Q and A: After a tough 2024, The Black Keys bounce back with No Rain, No Flowers

On No Rain, No Flowers, the title track of the Black Keys’ 12th studio record, vocalist Dan Auerbach sings, “There’s evil people in this world. Live long enough, and you will be burned.” For those familiar with the rock duo’s recent history, it may seem as if the song is addressing the much-publicized turmoil that Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney went through in 2024. The band made headlines when it cancelled its stadium tour in support of its Grammy-nominated 2024 album Ohio Players, apparently due to low ticket sales. Auerbach and Carney eventually fired their management — which included Irving Azoff, a powerful figure in the music industry — and their PR team.

“It was a (expletive) nightmare,” is Auerbach’s blunt assessment in a recent interview with Postmedia.

Luckily, the Ohio-born, Nashville-based duo seems to have bounced back with the new record, which they are busy touring in North America and Europe. The album offers The Black Keys’ usual mix of genres, from garage rock to soul, upbeat pop, blues and riff-heavy guitar rock. While the band has collaborated with other artists in the past — including Danger Mouse and Beck — No Rain, No Flowers marked the first time the duo enlisted professional songwriters to help flesh out the material. That includes Rick Nowels, a veteran songsmith who has worked with everyone from Madonna to Adele and Fleetwood Mac. He has also collaborated with singer-songwriter Lana Del Ray on numerous projects, including 2014’s Ultraviolent, which Auerbach co-produced.

Auerbach took some time to chat with Postmedia about the new record.

Q: How has the tour been going? I understand you have been playing different types of venues compared to previous tours.

DA: Some of them. Some of them are the same.

Q:  I saw a recent interview and you and Patrick were talking about playing a prison . . . (they actually played Outlaw Field within the Idaho Botanical Garden, which is adjacent to the Old Idaho Penitentiary site.)

DA: They are going over really good. We were just over in Europe, and people were singing along. It felt great. We just started playing Man on a Mission a little more recently because that was the last one that came out. That one is going over great. That one definitely transitioned into the setlist swimmingly. Sometimes, you never know how a new song is going to go. Sometimes, it’s difficult; sometimes it’s easy. That one was easy right from the jump.

Q: Does the title track of the new album, No Rain, No Flowers, represent a broader theme you were going for?

DA: Not really, but everybody has made it into that. We have to talk about it in every interview. We went through all that bullsh-t with our manager. It was a (expletive) nightmare, but no, it’s not what the record is about. Each song is its own little story, I think, a little vignette. A little character study, maybe. It’s more creative musically.

Q: Early on in your career, you recorded in a basement, presumably just the two of you for the most part. What has the shift been like to collaborate with artists like Danger Mouse, Beck, Noel Gallagher, and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons?

Q: On this record,  you co-wrote songs with veteran songwriter and producer Rick Nowels. How did you settle on who to collaborate with this time around?

DA: We talked about it. The last time we worked with a couple of songwriters who were also performers — Noel Gallagher and Beck — and they are all incredible songwriters, of course. But having lived in Nashville for 16, 17 years, I work with a lot of songwriters and it’s not something that Pat and I had ever done. So we thought it might be fun to give it a shot, and we were thinking about what songwriters we were interested in. Rick Nowels just came to mind early because I loved those songs I got to work on with Lana, and I kept seeing his name on them. I was just curious. I love voicing chords, I love pop songs that are melancholy. We reached out to him. He is a lifelong songwriter. He’s in his 60s, and it’s the only thing he has ever done and he had never been to Nashville. So what were the odds that when we called him and reached out that he was going to be in Nashville in two weeks for the very first time? It was absolute serendipity.

Q:  There is lots of genre-hopping on this record: the vocals on Make You Mine reminded me of the Bee Gees, there’s a lot of great hard-rock riffs going on in Man on a Mission, there’s some upbeat pop songs and the country-folk on Neon Moon. What’s your relationship to genre now and how has it changed? Do you give yourself challenges as a songwriter or is it all organic?

DA: I think with this album, what is probably most reflective are these record hangs that Pat and I have been doing, where, when we travel, we have a bag with us where we carry 120 45s. We are constantly on the lookout for records. We have these little things called record hangs, essentially a little dance party with 45s. We try to play a song that nobody has ever heard before and songs that are unshazamable. These songs are really fantastic and you hear it and say, ‘How did I never know this song?’ We play rockabilly, garage. soul, we play reggae or Jamaican records, we’ll throw on a hip-hop song. I think it’s really reflective in the record we made.

Q: Where do you even find obscure 45s like that these days?

DA: When we’re on tour, we’ll go to record shops. When we’re stuck on the bus, it’s Discogs. Do you know what Discogs is? It’s an incredible resource. And, you know, my credit card bill is . . . (laughs).”

Q: You’ve talked a little bit about this already, but there was a lot of press about what The Black Keys went through in 2024. That included firing your management and cancelling the tour. How did those experiences change how you conduct business?

Q: You’ve worked with Patrick Carney for more than 20 years. That’s a long time to be working as a duo. Has your relationship changed?

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)