The Black Keys survived the ultimate rock jinx. Very few rock bands rediscover the chemistry that defined them when members of the group start to make solo albums. But after Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney went off to record with their own groups, they went on to make the best record of their career, Brothers. The album – with its memorable hit single, the Danger Mouse-produced “Tighten Up” – is also their best selling disc to date, debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart behind the soundtrack to the hit television show Glee and the reissue of The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street.

Auerbach doesn’t buy the solo jinx, perhaps in part because he never felt like he really went off on his own. “I know what you’re talking about, but we’re not like that,” he says as the band prepares for a five-month tour of the United States and Europe. “We had a big chunk of time off, so I just decided to do something with it. I’m always writing or recording something. [My solo record] Keep It Hid was fun because I was making it in my home studio. My studio was new, so there was a great feeling of being at home while I was making it. There’s no difference between writing songs for The Black Keys or a solo record – it can be either. A lot of songs on both records were written around the same time.”

Keep It Hid was released in February 2009 with Auerbach playing a tour in support of it with his own band. Carney formed his own group, Drummer, which put out its album, Feel Good Together, in September. If the side projects did not push the group apart, then they represented a turning point for The Black Keys. The group that had never left its Ohio base to make a record took on two extremely demanding projects in unfamiliar territory: during a whirlwind stretch over the summer, the duo went to Brooklyn to collaborate on a record with hip-hop MCs, called BlakRoc, then traveled to Muscle Shoals, Ala., to cut most of the tracks for Brothers.

“It was a heavy point,” says Carney. “[Dan and I] had been apart. We did a couple of shows last year but we really didn’t see each other much until we started working on the BlakRoc record.” The project came at a time when Carney was in the midst of an emotional divorce and planning his move from his hometown of Akron, Ohio to New York.
“I probably should have been more cautious with my friends [in Drummer],” says Carney. “They knew going into it that I was in a band already and The Black Keys would obviously be a priority. We were supposed to do a West Coast tour and I had to put that on hold because the BlakRoc record happened. I had a kind of falling out with the lead singer and the band basically just broke up. We’re all on pretty good terms now, though.”

BlakRoc appeared to be a dramatically different direction for The Black Keys, but it was a record the duo had been preparing to make since they were teenagers. Auerbach has been listening to hip-hop since he was a kid, even though he played blues guitar with a slide. His first music purchase was a cassette single of The Geto Boys “Mind Playing Tricks On Me.” Carney’s first buy, he ruefully admits, was Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby.”

Truth to be told, the song offers a keen insight into The Black Keys approach to music making. It is less about Vanilla Ice than it is about the way a riff from the David Bowie/Queen collaboration “Under Pressure” is looped to create the infectious backing rhythm. This approach to using discrete musical ideas as a foundation for new songs is central to the way most hip-hop recordings are created and it’s also a way that The Black Keys create music. Their songs repeatedly remind listeners of a catalog of influences but are so cleverly arranged and embellished with original melodic content that they never sound like covers.

“If there’s any goal, it’s to never sound retro,” says Auerbach. “We appreciate new music. We love the sound of hip-hop records.”

The band got its chance to demonstrate that love when rap impresario Damon Dash invited The Black Keys to record with rapper Jim Jones, an idea that mushroomed into the band making BlakRoc with an all-star cast of rappers including Mos Def, Raekwon, Q-Tip and RZA [Ed note: We did a cover story on the project for our December/January issue. Find it at www.relix.com/blakroc. ]

“I expected it would be somewhat of a challenge,” says Carney, who produced all of the band’s early records. “Going into it, I could see more risks than anything else. The idea of a rock band trying to go in and make a hip-hop record is kind of daunting. But I thought that Dan and I were up to the challenge. It was the first time we’d recorded in two years. We did [ BlakRoc ] right before Brothers and the way we approached it, focusing on bass lines and grooves, not only helped us focus, but [also] working in the studio for 11 days before we made our own record cleared our heads of all preconceived ideas that we had about our next record. It was easier to use ideas off the top of our heads.”

The bass and drum tracks became the lifeline of BlakRoc, with guitar parts mostly augmenting the rhythm or being used as fills.

“We would record the backing tracks in the morning and then in the afternoon, the hip-hop artists would come in and put down lyrics they’d composed right on the spot,” Auerbach marvels. “It was inspiring to witness. It was like no hip-hop record ever made.”

After BlakRoc was completed, the band immediately started work on Brothers.

“We finished BlakRoc August 12, packed up our gear and I drove it all down to Alabama,” says Carney. Auerbach flew down and the two started recording for Brothers August 15.

Bonnaroo 2010- photo by C. Taylor Crothers

Carney had misgivings about recording in Muscle Shoals, but deferred to his partner’s instincts. “Dan wanted to go to a classic studio,” Carney explains. “I wasn’t as keen [on the idea] as I thought it would be introducing more problems than necessary. We had to bring all our gear into another recording studio. I would have preferred a place that was in a more urban environment. Our initial plan was to go to Memphis but that fell through.”

Auerbach and Carney had already recorded demos for the project, but they created much of the Muscle Shoals material on Brothers in the studio with producer Mark Neill who had worked with Auerbach on Keep It Hid. “I didn’t have all of the lyrics written,” explains Auerbach.

The spirit of the BlakRoc sessions carried over to Brothers, which features tricky beats and powerful bass lines along with the sturm und drang of the band’s trademark guitar and drums.

“We went into it cold,” says Carney. “We didn’t really discuss anything until we showed up in the studio. The first day we started out with drums and guitar, then we decided to do bass and drums first, the way we did on BlakRoc.”

After Carney and Auerbach laid down all of the backing tracks, Neill remarked that the record sounded like a vintage ‘60s soul session. Auerbach proceeded to complete the songwriting in the studio while delivering perhaps his best vocal performance to date. His singing is soulful and seemingly effortless, yet his phrasing is beautifully contoured to the songs’ melodies. It’s surprising to hear that he did not conceptualize any aspect of his performance before he went into the studio.

“I almost never do more than one take of a vocal,” he points out.

Even the gorgeous cover of Jerry Butler’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” wasn’t premeditated.

“That was the result of us going into the studio one day and deciding to do a Jerry Butler song,” says Auerbach. “We just said, OK let’s do ‘Never Gonna Give You Up.’ That’s the one track where I did have to sing the vocal twice.”

Auerbach suggests that his vocals could have been affected by the BlakRoc experience. " Blakroc was so much fun, we carried it over to the Brothers recording," he says. “It really was enlightening. It was fun to watch the rappers get into character. It helped me loosen up when I went in to sing on Brothers .”

After recording for 10 days in Muscle Shoals, the band returned to Akron. A few days later, Carney moved to New York. “I was going through hell,” he admits of his divorce at the time. Strangely, even though Carney writes none of the lyrics for The Black Keys, Auerbach seems to be commenting on his bandmate’s situation in songs like “Next Girl” and “I’m Not the One.” Carney suggests that Auerbach was so attuned to his feelings that some of the songs reflect his angst at the time. “Breaking up is a universal theme,” he says.

Though they were pleased with the results, Auerbach and Carney realized that the project was still incomplete. “When we went to Muscle Shoals, we thought we’d do the whole record there,” says Auerbach, “but when we got home, we realized it wasn’t done. We realized some of the demos we’d made were just as good if not better. So we went back in and tidied them up.”

The band wanted a strong track to release as the album’s first single. They contacted Danger Mouse, who produced their 2008 album, Attack & Release. The band went into The Bunker, Danger Mouse’s Brooklyn studio, to cut “Tighten Up” though it was initially deemed the wrong fit for Brothers.

“After we first recorded it, we talked about it and decided we weren’t gonna put it on the record,” says Carney. “So we sent it to Tchad Blake (who worked on BlakRoc ) to mix and just kind of forgot about it.” The Keys continued to work on the record, finishing three more songs in January, though were still searching for a single. “We wrote a song that was very close to ‘Tighten Up’ – two of the verses were almost exactly the same – and that was going to be on the record,” reveals Carney. “After we finished, I played everything for a friend of mine who told me we were crazy for not putting ‘Tighten Up’ on the album. So I called Dan and we talked about it and decided we were gonna put it on there.”

The last track on the album to be recorded was the beautifully broken ballad “These Days” at Mark Neill’s studio in San Diego. The final version of Brothers was assembled from recordings in different studios across the country. Carney credits Blake’s mix for giving the record its unified sound.

“The record wouldn’t be the same without Tchad,” says Carney. “Of all the people who had anything to do with the record outside of Dan and I, Tchad was the most important contributor. His mix is tying together a year’s worth of recordings in four different locations. Four different types of microphones, four different recordings, four different rooms – he made it all sound like one statement.”

Once Brothers was finished, Carney and Auerbach realized that they needed to add new band members to play the songs live. “When we went in to make Brothers, the idea was to make the record we wanted to make without thinking about who we were as a band or what we’re supposed to sound like,” says Carney. “Once the record was made, we had to think about how we would play the songs live. We could do the new songs without the bass, but they wouldn’t sound like the songs on the record.”

The duo recruited bassist Nick Movshon and keyboardist Leon Michels to augment the live shows. “They’re playing on about eight or nine of the 22 songs that we do,” says Carney. “It’s definitely different, but if we didn’t [add players] we wouldn’t be able to play our new songs live.”

Even with the augmented lineup, The Black Keys have no trouble summoning up the unique spirit of their sound, the chemistry that has been there right from the beginning. “I have a recording of the first concert we ever played,” says Carney. “It was sloppy, but even then we knew there was something special there – you can still hear it.”