The Black Keys received a “solid punch in the face” last year.
The ‘Lonely Boy’ duo – made up of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney – cancelled a planned North American tour last year, for which they blame their management at the time, and faced criticism for their decision to play a show at ‘America Loves Crypto’, an event in Ohio hosted by the Stand With Crypto Alliance political organisation, and they’ve now admitted the experiences made them realise they need to be more involved in making decisions to help them maintain a long career.
Patrick told Rolling Stone magazine: “I look at all this stuff happening for a reason. What happened last year was a solid punch in the face to wake us up to understand how we have to go about doing this if we want to have a long career.
“And taking a little heat for playing a crypto show and all this other shit, there’s a lot more factors that go into this whole thing. Our version of success now is being able to make the music we want to make, having people hear it, and being able to play shows that the fans attend. It’s that simple.”
The duo – who split from their management team after the tour was cancelled – hit out at the way the music industry operates these days.
Discussing the tour cancellation, Patrick said: “The essential thing that we learned here was how many management companies are directly connected to a company that runs every single aspect of promotion in this country.
“This whole industry is so intertwined from ticketing to promotion to the management company. But essentially as artists – and this is the thing that we care the most about – it’s almost impossible to talk about this…. You’re dealing with management companies that co-own festivals with this other company. You’re at the [whims] of these people who have other interests.
“There’s a concentration of connectivity that eliminates competition. Our tour, we had about 10 [arena] shows that were not doing great. They were just in rooms that they shouldn’t have been in.
“So, in any situation like this tour, we might’ve had to take one on the chin and find new venues to play in certain cities, but instead, we were advised to cancel the whole tour.
“We were told … there were other venues being booked, and it was all going to get into more intimate rooms, and it would be great. But that wasn’t accurate. That didn’t exist.”