The Black Keys have given their first interview since -- as the band's Patrick Carney put it in a since-deleted tweet -- they "got fucked." As a refresher: Last year, Carney and bandmate Dan Auerbach scrapped an entire arena tour due to low ticket sales and subsequently parted ways with their manager, Irving Azoff. The duo's first show back was a peculiar "America Loves Crypto" concert in their Akron hometown. More recently, the musician Yola slammed Auerbach, her former producer and label head, for his “cookie-cutter bullshit.” None of that is good from a PR standpoint, especially now that they also have a rescheduled tour and a new album on the way.
The Black Keys opened up about it all in a new interview with Rolling Stone, in which they confirmed that their next studio LP No Rain, No Flowers is set to arrive sometime later this year. They talked about firing Azoff, who had claimed the split was "an amicable parting." Carney clarified, "I mean, we fired their ass," adding:
Shit happens. We spent a lot of time making Ohio Players and turned it in in October 2023 and had all this time to plan how we were going to tour. Things got off to this weird start where I was waiting for these European dates to pop up because our plan was to go to Europe first. We ended up getting nine shows sent to us [on] a three-week tour. There’s absolutely no way to make money [from] that.
We kept having to move shit around for a Manchester show because there was a venue that our management company co-owned and wanted us to play, and it wasn’t ready. After going to Europe 30 times in our career for tours, this was the most poorly orchestrated tour we had been on. The shows were incredible, but [it] just became the first sign that maybe there was some poor organization happening.
In regards to the canceled arena tour, the Black Keys said they were initially told that their underselling dates would be rebooked for smaller rooms. "But the plan wasn’t there because there were no holds on rooms," Carney added. "It was bullshit. I don’t want to use the term 'lie' because I don’t want to get fucking sued, but what was presented didn’t exist." When asked if the Black Keys thought they'd overestimated demand, Carney went on:
I don’t know, but all I know is this: After the tour was canned, I went through my email, and I had one email from Ticketmaster about the tour on the day it was announced and nothing else in my inbox for six weeks. When I finally went through the numbers after the tour was canceled, we had sold nearly $10 million worth of tickets, and we had four months till the first show. We just had to take one on the fucking face.
And about that "America Loves Crypto" show, Carney explained that they were told the event was "a bipartisan thing," although it was billed as a way to “rally the 5 million crypto owners that might just decide the 2024 election." He said:
It was very simple: We had lost all of our income for the year. We had retainers for people that we were working with. We got offered a lot of money to play a show, and we saw that the Black Pumas had done the same event and we were like, "Book it." It’s that simple, bro.
When asked if the Black Keys were crypto enthusiasts, Carney responded: "We're Crisco enthusiasts." OK! He also assured readers that he and Auerbach have been very creative and prolific during this time period. They'll release their new song "The Night Before" this Friday. UPDATE: Hear it below.
