnics across the road, where fife-and-drum masters Otha Turner (whose 1998 recording Everybody Hollerin’ Goat is a defining document of the music) and Napoleon Strickland would play with Fred McDowell.

“They would go all week-end sometimes,” Brown says. “I heard that stuff, and then Joe Callicott moved in next door to me and I loved what he was doing. That’s what got me to doing the blues more than any other thing.”

Brown picked up the tunings and techniques of Hill Country blues from Callicott in those early guitar lessons. “Joe first showed me slide in G tuning, which he called Spanish tuning,” he says. “He used a pocket knife, tuned the guitar to Spanish open G and laid it in his lap.” Not long after Callicott passed away, Brown met Bobby Ray Watson, who showed him open E tuning and how to play slide upright with a piece of pipe or glass on his finger. 

• Dan Auerbach: “That reckless abandon when we play was learned from people like Kenny Brown... that’s why we can go and improvise a record together“

“I’ve used everything you can think of, from an 11/16 deep-well socket [to] Coricidin bottles when you could get the old glass Coricidin bottles in the '70s,” he says. Until the mid '90s, when he began touring and performing full time, he would have plumbers on the construction jobs he worked cut 3/4-inch copper tubing so it barely hung off the tip of his finger, just how he likes it.

By the time he met R.L. Burnside in the early 1970s, Brown was eager to play the Hill Country blues he had grown up with. The pair began playing at Burnside’s house a few times a week, sometimes until late at night, and later at juke joints like Junior’s Place, owned by Junior Kimbrough.

Brown became a formidable sideman for both bluesmen, appearing on Burnside’s entire 1990s-2000s output, from Too Bad Jim through A Bothered Mind, as well as on Kimbrough’s Sad Days, Lonely Nights and Most Things Haven’t Worked Out (all Fat Possum). 

While playing as a duo and with people like R.L.’s grandson Cedric Burnside on drums (now a Grammy-nominated blues singer and guitarist), Brown and Burnside worked out a way to complement each other. 

“The way we got the sound that we did, both of us were using our thumb and index finger, going up and down,” he says. “And even though we played pretty close to the same licks, I might be sliding while he was picking with his fingers, and vice versa. I tried not to play on top of him, and we just over the years developed a way of playing together.

“The way our hands were going, getting so much harmonics going, there were times where I swear somebody had walked up on stage playing a harmonica, or I could hear a piano play and look around the stage and there wouldn’t be anybody there,” he says.

Brown was also by his side on A Ass Pocket of Whiskey [Fat Possum], Burnside’s 1996 collaboration with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, as well as the subsequent world tours that gave them a new audience of college-age fans and sustained them until Burnside passed away in 2005.

In the years since, Brown has collaborated with artists like Jessie Mae Hemphill and the North Mississippi Allstars, fronted by former Black Crowes guitarist Luther Dickinson. He also organizes the North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic, an annual gathering of regional blues artists that carries on the traditions of Kimbrough’s Sunday-evening jams, Otha Turner’s goat barbecues and the picnics Brown attended as a boy in Nesbit.

“Blues and this Hill Country music – you know, they didn’t even call it Hill Country music when I started playing it – but I think it’s more popular now than it’s ever been,” he says. “It’s such real music … I think a lot of people are hungry for this kind of stuff. I feel honored.” 

It's one thing for an established rock band to make a back-to-basics album. But it’s quite another to go all the way back to the songbook and sidemen who inspired you in the first damn place. 

For their 10th studio release, Delta Kream [Nonesuch], the Black Keys did just that, hosting a Hill Country blues party in honor of their departed heroes R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, with help from musicians who performed with them on classic albums and throughout their heyday. 

The whole affair was partly an act of serendipity – guitarist Kenny Brown and bassist Eric Deaton were both in Nashville to back Robert Finley on a session at Easy Eye Sound, Auerbach’s studio near Nashville’s Music Row, in December 2019. However, just three weeks removed from the Black Keys’ tour in support of their previous album, Let’s Rock, Auerbach caught a vibe with Brown and Deaton and soon they were digging into songs he hadn’t played in decades.

“It was just so much fun that I had to call Pat [Carney, drummer], and I said, ‘Man, you gotta come over here and I’ll see if these guys can stay an extra day and you can just play some songs.’ And that’s what he did,” Auerbach says. “He showed up the next morning; we just started playing for fun and we cut this record in a day.” 

It's hard to understate the impact Mississippi hill country blues had on Auerbach and Carney, and it’s fair to say the Black Keys wouldn’t exist without the songs on Delta Kream. 

The music of Burnside, Kimbrough and Fred McDowell was the flashpoint for the grimy Rust Belt blues the duo recorded on early releases The Big Come Up [Alive, 2002] and Thickfreakness [Fat Possum, 2003].

But whereas they paid homage to Burnside and Kimbrough with a handful of covers on those records, as well as on the 2006 EP Chulahoma: The Songs of Junior Kimbrough [Fat Possum], the addition of Brown and Deaton on Delta Kream unlocked hill country secrets like the hypnotic groove of Going Down South and the locomotive Coal Black Mattie. 

They revisited Kimbrough’s Do the Rump, trading the lo-fi fuzz of their debut-album version for a slower, more confident and muscular rhythm with Brown’s unhinged slide attack and a fiery Auerbach solo. Auerbach first met Brown as a fan, when the Fat Possum Juke Joint Caravan tour stopped at the Euclid Tavern in Cleveland, Ohio, in the late Nineties. 

“I was really lucky up in north-eastern Ohio; there was lots of great music that came through Cleveland,” he says. “I would get to see people like R.L. Burnside and Link Wray, and I saw Glenn Schwartz every week. I realized getting to see people in person was just what I loved.”

Those shows only drew him closer to the flame. When he was 18, he and his father took a trip to Mississippi to find the source of Auerbach’s obsession, and to hear “those guys [who] weren’t necessarily going to come to me.” 

He found both heartbreak and elation – Junior Kimbrough was in bad health, but he watched his sons play his dark, often unstructured, fingerstyle country blues at his juke joint in rural Chulahoma. When they crossed the flat, alluvial Mississippi Delta to Greenville, they found an aging T-Model Ford and spent time with him, as well. 

On Delta Kream, these experiences are full-frame as Brown wrings his opening slide licks on Crawling Kingsnake into feedback and Auerbach frets John Lee Hooker’s nimble riff. Recording live facing each other, the band found their way through muscle memory, intuition and the subtle cues of musicians steeped in a largely improvised tradition.

Most songs were first or second takes, with Auerbach and Brown swapping roles throughout as they worked to highlight the interplay between the instruments. 

Their stylistic differences are apparent – the former is often more reserved than the latter on these tracks – but Tchad Blake’s mix posts Auerbach’s guitar mostly center-right while Brown is panned center-left, giving the effect of being in the room while they both find pockets of their own in the swinging grooves Carney and Deaton carve for them.

Auerbach recently talked with Guitar World about coming back to Mississippi hill country blues after two decades and how Delta Kream came to life.

Were the sessions for Delta Kream the first time you played with Kenny Brown?

“That was the first time I’d really played with him. I’d seen him so much; he’s so influential. Of course, any time I saw R.L. Burnside, Kenny was there by his side. Such a big part of those Junior Kimbrough and R.L. records that I just obsessed over. So I felt like I knew him, I felt like I’d played with him a million times because I sort of had, playing along with the records.”

Did he take on the same role that he played with R.L. when you played together?

“Yeah, the Kenny Brown role. [Laughs] Eric knows all those songs just about better than anybody and Kenny helped to invent the ones that we know and love, so it was just a real treat, because I love that particular type of music so much, that hill country blues. These guys really know that stuff and it’s just an absolute joy getting to hang out with those guys and play those songs with them.”

You made a pilgrimage to visit the blues artists of north Mississippi in the 1990s. What was that trip like?

“The first time that I went to Junior [Kimbrough]’s juke joint, that’s when I found out he was really sick and he lost a leg to diabetes, and he just hadn’t been playing. That was also the first time I spoke to Kinney Kimbrough [Junior’s son] and met Garry Burnside [R.L.’s son].

“They told me and my dad if we could loan them some money to get David Kimbrough out of jail, they could get him over to the club where we were at and they could play some Junior songs. So we gave him some money; I think it was like $24.

“Then David came in. Junior had a lot of kids, but [David] was by far the standout musician and he played his dad’s songs so well. He had a strong voice, like Junior had when he was young, and I got to hear them play those Junior songs in Junior’s juke joint, surrounded by all the dancers and drinking the corn liquor. They paid us back at the end of the night from beer money and I’ve been playing with Kinney ever since.”

Patrick is quoted as saying, “Kenny Brown brings an organized chaos.” What does that mean on this new record?

"Kenny knows there are parts you have to play and you can’t mess them up, but he also understands that you can’t play those parts the same way twice. Not supposed to. Every time he solos, it’s different. He just goes for it. That’s just how he is. I think Patrick describes his guitar playing as eccentric, and I wholeheartedly agree with that.”

What did playing with Kenny bring out of you? Did you adjust your role of what you normally play in the Black Keys?

“I think some of that spirit in the Black Keys, that reckless abandon when we play, that was learned from people like Kenny Brown. You know what I mean? So I think that’s why we can go and improvise a record together. I learned from watching him.”

How did you come up with the song list for Delta Kream? Was it just people calling out different songs, like at a juke?

“Just right off the back of the hand, just thinking about the songs, and whatever popped to mind we would try it. It was funny how quickly [songs] came back. You’d say, 'What about this song? Start to pick at it a little bit and then, 'No, I think it goes like this. I think it does this here. Let’s give it a shot, and then we’d have the song in one or two takes. That’s how we made the record.”

On Louise it sounds like you’re doing a pretty close approximation of Fred McDowell’s fingerstyle playing and how you let certain open strings drone.

That’s definitely so hard to do. I used to try to figure it out, but that’s the thing with this record – this is stuff I used to try to figure out when I was 20, and I just haven’t played it since then. Those things are so ingrained in my brain, and Eric too, he knows all those songs by heart and then some.”

What are the main stylistic differences between the R.L. and Junior stuff – and Fred for that matter – in how they play?

“Well, R.L. is more part of a tradition. When you say hill country blues, I think R.L. is more part of that tradition. He comes out of Scotty McDowell and Wayne Burnett and people like that who are really rhythmic, with the open tuning. You’ve got that “whack” thing going on with the thumb, it’s very percussive. 

Junior Kimbrough was his own thing, absolutely. He definitely was a product of the hill country and his sound represents it, but he is so unique that maybe they all sounded like him.”

You acquired Fred McDowell’s Gibson Trini Lopez a while back. Did that play a role in the mix of instruments you and Kenny played?

“Kenny did play it; I don’t remember which song. You know what guitar that I got recently also is Hound Dog Taylor’s Teisco [Kingston-branded SD-40]. Everybody played that one. Kenny Brown, we split them out and he played it some on the record. 

“But Kenny had the Silvertone that I saw R.L. play every time I saw R.L. play, and it’s on the records that I love. Those are Kenny’s guitars. A black Strat that he always played. Those had a really amazing sound and I remember those things very vividly. It was really fun.”

How far out did you get with amps and other gear, or did you plug straight in?

“I had my tweed [Fender] Deluxe narrow panel and an [Ebo Customs] E-verb spring reverb. This guy in town [Eric Borash], in Nashville, makes this spring reverb that I really like. That’s about it. I’ve got a fuzz that I’ll have on sometimes, [an Analog.Man] germanium fuzz. 

“I played my ’60 Tele most of the time. Kenny may have been playing a tweed Deluxe also. I’ve got two of them and I think he was playing one. He had a fuzz pedal that was turned all the way down, but still kind of dirty. He would use that for some solos with the slide. It’s such an awesome sound because he’s got the lipstick pickups with the slide and it’s just a very awesome, unique high end.”

You recorded live as a five-piece and some-times six-piece band with a percussionist and keys. How is the room at Easy Eye Sound set up? Were you all facing each other?

“That’s right. We have some tall baffles with glass in them around the drums, but it’s not enclosed; it’s open at the top, so it was bleeding everywhere. The percussion is sitting face to face with the drummer and then the bass player and me and Kenny were all in a circle. We could all see each other.”

What does that bleed do to the mix? What does it bring to the finished product?

“Here’s the thing: If you don’t fuck up, it’s amazing. If you mess up, it’s a nightmare because you can’t fix it. You just have to be cool with warts-and-all type of recording. I think that that bleed is a big part of the magic of some of the old classic recordings. Most people learn that eventually, that half of their favorite drum sound is bleeding from some other mic. Bleed can be your friend. Let it bleed.”

Why do you think it took so long for you and Patrick to get into the studio with guys from the hill country?

“I’m not really sure. That’s sort of what I was thinking when I was there doing it. You couldn’t have made this record 10 years ago. Somebody told me yesterday, 'This reminds me of old Black Keys.' I’m like, 'No, it doesn’t, because we weren’t that good.' I think it reminded them of the spirit. It’s the same spirit, but it’s a couple of decades later. Having those guys on the record is just a difference maker. I think for both Pat and me it made it more meaningful. That’s really the reason we were there.”

• Delta Kream is out now via Nonesuch Records.

The Black Keys have given stirring performances of Crawling Kingsnake and Going Down South – both taken from their recent blues covers album Delta Kream – during an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

Recorded at iconic Mississippi blues venue Blue Front Café, the show sees the Ohio duo deliver stellar renditions of the John Lee Hooker and R.L. Burnside originals.

Frontman Dan Auerbach and guitarist Kenny Brown – who not only lent his six-string skills to the album, but is also a former sideman of R. L. Burnside – trade tasteful lead lines and luscious bluesy slides throughout, backed up by drummer Patrick Carney, bassist Eric Deaton and percussionist Sam Bacco.

Delta Kream – which arrived last week via Nonesuch Records – is The Black Keys' first release since their ninth studio album, 2019's Let's Rock. The 11-track record sees the pair pay tribute to their blues inspirations, including Ranie Burnette, Junior Kimbrough and Big Joe Williams.

“This is basically folk music on a certain level, and a lot of this music is like hand-me-downs from generation to generation,” Auerbach recently told Rolling Stone.

“I’m singing lyrics that are like third-generation wrong lyrics. I’m singing a certain version that Junior recorded where maybe he messed up a line, but that’s the only one I know. So we were really just kind of flying by the seat of our pants.”

Delta Kream is available now. Check out its full tracklisting below:

1. Crawling Kingsnake (John Lee Hooker)
2. Louise (Mississippi Fred McDowell)
3. Poor Boy a Long Way From Home (R. L. Burnside)
4. Stay All Night (Junior Kimbrough)
5. Going Down South (R. L. Burnside)
6. Coal Black Mattie (Ranie Burnette)
7. Do the Romp (Junior Kimbrough)
8. Sad Days, Lonely Nights (Junior Kimbrough)
9. Walk with Me (Junior Kimbrough)
10. Mellow Peaches (Big Joe Williams)
11. Come on and Go with Me (Junior Kimbrough)

After announcing new blues covers album, Delta Kream, yesterday, The Black Keys have officially released its first single, a version of John Lee Hooker’s 1949 track, Crawling King Snake.

The new rendition, like the album on which it appears, sees Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney go back to their roots, not only in terms of their influences, but also The Black Keys’ grittier, slide-heavy early material.

A bolstered band lineup makes for a more expansive sound than those early Keys cuts, however, with the addition of guitarist Kenny Brown and bassist Eric Deaton – the former sidemen of R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, whose tracks are covered on the record – as well as percussionist Sam Bacco and organ player Ray Jacildo.

Crawling Kingsnake – which Auerbach first heard via Kimbrough’s own rendition, rather than Hooker’s version or the Big Joe Williams original – is among 11 tracks featured on the band’s forthcoming 10th studio effort, which includes covers of tracks by Fred McDowell, Ranie Burnette and Big Joe Williams.

“This is basically folk music on a certain level, and a lot of this music is like hand-me-downs from generation to generation,” Auerbach told Rolling Stone.

“I’m singing lyrics that are like third-generation wrong lyrics. I’m singing a certain version that Junior recorded where maybe he messed up a line, but that’s the only one I know. So we were really just kind of flying by the seat of our pants.”

Delta Kream is out on May 14 via Nonesuch, and available to preorder via the band's official website.

The album’s full tracklisting is as follows:

1. Crawling Kingsnake (John Lee Hooker)
2. Louise (Mississippi Fred McDowell)
3. Poor Boy a Long Way From Home (R. L. Burnside)
4. Stay All Night (Junior Kimbrough)
5. Going Down South (R. L. Burnside)
6. Coal Black Mattie (Ranie Burnette)
7. Do the Romp (Junior Kimbrough)
8. Sad Days, Lonely Nights (Junior Kimbrough)
9. Walk with Me (Junior Kimbrough)
10. Mellow Peaches (Big Joe Williams)
11. Come on and Go with Me (Junior Kimbrough)

When The Black Keys released Let’s Rock earlier this year, it represented the first new music from singer and guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney in five years. But to hear Auerbach tell it, when they entered his own Easy Eye Sound in Nashville to get to work on the record, their ninth full-length since 2002, it was as if no time had passed at all.

“We just started playing music and this is what came out,” he explains simply.

In conversation, Auerbach can occasionally be a man of few words, but in this case he’s hardly being dismissive or evasive. In truth, he and Carney did, for all intents, enter the studio and just, well, rocked, pulling together 12 tunes from absolutely zero previously created material - and producing the entire affair themselves.

It’s an unusual way for a multi-platinum act to work in this day and age, but, in Auerbach’s mind, it makes perfect sense for the duo.

“When you’ve been in a band with somebody for 18 years, we don’t even have to talk about things - we just do it,” he says.

In some respects, what the pair achieved on Let’s Rock recalls the more bare-bones riff ’n’ rhythm sound of early Black Keys records like their 2002 debut The Big Come Up and 2003’s Thickfreakness.

The album’s 12 tracks are short, focused, hooky and unequivocally guitar-centric, from the crushing power-chord hooks of opener Shine a Little Light to the gnarled boogie of Eagle Birds, the slow-burning soul of Walk Across the Water to the overdriven guitar scuzz of Every Little Thing.

At the same time, similar to more recent Keys records, there’s also expanded instrumentation (most significantly, Auerbach adding bass behind his guitar parts) and less of a strict adherence to traditional blues forms.

The result is one of the duo’s most overall satisfying records. And if, after half a decade apart (during which time both members stayed plenty busy, writing, recording and producing with others), it sounds as if Auerbach and Carney haven’t lost a step, well, there’s a reason for that.

“Pat and I have this special relationship where when we get together it just sounds like the Black Keys,” Auerbach says. “We don’t even have to try.”

Auerbach recently phoned Guitar World from Easy Eye Sound - where he “lives” - to talk about the making of Let’s Rock.

In the following conversation, he discusses the gear he used on the record, the unexpected guitarist who helped to inspire the sound and direction of the new music, and his and Carney’s unique creative process in the studio, which, in this instance, saw them write and record in a quick, spontaneous manner.

And the secret to their musical partnership?

“The thing that really fucks up any band, really stifles creativity, is being insecure and not being able to self-edit - not being able to work around certain criticisms,” Auerbach says.

“That’s always the thing that’s crippling. If you can’t get over that, you can’t make music. But Pat and I are just so beyond that.”

It’s been five years since the last Black Keys album; at what point did you make the decision that it was time to get back in the studio together?

"Well, about a year-and-a-half-ago I made a record with this guy named Glenn Schwartz, who was from northeastern Ohio and who was the original guitarist in the James Gang.

"He was Joe Walsh’s guitar hero. Joe said the first time he saw Glenn Schwartz was in 1966 or 1967 and he was wearing, like, purple velvet bell bottoms and no shirt and playing an Epiphone Casino up on somebody’s shoulders in a bar. [Schwartz, who passed away in November 2018 at age 78, was eventually replaced by Walsh in the band.]

"Back when I was 17, 18, 19 years old, Glenn would still play at this bar in Cleveland every Thursday night, and I would go to see him. Even then he was old, but he still rocked like crazy.

"So I decided to invite Glenn to my studio in Nashville and make a record with him. I invited Joe [Walsh] out too, and we played all of Glenn’s old songs. And just watching him play those songs reminded me of all of the licks that I borrowed from him when I was first making Black Keys records.

"It put me right back in that place and made me fall in love with the electric guitar all over again. I felt the same way I did when I used to watch him when I was 18. I really didn’t realize how much he had influenced me until I did that session. It just hit me like a ton of bricks. And right when I was done with that session, we put the Black Keys on the books.

Let’s Rock is a more straightforward and in-your-face guitar record than the previous Black Keys album, 2014’s Turn Blue. Was that partly a result of your having been reintroduced to Glenn’s playing?

"Yeah. That’s definitely where my head was at. And you know, when Pat and I got back together, we never talked about inviting anyone else to come and play or to co-produce. I just sat down at the guitar and Pat sat down at the drums and that was it. We started playing and we didn’t really change the formula at all for the whole record."

This time you also went into the studio without having worked out any material beforehand.

"Everything was improvised. We would just sit down and start playing, figuring out what we liked and getting away from what we didn’t like. We were following the songs, just trying to find something that felt good. We would compose instrumentals, with intros and verses and turnarounds and, you know, maybe a bridge here or a solo there or an outro here.

"We’d figure all that shit out and then cut it like that and try to get it within the second or third take. So every single song has that live performance at the foundation of it. And then after we got the take, that’s when I’d go in and start working on vocals and try to find melodies. It was like writing in reverse, almost."

How long did it take before you stumbled onto something that was album-worthy?

"Actually, the very first idea that we had is on the record. It turned into the song Breaking Down. That was the very first time we sat down to play together in however many years, and just immediately we were making music."

In that environment, how does that actual creative process proceed? Are you playing off of what Patrick might do rhythmically, or is he responding to a riff or chord progression on the guitar?

"It’s both. There are no rules. We just go by feel, because we’ve worked together for so long now. So we’re able to work really fast. It was right into it. We had no pre-production meeting, we had no talk of what we were looking to do. We didn’t really listen to much music in the control room or anything to get inspired."

Did you approach your solos in the same sort of spontaneous manner?

"Yeah. More than half of the solos on the record are the improvised takes from the original foundation tracks. I just fucking kept ‘em."

For many artists, the studio is the place you go after you’ve spent weeks or months or even years writing and demoing and rehearsing and doing preproduction and so on. It’s a means for getting your finished idea down on tape, so to speak, but what’s interesting about you is that you seem to view the studio as a creative tool in and of itself.

"Well, this is the thing: I live in the studio. I’m here every day, whether I’m doing a Black Keys record or not. So I’m used to working in here. My work is creative and it’s different every day and it’s exciting. Because of that I think my perspective is just different."

What about when you’re playing live? Is that same spontaneity and ability to improvise that you have in the studio also present onstage?

"Not really. I think the thing about the Black Keys is we started as a studio band. We really love being in the studio and making sounds and recording. Being on the stage was never the thing that was so near and dear to us. So making that transition from the studio to the stage, even with as long as we’ve been playing, it’s still slow. [Laughs]

"It’s like a different experience. We don’t really improv onstage. We have a couple of spots where we can do a little this or that, but it’s not a lot of improv. Instead of making music, we’re performing."

Let’s talk about some of the gear you used on the new record. What were your preferred guitars and amps?

"A guitar that I used a whole bunch was a 1964 Guild Starfire III, with those Guild mini-humbuckers and the Guild label Bigsby. And there was a Gretsch Chet Atkins named Rudy. I’ve kind of fallen in love with that guitar. I used those two a lot.

"I also used my Ibanez SG 'lawsuit' guitar quite a bit, and my Vinnie Bell electric sitar, which actually belonged to [session guitarist] Vinnie Bell. It was used on movie soundtracks and a bunch of hits from the '60s, '70s and '80s. You can hear it on the new record on the intro and turnarounds on Breaking Down.

"Then there was a Gibson Everly Brothers acoustic and also my Teisco Del Rey four-pickup guitar that used to belong to Hound Dog Taylor. I used that to double up some of the rhythms on some of the tracks I did with the Guild.

"As far as amplifiers, I’ve got a little Flot-A-Tone that I used quite a bit, and a little tweed Deluxe copy, made by a friend of mine in Cleveland named Nick Miller. And sometimes if I needed some choppy tremolo I used a silverface Deluxe Reverb. But that’s pretty much it."

How about effects?

"I had a few fuzzes - my Marshall Supa Fuzz and my Ibanez Standard Fuzz. The Ibanez is from the late-'60s, and I’ve been using it since the first Black Keys record.

"I also had an old Prescription Electronics Face Lift. It has a fuzz channel and an octave channel but I only used the octave channel. And I used a Uni-Vibe a little bit, and also a [Catalinbread] Belle Epoch delay."

Your rhythm tones are so distinct from song to song, and in many cases - Shine a Little Light and Eagle Birds from the new album would be examples - the sound itself is arguably as central to the character of the song as the riff or chord progression you’re playing. Does a tone or an effect ever guide a song during the creative process, or do the sounds come later on?

"Oh, no - that’s all during. When you find that little sweet spot where the guitar’s really kind of singing… that’s the fun of it. Especially when it’s just a two-piece, because you get those little ghost notes and things. Makes it a little bouncier somehow. I think playing into the right effect is kind of important to creativity."

Can you give any examples of songs where that happened on this record?

"Well, like you said, Eagle Birds is one. That one started with that kind of, basically, T-Model Ford guitar rhythm. He’s one of my guitar heroes, and so I just started playing a rhythm in that style.

"I think I had a single-transistor fuzz going, or maybe some sort of treble booster. Because I really do love treble booster, especially into the right tube amp; it’s just so sweet. So it was all about having the right sound, and being able to touch the strings real light, but have the tone be explosive.

"And then Every Little Thing, the intro to that was me playing the Guild through, it might have been the Face Lift pedal. And that’s a good sound.

"So in general I was trying to get sounds that I hadn’t gotten before. That’s why I switched out guitars a lot and went for some different combinations. Using the right Gretsch with the right amp with the right spring reverb, it’s just like, 'Goddamn!'

Over the course of your 18 years with the Black Keys has your approach to guitar tone changed significantly? Do you feel you’re looking for something different now than you were years ago?

"I think that ultimately I’m always going for kind of the same thing I like and that I’ve always liked. And that’s what was so amazing to me about seeing Glenn Schwartz again. It was him just fucking blowing my mind all over by doing the same exact thing he’d always done. [Laughs] I’ve always been such a sucker for that."

You like what you like…

"Yeah. And I’ve been blessed that I was able to hear people like Glenn Schwartz in person. I’ve been blessed that I was able to hear people like Link Wray in person. Because that changed me.

"When you get to see a wild-ass guitarist playing through a Fender Quad Reverb run at its sweet spot – I mean, that’s crazy-sounding in a tiny bar. It can really transport you. And for me, it did."

Now that the Black Keys are back up and running with a new album and tour, do you look forward to the next thing or do you just take it one day at a time?

"I think I take it one week at a time! I look at my weekly planner and I think about that week and I just focus on that. Because for me every week is something new.

"So the only thing I’ve been thinking right now is that me and Dan Johnson, who’s been my guitar tech since I was 17 years old, going to see Glenn Schwartz – we’ve been trying to figure out what guitars I’m going to bring on the road."

Do you tend to bring out the same guitars you used in the studio on a particular record?

"That’s what I’m trying to figure out if I’m going to do this time. Because I don’t know that I want to bring some of those guitars out on the road. Do I want to bring that nice-ass Gretsch and get it all beat up? I don’t know."

In addition to not wanting to damage an old guitar, vintage gear also can be temperamental and inconsistent from room to room…

"Yeah, exactly. That red guitar I tour with, that Harmony by Heath [H78]? Everybody thinks of it as my main guitar because it’s the one I play live. But it’s just a good touring guitar - I don’t know that I’ve ever even used it on a recording.

"But then I have this ‘58 Rickenbacker that’s a beauty, but I just don’t know that I want to expose it to changing temperatures and all this stuff. The thing plays so true because it gets to sit in this climate-controlled studio and just be pampered. So maybe that’s where it needs to stay. [Laughs]

"I think I’ve gotta continue to pamper some of these guitars!

From appearing at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Festival to revealing the imminent release of his signature Gibson ES-345, Marcus King has had a busy couple of months.

Now, the 23-year-old electric guitar phenom has announced his debut solo album, El Dorado, produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach.

You can check out the first single, The Well, above.

Billed as a “contemporary genre-bending sonic exploration of classic rock, blues, southern R&B and country-soul,” El Dorado was written and recorded by King and Auerbach over three days at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studios in Nashville.

Also along for the ride were writers including Paul Overstreet, Ronnie Bowman and Pat McLaughlin, as well as studio musicians like drummer Gene Chrisman and keyboard player Bobby Wood.

Said Auerbach about working with King, “Marcus is known by so many as a phenom guitar player, and rightfully so. He’s regularly the best player in the room, hands down.”

He added, “I was equally blown away by the way he can sing – so effortless, so soulful, straight from the heart. He’s a naturally gifted writer too, which was clear right away. Everything for him is so innate – that’s why he can always go right to the heart of a song and connect in a deeper way. He’s really one of a kind and I’m proud I got to work alongside him on this record.”

El Dorado is out January 17 via Fantasy Records. You can pre-order the album here. 

There are a lot of online guitar tutorials out there, but if you really want to learn how to write songs – or, as Dan Auerbach contends, are interested in buying a new pool – you’d do well to check out the Black Keys MasterCourse.

The Let’s Rock duo have unveiled a new Funny or Die trailer in which they outline their mock online class, with Dan Auerbach displaying his cadre of super-expensive guitars and drummer Patrick Carney proudly christening himself the band’s front man.

If this sounds like your sort of learning environment, check out the video above.

As Carney contends, “After this course you’ll be able to write music like the pros.”

“Unless you’re not naturally gifted like us,” Auerbach adds. “Then we can’t really help you.”

Nearly 60 years ago, first-generation rocker Link Wray released "Rumble," a pulsating, slow-burning guitar instrumental that forever changed the sound of rock and roll. Iggy Pop did a fine job of summing up the song's menacing magic when he said, “'Rumble' had the power to help me say ‘fuck it, I’m going to be a musician'.”

Today, we've gotten together with Dan Auerbach’s label, Easy Eye Sound, to premiere “Son of Rumble,” Wray's never-released followup to the song that introduced the world to nasty power chords. “Son of Rumble” comes to you straight from the Link Wray archives, and you can hear it above. The song, along with “Whole Lotta Talking,” will be released April 13, 2018, as a 7-inch vinyl record. It's available for pre-order here.

“Rumble” (hear it below) was a rock-and-roll milestone for countless subsequent rock legends, including Jimmy Page, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend, Tom Petty, Slash, Steven Van Zandt, Jeff Beck and Elvis Costello, not to mention Los Straitjackets' Eddie Angel and thousands of surf-instrumental bands. The song was actually banned in New York, Boston and Detroit for fear it would incite juvenile violence, making Wray the only artist in history to release a banned instrumental.

“I saw him play in Cleveland at The Grog Shop and he blew my mind," Auerbach told Guitar World this week. "To get the chance to put out unreleased songs on Easy Eye is amazing and a dream I never thought was possible. It’s time we give Link Wray a statue on the top of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

Thirty-three years after becoming eligible for inclusion, Wray is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominee for the Class of 2018. Fans can vote for his inclusion with a daily ballot through December 5 right here.

In other Link Wray news, the guitarist's story will be featured in Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World, a documentary about the profound impact indigenous people have had on American music. The film includes interviews with Auerbach, Iggy Pop, George Clinton, Tony Bennett, Steven Tyler and many more. You can watch the trailer below—followed by a fun clip of Jimmy Page listening to "Rumble" and a live performance of the song (by Wray and his band) from 1974. Enjoy!

“The reason I first wanted to play guitar is because my family played bluegrass,” Dan Auerbach says.

“There were a lot of guitars around and they would sing and play these old songs. And a lot of those songs were recorded in Nashville. So, growing up, Nashville was a place I knew I needed to go.”

True to his word, Auerbach is telling Guitar World this story while on the phone from Nashville, which is where the Ohio native calls home these days. It’s also the city where he set up his recording studio, Easy Eye Sound, where he has over the past few years produced albums from artists as varied as Dr. John to the Pretenders to Cage the Elephant.

Additionally, Auerbach’s own band, the Black Keys, have tracked all or parts of their last two efforts at the facility. More recently, Easy Eye became the meeting place for some of Nashville’s finest musicians, who gathered there to assist Auerbach in the recording of his new solo album, Waiting on a Song. The 10-track effort is an overall lighter and more expansive affair than his Black Keys work, with songs that evidence a strong affinity for Fifties and Sixties rock and roll and that are outfitted with all manner of strings, horns and acoustic picking and strumming.

Auerbach’s second solo record (his first, Keep It Hid, was released back in 2009), Waiting on a Song features a who’s-who of Nashville players, from guitarist and pedal-steel extraordinaire Russ Pahl to keyboardist Bobby Wood and drummer Gene Chrisman, both former members of the “Memphis Boys,” the famed American Sound Studios house band. Among the hundreds of artists Wood and Chrisman have played with over the decades is renowned country-folk singer-songwriter John Prine, who, coincidentally, also co-wrote the title track to Waiting on a Song alongside Auerbach.

“I met some amazing people and kept ’em busy,” Auerbach says. “Tried to get ’em in the studio as much as I possibly could. We wrote and recorded about 60 or 70 songs, and the 10 on the album were a bunch of tunes that we thought worked well together from that group.” Among the other “amazing people” that assisted Auerbach on Waiting on a Song were two six-string icons—twang guitar legend Duane Eddy and former Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler.

As far as how Eddy, whose 1959 guitar version of the “Peter Gunn” theme stands as a monumental moment in electric guitar playing, got involved in the project, Auerbach explains, “I met Duane through my buddy David Ferguson, who executive produced my record. Fergie kind of introduced me to everyone in Nashville, really. And he said to me, ‘C’mon, Auerbach, we’re gonna go have a burger with Duane Eddy!’ He picked me up and we went over to this place that only had buffalo burgers. Apparently, that’s what Duane likes. I hate ’em.” Auerbach laughs. “But I had to pretend like I liked ’em because Duane Eddy likes ’em.”

Not long after, Auerbach had Eddy over to Easy Eye. “I realized he’s a studio junkie, just like me,” Auerbach says. “That’s why he has that cool sound. Because he loved experimenting in the studio. He and [producer] Lee Hazlewood found a guitar sound really early on, and that became the Duane Eddy sound.” That “Duane Eddy sound” is unmistakable on Waiting on a Song, in particular in the reverb-drenched, twangy lines Eddy plays on the rockabilly rave-up “Livin’ in Sin.”

“There’s very few people in the guitar world where you can say they take the instrument, which is a commonly played instrument, and they make it sound only like one person,” Auerbach says of Eddy. “That’s really hard to do. But Duane’s done that.” It’s safe to say that another guitarist who has done that in his career is Mark Knopfler, whose distinctive six-string work spices up the jaunty Waiting on a Song track “Shine on Me.”

Knopfler’s participation, however, came about in a different manner than Eddy’s. “I was listening to the playback of ‘Shine on Me’ right after we recorded it and I just said out loud, ‘Man, this sounds like Mark Knopfler should be on this song,” Auerbach recalls. “And I’d never met Mark Knopfler. But I had my manager reach out to him and just kind of ask him nicely if he would consider it. We sent him the song, and two days later he sent it back with his guitar on it and it was just like I heard it in my head. It was perfect. And he doesn’t even play a solo—it’s just the most perfect rhythm guitar. It fits right in with the band.”

As far as Auerbach’s own performances on the songs, in addition to singing, he says, “I played all kinds of stuff. I played drums. I played percussion. I played a bunch of keyboard parts. I arranged strings. I was just kinda doing whatever was needed. If that meant playing a solid rhythm acoustic part, that’s what I would do. It was all about serving the song.”

Since the Black Keys wrapped touring in support of their most recent album, 2014’s Turn Blue, Auerbach, who is enjoying his first extended stretch of time off the road in many years, has become somewhat consumed with serving the song.

“I’ve sort of gotten into this routine where I come to the studio every day at about nine o’clock in the morning and I just start working,” he says. “When I’m writing and recording every day, I feel like the blade just gets sharper, you know? Your writing is best when you do it every single day and keep that muscle going. And I feel like my studio is a big part of making that possible. Everything just seems to flow better.”

When it comes to Easy Eye, Auerbach says he envisions the facility functioning in a manner similar to legendary label/studios like Motown and Stax.

“Absolutely,” he says. “I have a house band. All my instruments are here. I have a whole crew of writers I’ve been writing with. It’s very much sort of like a factory, but in the best sense of the word. I started a record label, Easy Eye Sound Records, and we’re gonna start releasing albums. We’re just starting to sign some people, we’re putting the finishing touches on different records we cut here. Some with the same band from my record and some with other bands that already exist. It’s a big mix of stuff that I’m interested in.”

Auerbach has become so entrenched in Easy Eye, in fact, that when it comes to the music on Waiting on a Song, he says, “It feels weird talking about these songs because they’re so old to me right now. I cut ’em, and some of ’em, that was the last time I played ’em. And now I’m talking about ’em. But it’s not like that’s the end of it for me. We started making music last summer, and I’ve been writing and recording and making songs ever since. I’ve never really stopped, to be honest.”

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“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done, but it still makes sense.”

That’s how nine-time Grammy winner Dan Auerbach describes his new album, Waiting On a Song, which will be released June 2 on his own Easy Eye Sound label.

Waiting On a Song is the followup to the Black Keys frontman’s 2009 solo debut, Keep It Hid. It’s also a love letter to Nashville; Auerbach recruited some of the town’s most respected players to write and record for the new project, including John Prine, Duane Eddy and Bobby Wood. Even Mark Knopfler contributes his own snaky, snarling guitar to “Shine On Me," which you can hear below.

Other standout tracks include the cinematic “King of a One Horse Town” and the upbeat but melancholy title track. The song's music video—which was directed by Bryan Schlam—reinforces that perspective by following a group of teens during the “best summer of their lives” before they head off to college.

I recently spoke with Auerbach about Waiting On a Song, songwriting, his gear and more.

When you experience Waiting On a Song as a whole, there are so many different styles and influences from the Sixties and Seventies that come across. Was that the intent?
A lot of what you’re hearing is the guys from those records that you remember listening to, like Bobby Wood, who plays Wurlitzer on this record, also played on hits by Elvis and Dusty Springfield. When you listen to this record you’re not being reminded of a certain style. You’re actually listening to the guy who created the style.

What’s your songwriting process like?
It all depends. Sometimes, you have a melody first or a lyric, and other times it can just be a title and you can write a whole song based on it. What I do know is that every single song on this record was done in an old-school, "songwriter" way of getting into a room with someone and writing a song on acoustic guitar or just on a piano. I’m so used to having the studio be a part of the writing process, but not on this record. Everything was done ahead of time, which is really interesting because it was the first time I’ve ever done that.

When I was growing up, we’d sit around in a circle and play guitar and sing bluegrass and blues songs. Now, I’m sitting in a circle with the guys who wrote many of those bluegrass and blues songs and we’re writing together. Even though it was the first time I did it, something about it felt very natural.

Let’s discuss a few tracks from the new album, beginning with the title track.
I’ve got a little room over at my house that we started writing in last summer. I spent the whole summer in that room just writing, and I wrote that one with John Prine and Pat McLaughlin. The concept for the video was director Bryan Schlam's idea. He executed it so well. Even if you didn’t grow up during that time period, everything those guys and girls are doing makes you feel nostalgic. There’s something warm about the video, but the feeling of it really matches the song in an uplifting, melancholy way.

“Shine On Me” has a guest appearance by Mark Knopfler. How did that come about?
I recorded that song, and when we went into the control room and listened back, it sounded like it needed Mark Knopfler on rhythm guitar. So we made a rough mix and I sent it to him. Two days later he sent it back with the guitar on it. I felt like anything was possible with this year and was just so thrilled to be working with guys like Mark, Duane Eddy, Bobby Wood and Gene Chrisman.

“King of a One Horse Town”
That’s the first time you hear Duane on the record. For me, the song is very cinematic, intimate and in your face. There’s something old-school about the sound. It’s almost hi-fi and open at times. I love hearing Duane in that setting. It’s a good place for him to be.

Do you have plans to tour in support of Waiting On a Song?
This was more of a recording project, so I don’t have any plans at the moment. We did do a show in Brooklyn recently to see if we wanted to play some more shows, and everyone loved it. We’ll see what happens. I will be opening for John Prine for a few weekends this year, which will be amazing. He’s such a great guy.

What’s your guitar setup like?
At the Brooklyn show I used my Telecaster, which I’ve had for years. I’ve been using it in the studio forever but had never played it out live. I brought that along with a Deluxe Reverb Blackface and my Everly Brothers acoustic.

Was having a career in music something you always aspired to do?
I knew I wanted to do music but didn’t know I wanted to have a career. Music was the thing that stuck with me and I felt a connection to. It was something I could understand at an early age. My dad had a great record collection and my mom played piano and all of her brothers and sisters played bluegrass. Every time the family got together, they would sing all of these great songs. That’s what made me want to play guitar and sing.

Are there any other projects you’re working on?
I’ve got my label, Easy Eye Sound, that I started to put out my record as well as a few other guitar-oriented albums I produced that will be out later this year.

What satisfies you the most about Waiting On a Song?
Every single second of making this record felt so good and was something I needed to do. Last summer, I made a conscious decision to not tour and to be home and play and record and not worry about anything else. I turned down a lot of work but it was so worth it. One of the biggest things these older musicians taught me was to not think about things too much and to get out of my own way. It’s not about doing anything technical. It’s about how it feels.

ames Wood is a writer, musician and self-proclaimed metalhead who maintains his own website, GoJimmyGo.net. His articles and interviews are written on a variety of topics with passion and humor. You can follow him on Twitter @JimEWood.

The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach will release Waiting On a Song, his second solo album, June 2 via his new label, Easy Eye Sound. He's already released the Steven Mertens-directed music video for "Shine On Me," which you can watch right here.

Today, Auerbach has premiered the music video for the album's upbeat title track.

The video seems to pick up where Dazed and Confused left off, following a group of teens during the “best summer of their lives” before they leave home for college.

"Not only does the video evoke the feeling of the song, but it also pays tribute to the great tradition of Nashville songwriters," Auerbach says. "It was fun to have John Prine and Pat McLaughlin have cameos in the video as I wrote the song with them. It also has appearances by other Nashville songwriters, like Michael Heeney and Luke Dick, as well as David Ferguson, who was the executive producer of the album with me."

The clip was directed by Bryan Schlam.

“When I first heard ‘Waiting On a Song,' I instantly thought about summer hijinks, basically anything that could happen during the last summer between high school and college," Schlam says. "I’ve always wanted to make a movie about that weight, the feeling of moving from childhood to pseudo adulthood.”

Waiting On a Song is available for pre-order on CD, vinyl and digitally. It also be available in limited-edition bundles, including an exclusive 8 track and a vintage 8 track player signed and customized by Auerbach. You can pre-order the album here.

Dan Auerbach, Waiting on a Song Track List

• 1 Waiting on a Song
• 2 Malibu Man
• 3 Livin’ in Sin
• 4 Shine on Me
• 5 King of a One Horse Town
• 6 Never in My Wildest Dreams
• 7 Cherrybomb
• 8 Stand by My Girl
• 9 Undertow
• 10 Show Me

The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach will release Waiting on a Song, his second solo album, June 2 via his new label, Easy Eye Sound. He's already released the Steven Mertens-directed music video for "Shine On Me," which you can watch out below.

The album is the followup to 2009’s Keep It Hid and is a love letter to Nashville. As such, he recruited some of Nashville’s most respected players to write and record his latest, including John Prine, Duane Eddy, Jerry Douglas, Pat McLaughlin and Bobby Wood and Gene Chrisman of the Memphis Boys.

“Living in Nashville has definitely changed the way I think about music and the way that I record it," Auerbach says. "I didn’t have all of these resources before. I am working with some of the greatest musicians that ever lived.”

Waiting on a Song is available for pre-order on CD, vinyl and digitally. It also be available in limited-edition bundles, including an exclusive 8 track and a vintage 8 track player signed and customized by Auerbach. You can pre-order the album here.

Auerbach moved to Nashville from Akron, Ohio, in 2010; with this release, it's clear he's made Music City his home. During the summer of 2016, taking a break from the touring he’d done with the Black Keys and the Arcs, he finally got acquainted with the city, as well as the musicians who live there.

“They’d come over, and we’d be in a little room in my house with the door closed, and we’d just write," he says. "Monday through Wednesday we’d write, and then Thursday through Sunday we’d record, every week.”

Auerbach wrote seven songs with Prine, one of which is the title track. Mark Knopfler’s immediately identifiable guitar elevates “Shine on Me.” Duane Eddy is featured on “Livin’ in Sin” and the cinematic “King of a One Horse Town.”

Dan Auerbach, Waiting on a Song Track List

• 1 Waiting on a Song
• 2 Malibu Man
• 3 Livin’ in Sin
• 4 Shine on Me
• 5 King of a One Horse Town
• 6 Never in My Wildest Dreams
• 7 Cherrybomb
• 8 Stand by My Girl
• 9 Undertow
• 10 Show Me

Learn how to play one of the best albums of 2011 -- The Black Keys' El Camino -- courtesy of this artist-approved tab book, which is available now at the Guitar World Online Store.

The softcover book by Cherry Lane Music contains spot-on transcriptions of all 11 songs on the garage/blues-rocking album by Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, which was produced and co-written by Danger Mouse.

Songs include:

• "Dead and Gone"
• "Gold on the Ceiling"
• "Hell of a Season"
• "Little Black Submarines"
• "Lonely Boy"
• "Mind Eraser"
• "Money Maker"
• "Nova Baby"
• "Run Right Back"
• "Sister"
• "Stop Stop"

For more information, or to order the book for $19.99, head to the Guitar World Online Store.

The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach and ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons are on the cover of the current issue of Guitar World. Read an excerpt of that story right here.

In case you missed last week's season premiere of the History Channel's American Pickers, you'll get another chance to catch it tonight.

The episode features singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys.

Auerbach—along with Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz of Antique Archaeology in Nashville—check out a Chet Atkins model Gretsch guitar—that once belonged to someone named "Rudy."

Auerbach isn't the first Nashville guitar picker to appear on American Pickers; Jack White acquired a decorative elephant head on a 2012 episode of the show.

The Auerbach episode of American Pickers airs 8 to 9 p.m. EST today (May 13) and midnight to 1 a.m. May 14. You can check out a preview of the episode below.

For more about American Pickers, visit history.com.

This is an excerpt from the September 2014 issue of Guitar World. For the rest of this story, plus features on Dan Auerbach's off-beat guitars, Eric Clapton and his new J.J. Cale tribute album, Judas Priest, 17 Amazing practice amps, columns, tabs and reviews of new gear from Epiphone, ESP Guitars, Visual Sound, Blackstar, G&L Guitars, Ibanez and more, check out the September 2014 issue at the Guitar World Online Store.

Black and Blue: Dan Auerbach tells how the Black Keys made their latest hit album, Turn Blue, in the midst of personal hardship, using a handful of guitars, amps and effects and a whole lotta spontaneous inspiration.

Black Keys guitarist and singer Dan Auerbach is obsessed with arcane, el-cheapo mid–20th century guitars: Teiscos, Nationals, Supros, Silvertones.

But that fixation is rivaled only by his passion for collecting vintage vinyl and under-the-radar new music. “Yesterday, I was listening to some dub [reggae] that I have on vinyl,” he says. “And this morning, I was listening to some South American Sixties psych music.”

When it comes to current music, Auerbach’s passion for contemporary hip-hop is balanced by a fondness for less mainstream fare, like moody Canadian act Timber Timbre and U.K. retro-pop unit Metronomy. “I love their English Riviera album,” the guitarist raves. “There’s some really amazing plectrum bass playing on it. I just love the record’s experimentation and sonic limitlessness.”

In one way or another, these variegated influences find their way into the Black Keys’ own music. Their new album, Turn Blue, takes them further along the ambitious sonic trajectory they’ve been following ever since Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney teamed up with über producer Brian Burton, a.k.a. Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley, Beck, Gorillaz, Norah Jones) for the Keys’ 2008 album, Attack & Release. Like all the Black Keys’ records, Turn Blue’s sound is firmly based in the garage-rock interplay between Auerbach’s bluesy squawk-box aggression and Carney’s flailing frenzy. But over this foundation, the Keys have woven a mesmerizing web of ghostly synths and eerie sonic textures. Auerbach plays bass as well as guitar on the album, and he splits keyboard duties with Danger Mouse.

“Anybody can jump on any instrument at any time,” Auerbach says. “There are really no rules when we’re in the studio.”

With its stately tempo, lazily strummed acoustic guitar and spectral synth line, the album’s opening track, “Weight of Love,” invites comparison with the classic-rock majesty of Pink Floyd. “We love that kind of music,” Auerbach admits, “so it’s in us to be capable of doing that. It’s just something that we’ve never tried to go for before. But we had the time and that little spark of creativity to start us in that direction, and on a couple of songs we saw it through.”

“Weight of Love” also is the most guitar-solo-intensive Black Keys track to date. Auerbach’s psychedelicized midsong magic carpet ride is followed up by a soaring outro excursion to the creative dark side that lurks somewhere underneath his regular-guy, flannel-and-denim Midwestern exterior.

“That was all spur of the moment,” he says. “We’d just built that song up, and the end has this massive crescendo where everybody’s really going for it. It really called for a guitar solo, and I just improvised something. Then I put a harmony guitar on top of it. Honestly, it was 20 minutes and done, not something I really labored on very long. Everything on this record happened very naturally.”

Auerbach seems to have little or no use for premeditation. He appears to be proud of the fact that he and Carney were completely unprepared when they entered the studio to make True Blue, the heavily anticipated follow-up to 2011’s strong-selling, Grammy-winning and critically lauded El Camino.

“We didn’t have any songs written,” he says. “We had no sense of what we were gonna do. We just went in blind. The blind leading the blind. We didn’t have any real goal other than to make an album. So we wrote songs every day. We just improvised. I guess the goal was to try to have a song done every day, maybe every two days at the most. And we did.”

Sessions for Turn Blue began at a studio in Benton Harbor, Michigan, called the Key Club, where Auerbach and Carney worked on their own. Danger Mouse joined them for subsequent sessions at Sunset Sound in L.A. and Auerbach’s own Easy Eye studio in Nashville. Auerbach also seems to take pride in the fact that he came up with the album’s infectious lead single, “Fever,” during the early sessions in Michigan, without assistance from Danger Mouse, who has served as the band’s co-writer as well as producer on the past few albums.

“Fever” exemplifies Auerbach’s formidable strength as a tunesmith—he can write catchy pop hooks that go straight to your head like a sugar rush. The song’s main synth line wouldn’t be out of place in an early Eighties hit by OMD or Depeche Mode. “Fever” is also one of many seriously bass-driven songs on Turn Blue. Throughout the album sessions, Auerbach played a Fender Mustang bass guitar through “a good, old-time transformer D.I.,” he notes, usually employing a pick. “I really like palm-muted pick bass,” he says. “Especially if you’ve got flatwound strings. It’s just classic—a really nice bass sound that kind of sits well in a mix and is really propulsive.”

This is an excerpt from the September 2014 issue of Guitar World. For the rest of this story, plus features on Dan Auerbach's off-beat guitars, Eric Clapton and his new J.J. Cale tribute album, Judas Priest, 17 Amazing practice amps, columns, tabs and reviews of new gear from Epiphone, ESP Guitars, Visual Sound, Blackstar, G&L Guitars, Ibanez and more, check out the September 2014 issue at the Guitar World Online Store.

The Black Keys — those two blues- and garage-loving Ohioans best known for recording raw, stripped-down, "mid-fi" albums — picked up four Grammy awards last night.

The duo, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, earned Best Rock Album for El Camino (released in December 2011), plus Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance for "Lonely Boy." Auerbach scored a bonus Grammy as Non-Classical Producer for the Black Keys' El Camino, plus his work on Dr. John's Locked Down album and two discs by Hacienda.

Album of the Year went to Mumford & Sons for Babel. Record of the Year went to Gotye (featuring Kimbra) for "Somebody That I Used To Know," while Song of the Year went to Fun. for "We Are Young."

In the world of hard rock and metal, Halestorm beat out heavyweights Anthrax, Lamb of God, Marilyn Manson, Iron Maiden and Megadeth to win Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance for "Love Bites (So Do I)."

It was a disappointing night for Jack White, who was nominated for Album of the Year, Rock Album of the Year (both for Blunderbuss) and Best Rock Song ("Freedom at 21") but lost in every category. His Third Man Records label mates, Alabama Shakes, also lost in three categories, including Best New Artist and Best Rock Performance.

Performance-wise, White performed with both his all-female and all-male bands. Black Keys tore through "Lonely Boy" with Dr. John; a tribute to the late Levon Helm of the Band featured Zac Brown, Elton John, Mavis Staples and Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, who performed "The Weight." Bruno Mars kicked off a Bob Marley tribute with his own song, "Locked Out of Heaven," before introducing Sting, who led the band into "Walking on the Moon." Rihanna, Ziggy Marley and Damian Marley finally joined them for Bob Marley's "Could You Be Loved."

For the show's finale, Tom Morello, LL Cool J and Chuck D performed "Whaddup."

Other guitar-centric or noteworthy Grammy wins:

• Best Jazz Instrumental Album: Unity Band, Pat Metheny
• Best Americana Album: Slipstream, Bonnie Raitt
• Best Blues Album: Locked Down, Dr. John (produced by Dan Auerbach)
• Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album: Kisses On The Bottom, Paul McCartney (featuring Eric Clapton)
• Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
• Best Bluegrass Album: Nobody Knows You, Steep Canyon Rangers
• Best Reggae Album: Rebirth, Jimmy Cliff (featuring a cover of the Clash's "Guns of Brixton")
• Best World Music Album: The Living Room Sessions Part 1, Ravi Shankar
• Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media: Midnight In Paris (featuring the stellar guitar work of Stephane Wrembel)
• Best Historical Album: The Smile Sessions (Deluxe Box Set), The Beach Boys
• Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical: Dan Auerbach (of the Black Keys)

For a complete list of winners and losers, visit the official Grammy awards website at grammy.com.

Photo: grammy.com/photos

The Black Keys, the power-packed Akron duo who released Brothers in 2010 and followed it soon after with 2011's El Camino, have already started sessions for their next album.

"We spent a week in the studio," guitarist Dan Auerbach told Rolling Stone, referring to a Nashville session that took place in July. He added that it wasn't "the most focused studio session," but he and drummer Patrick Carney did "get some ideas down and started the ball rolling."

The duo plan to regroup in earnest in early 2013 more more sessions. "We might not finish it until March since we have to tour so much, but we'll see," Carney told Rolling Stone earlier this summer.

"We never know what's going to happen," Auerbach added. "We don't talk about it. We don't plan it. We start recording, and then all of a sudden it starts to take shape and we have an idea." Auerbach adds that each Black Keys album, to him, represents "a snapshot of a moment in time. We like to let them be like that," he says. "Sort of a spontaneous thing."

Auerbach added that a producer hasn't been chosen yet — and they might even produce the next album themselves.

Auerbach and ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons shared the cover of the October 2012 issue of Guitar World,which is available now at the Guitar World Online Store. Check out an excerpt from that issue right here.

The all-new October 2012 issue of Guitar World magazine is available now at the Guitar World Online Store.

This month, ZZ Top's blues-rock godfather, Billy Gibbons, and the Black Keys' garage-rock scion, Dan Auerbach, sit down for a talk about the long history of the blues and its enduring power in the 21st century. They also discuss their love of talking-blues legend Lightnin' Hopkins (Check out this month's In Deep video: John Lee Hooker and Lightnin' Hopkins, below).

And speaking of the blues, read about the wild blues life of Buddy Guy in an excerpt from his new autobiography, When I Left Home, in which he tells how his reputation as a guitar slinger spread like wildfire through the Windy City.

Also, guitarist Mark Tremonti of Creed and Alter Bridge follows his thrash-metal muse and comes into his own with All I Was, the debut album from his self-titled solo project.

Poison frontman Brett Michaels teams up with Ace Frehley, Phil Collen, Michael Anthony and other musical mates for Get Your Rock On, his latest album, featuring new recordings of songs by Poison, Lynyrd Skynyrd and others.

Plus, plenty of GEAR!

• Rocktron Boutique Series stomp boxes
• Orange Signature #4 Jim Root Terror amp
• Framus Panthera Studio Supreme
• EQ What's Hot and Cool
• Samick JTR Marie MR10 electric guitar
• Eminence EJ1250 Eric Johnson Signature 12-inch speakers
• Cort MR710-F acoustic-electric
• Olympus LS-100 Linear PCM Recorder

And four SONGS with Guitar and Bass TABS!

•Maroon 5, "Moves Like Jagger"
•ZZ Top, "Waitin' for the Bus"
•Buddy Guy, "Damn Right, I've Got the Blues"
•Pierce the Veil, "Caraphernelia"

The new issue is available now at the Guitar World Online Store.

The Black Keys have just premiered the fourth music video from their latest studio album, El Camino. Check out the video for "Little Black Submarines" below.

A departure from the more videos the band has produced as of late, the "Little Black Submarines" clip features mainly live performance footage from an intimate gig at Nashville dive Springwater Supper Club.

And just a reminder that the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach is featured on the cover of the latest issue of Guitar World alongside the legendary Billy Gibbons. You can read an excerpt from the cover story here, and pick it up in our online store here.

The original music video for "Gold on the Ceiling" by The Black Keys has been available on the band's YouTube channel for about three months.

But for some reason, the guys -- Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney -- just posted a second version of the video. The new one, which is directed by Harmony Korine, is a bit more wobbly and bizarre. It features Auerbach and Carney -- along with gigantic ersatz versions of themselves -- romping around in weird baby suits, toting fire extinguishers, hugging ... not that there's anything wrong with that!

Check it out below.

"Gold on the Ceiling" is from the band's 2011 album, El Camino.

Today, NPR debuted the new music video for "Revolution" from Dr. John's new album, Locked Down, which was produced by Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach, who also plays on the album.

The album, which was released April 3 via Nonesuch, earned the highest-charting debut of Dr. John's 50-plus-year career.

"I wanted to surround (Dr. John) with younger guys. To test him a bit," Auerbach told NPR. "I also wanted him to talk from the Mac Rebennack [Dr. John's real name] perspective, lyrically. I didn't want him to talk from the Dr. John perspective."

The video, which was directed by Reid Long, offers a behind-the-scenes look at Dr. John's recent three weekend residency at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), where he performed with guests including Blind Boys of Alabama, Ivan Neville, Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Irma Thomas.

The residency also included a live performance of Locked Down with Auerbach, to which The New York Times responded: "Physical and spiritual, earthly and supernatural, a memento mori and a promise of transcendence - all were aspects of Dr. John’s music for the night."

Check out the video below; below that, you'll find Dr. John's current tour dates.

For more on Dr. John, check out his Facebook page.

Dr. John's 2012 Tour Dates:

• June 1 - Alexandria, VA - The Birchmere
• June 2 - Augusta, NJ - Sussex County Fairground
• June 5 - Portland, ME - The Asylum
• June 6 - Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club
• June 7 - Tarrytown, NY - Tarrytown Music Hall
• June 9 - Charlotte, NC - Uptown Amphitheatre (w/ Gov't Mule)
• June 10 - Highland Park, IL - Ravinia Pavilion (w/ Iron & Wine)
• June 12 - Myrtle Beach, SC - House of Blues (w/ Gov't Mule)
• June 13 - Raleigh, NC - Raleigh Amphitheater (w/ Gov't Mule)
• June 14 - Louisville, KY - Iroquois Amphitheater (w/ Gov't Mule)
• June 29 - Paddock Wood, UK - Hop Farm Festival
• June 30 - Samois-sur-Seine, France - Django Reinhardt Festival
• July 2 - Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso
• July 4 - Paris, France - La Cigale
• July 5 - Stasbourg, France - Strasbourg Jazz Festivl
• July 6 - Lugano, Switzerland - Lugano Estival Jazz
• July 9 - Montreux, Switzerland - Montreux Jazz Festival
• July 10 - Nice, France - Nice Jazz Festival
• July 13 - Stuttgart, Germany - Jazz Open Stuttgart
• July 15 - Cahors, France - Cahors Blues Festival
• July 18 - London, UK - Under the Bridge
• July 19 - London, UK - Under the Bridge
• July 22 - Gateshead, UK - The Sage Gateshead
• August 3 - Newport, RI - Newport Jazz Festival

Back in January, The Black Keys made tabloid-style headlines everywhere after drummer Patrick Carney singled out Nickelback in a Rolling Stone interview as the cause of the death of rock and roll.

"Rock & roll is dying because people became OK with Nickelback being the biggest band in the world," he said. “So they became OK with the idea that the biggest rock band in the world is always going to be shit – therefore you should never try to be the biggest rock band in the world. Fuck that! Rock & roll is the music I feel the most passionately about, and I don’t like to see it fucking ruined and spoon-fed down our throats in this watered-down, post-grunge crap, horrendous shit. When people start lumping us into that kind of shit, it’s like, ‘Fuck you,’ honestly."

Now, during an interview with MTV News Canada, Carney seemed almost apologetic toward Nickelback.

"I didn't mean to single them out," Carney said during the on-camera interview. "It just came out."

He added: "There's much worse bands than Nickelback. Maybe."

You can watch the full interview below.

His Nashville studio is full of sweet vintage gear, but Dan Auerbach isn't just a retro-obsessed guitar hound. The Black Keys guitarist gets his motor running for an in-depth discussion about his group's latest album, El Camino.

“I’m not too picky about guitars,” says Dan Auerbach, who’s known for manhandling a motley assortment of electric instruments with brand names like Teisco Del Ray, Harmony, Supro, Silvertone and National onstage with the Black Keys.

“I love to collect them, mostly oddballs, but I’m not married to any brand or model. Whatever guitar has the best character for the song is the one I want to use, because if you’ve got a style, you’re going to sound like yourself no matter what guitar you play.”

Thus, while it might seem out of character for Auerbach to use a 1953 Les Paul as his go-to six-string for the Black Keys’ new El Camino, the album still sounds like classic Keys. It’s driving, melodic, brash and bristling with unbridled rock and roll energy.

Actually, it’s even more “classic” than usual, weaving in a vocabulary of rock filigrees from the Fifties and Sixties -- from handclaps and vocal harmonies to swirling Leslie speakers, big melodies and even bigger hooks. The result is a garagepop masterpiece that’s likely to ratchet Auerbach and his drumming compadre Patrick Carney a few steps closer to rock’s Olympus.

However, Auerbach is picky -- and proud and protective -- about his new Easy Eye Studio in the band’s recently adopted hometown, Nashville, Tennessee. It’s where he and Carney produced El Camino with Brian Burton, the musical auteur who goes by the name Danger Mouse. Burton helmed the Black Keys’ 2008 sonic breakthrough, Attack & Release, and the single “Tighten Up” on 2010’s commercial door buster Brothers.

“We don’t know any other producer we’d like to work with,” Auerbach explains, sitting on a worn brown leatherette sofa in Easy Eye, a comfortable, big black box just outside of downtown. Immediately to his right is a towering Moog modular synthesizer topped with a photo of a dapper, pomaded Muddy Waters from his days as a Chess Records artist. And within the surrounding 20 feet are many of the keys to his sonic kingdom: a recording console from the Sixties, a rack of well-worn guitars, amps with tattered grills, a Vako Orchestron (an early sample player that played back sound recorded on optical discs), a vintage Scully eight-track tape machine ... and the list goes on.It’s gear that Auerbach has been collecting since before the Black Keys recorded their 2002 debut, The Big Come Up, in Carney’s basement back in Akron, Ohio, under the influence of dirty three-chord rock and the haunting psychedelic echoes of North Mississippi trance bluesmen Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside, artists who still remain the cornerstones of the Black Keys’ music.“Having a place that’s tailor-made for you is a real luxury,” Auerbach says. “Everything here works. These keyboards ... all you need to do is pull up a fader on the console to start recording. You see a lot of studio websites and think they’ve got cool shit. Then when you show up, half of it’s not working. If it doesn’t work in my studio, it doesn’t stay on the floor.”Despite his retro passions, Auerbach also believes in evolution. El Camino was recorded on Easy Eye’s Pro Tools rig, and there’s a pitch-shifted yelping in its first single, the riffpumped “Lonely Boy.” So that’s where our conversation begins.GUITAR WORLD: Listening to the Black Keys’ seven albums in sequence, it’s striking to see your evolution from chord cruncher to sonic explorer. Where did it all begin?I started playing bluegrass with my family, so there were the G, C and D chords. I was playing a Martin acoustic because that’s what Carter Stanley of the Stanley Brothers played. Then I got into the really raw blues of Hound Dog Taylor and started on electric guitar. My mom bought me a white Strat, but that wasn’t what I wanted, so I went to a guitar store in Cleveland and -- the guy told me it was a really good deal -- made an even swap for a blue Teisco Del Ray. I loved that guitar and used it a bunch. I got into open D tuning, like Hound Dog. Since then I’ve gotten into other people’s styles, but I’ve never tried to master them.Despite your bluegrass roots, you seem more interested in sound and texture than notes.Definitely. That’s something I got from Junior Kimbrough. Junior changed everything for me. When I heard his album All Night Long, I dropped out of college and started playing seriously. His shit is weird North Mississippi dance music. He came up with his own style, influenced by local folks. He had the bravery to try something different.Speaking of something different, the wideopen sound of Attack & Release seemed to radically expand your universe as a guitarist. Did working with Brian Burton and Marc Ribot help open you up?I was inspired by a lot of Turkish, Japanese and South American psychedelic records at the time. They turn the guitar into a canvas that you can put sounds on top of, instead of using it as a lead instrument. Now I try to incorporate that into whatever I’m doing. Patrick and I learned from Brian, but he learned from us too. We brought a lot of the same music -- like hip-hop, psychedelia and Ennio Morricone -- to the sessions for inspiration. We have fun when we work together, and we are competitive, so we’re always trying to one-up each other with cool music that we’re into and wild ideas in the studio. And Marc is one of my all-time favorites. The first thing Ribot started doing when he began recording guitar solos was scraping the strings with his car keys. He was almost frothing at the mouth sitting in his chair playing his guitar overdubs. I first heard him on his Los Cubanos Postizos album. [Ribot’s homage to Cuban composer Arsenio Rodriguez, who played the tres, a Cuban guitar.] I’ve never tried to play along to a Jimi Hendrix or Cream record. That was the first album I played along to. [He sings a Latin-sounding guitar phrase.] That shit is so amazing. Then I got one of Rodriguez’s albums and got into the tres, which sounds like Big Joe Williams’ homemade nine-string guitar. I love that weird shit.After expanding the Black Keys’ sound so much on Attack & Release and Brothers, why go back to the roots of classic American pop-rock for El Camino?Patrick and Brian and I were listening a lot to the Clash, Jonathan Richman, the Cars and the Johnny Burnette trio -- music from different decades that was all influenced by Fifties rock and roll. We got inspired by it and went into the studio with absolutely nothing. We hadn’t rehearsed; there were no demos and no lyrics except for “Little Black Submarines,” which Brian and I had written. We’d never done it like this before. We also wanted to make an album that would translate to the stage. Brothers was very difficult to play live because it had a lot of open spaces. We added a bass player and keyboard player for touring, which I love, because otherwise the songs felt compromised, which bummed me out. When we went into the studio for Brothers I’d written the lyrics, the chord changes and all the verses and choruses. We just had to work on grooves so the music fit the lyrics. This time all the music was done first. When I recorded my solo album, Keep It Hid, in 2008 I’d gotten more interested in songwriting, inspired by reading Charles Bukowski and connecting with unfancy, interesting language. But El Camino is focused on melody and groove. A lot of the lyrics are absolute throwaways, but you want to sing along because the melody is so strong. Next time I’ll try to make the lyrics as memorable as the melodies. The bottom line is that, for us, the groove has always been king. And I have to keep my eyes and ears open because Patrick fluctuates in tempo a lot. That’s how we play live, and you can hear it on the records. Pat never plays a normal drumbeat, which is why he’s so awesome.There’s a pitch shifter on “Lonely Boy,” a talk box on “Money Maker” and vibrato and wahwah effects elsewhere. How important are stomp boxes to you?My core tone just comes from my amps. For El Camino, I used a Magnatone and an Ampeg V-92 with a JBL D-130 speaker. I blew the speaker, and in three or four songs you can hear it rattle, like at the beginning of “Lonely Boy.” I use fuzz pedals, but I’ve never used a distortion or overdrive pedal -- just boost pedals. The Shin-ei Companion Fuzz and the Marshall Supa Fuzz are my favorites. Before the sessions, Dunlop sent me a box full of effects, including a talk box. I was listening to Pete Drake a bunch. He was a pedal steel player from Nashville who invented the talk box. He has this song called “Forever” that’s amazing. So Pat and I tried to set it up and it wouldn’t work. “How does this work? How do you plug this in?” Then our engineer said, “It goes like this, dumbasses,” and just plugged it in, and we started playing with it, laughing the whole time. I cut the solo in two takes, and then I put it in a box and haven’t seen it since. I like pedals, but they have to be easy. I want instant gratification.Did you use any workhorse guitars for El Camino?I got a ’53 Les Paul while I was on tour. It looks like it was attacked by a shark. I used that a bunch, plus a Danelectro and an early Harmony Stratotone. I had the Stratotone before the Black Keys, and I’ve used it on every one of our albums. When Ribot walked into the studio for Attack & Release, he brought a Tele and one of those.How has your growth as a singer -- even to the point of having a beautiful falsetto on “Stop Stop” -- brought depth to the Black Keys’ sound?My voice is like my guitar playing. I listen to records, like Curtis Mayfield’s and Marvin Gaye’s, and get inspired. I’ve always sung falsetto and sang the high harmonies playing bluegrass with my family. But I never thought to do it as a lead vocal on a Black Keys album until Brothers, and I loved it. You have to build your confidence to sing lead in a high register. Put that kind of vocal up against really fuzzy guitars and you get a really interesting contrast. There’s always got to be contrast. If the guitar is fuzzy, the bass is going to be clean; if the bass is fuzzy, the guitar is going to be clean. I like to focus on that kind of stuff. That comes from owning a studio and being able to mess around while making records. You start to understand how elements are going to work in a mix.There’s a lot of sweet gear in Easy Eye, from analog synths to vintage board modules to stacks of amps and guitars covering nearly every inch of the place. Did you have all of this in your home studio in Akron?All of this stuff was at my house. [laughs] It’s not healthy to have your workplace be your home. I am obsessive and would never leave. If I leave here, I’m gone. Is Easy Eye a commercial enterprise?Well, I have other bands that I know and like and can trust with all my stuff. Most of it’s irreplaceable if it’s broken, so I can’t just let anybody in. I have a couple engineers I work with now, so if a band I like wants to use the studio I can let them come do that. I just produced a Dr. John album. I assembled the band, and we were here 10 days. We cut everything live. It was so fucking cool. I did albums here with the Growlers and the Reigning Sound. I just finished working with Hacienda and mixed a record for a guy from Cincinnati named Brian Olive. We’ve been doing some super-cool stuff. You get to be around these people and feed off their energy. I’ve made a lot of records with different people, and every time I’ve learned something, and I bring it to the table when we make a Black Keys record.Photo: Joseph Anthony Baker