The Black Keys Trivia: 28 intriguing facts about the band!

The Black Keys are an American rock band formed in Akron, Ohio, in 2001.

Let’s find out some interesting facts about the band!

1. The group consists of Dan Auerbach (guitar, vocals) and Patrick Carney (drums).

2. The duo began as an independent act, recording music in basements and self-producing their records, before they eventually emerged as one of the most popular garage rock artists during a second wave of the genre’s revival in the 2010s.

3. The band’s raw blues rock sound draws heavily from Auerbach’s blues influences, including Junior Kimbrough, Howlin’ Wolf, and Robert Johnson.

4. Friends since childhood, Auerbach and Carney founded the group after dropping out of college. After signing with indie label Alive, they released their debut album, The Big Come Up (2002), which earned them a new deal with Fat Possum Records.

5. Over the next decade, the Black Keys built an underground fanbase through extensive touring of small clubs, frequent album releases and music festival appearances, and substantial licensing of their songs.

6. Their third album, Rubber Factory (2004), received critical acclaim and boosted the band’s profile, eventually leading to a record deal with major label Nonesuch Records in 2006.

7. After self-producing and recording their first four records in makeshift studios, the duo completed Attack & Release (2008) in a professional studio and hired producer Danger Mouse, a frequent collaborator with the band.

8. The group’s commercial breakthrough came in 2010 with Brothers, which along with its popular single “Tighten Up”, won three Grammy Awards.

9. Their 2011 follow-up El Camino received strong reviews and peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 chart, leading to the first arena concert tour of the band’s career, the El Camino Tour.

10. The album and its hit single “Lonely Boy” won three Grammy Awards. In 2014, they released their eighth album, Turn Blue, their first number-one record in the US, Canada, and Australia.

11. Guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney first met when they were eight or nine years old while living in the same neighborhood of Akron, Ohio.

12. Auerbach is the cousin of guitarist Robert Quine, a “veteran of New York’s avant-rock scene.”

13. Carney is the nephew of saxophonist Ralph Carney, who performed on several Tom Waits albums

14. In the band’s early days, the Black Keys were given only $5 a day for meals. Auerbach preferred Chinese takeout, drummer Patrick Carney revealed on the Travel Channel’s ‘No Reservations.’

15. Being Polish-Jewish, guitarist and singer Dan Auerbach’s great-uncle survived the Holocaust, while his grandmother managed to escape before the Nazis closed the borders.

16. Jack White hates the Black Keys because he thinks they’ve copied his style.

17. The pair are vocal supporters of Barack Obama, playing a benefit show for the President in 2008 in their hometown Akron, Ohio with fellow Akronites Devo and Chrissie Hynde.

18. At the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, the Black Keys won the Breakthrough Video award for ‘Tighten Up,’ but the plaque on it actually said ‘The Black Eyed Peas.’

19. Although they sent the demos to Turner, the band felt like the songs were more for them than the R&B legend. In the end, the tracks were never used for Turner, who died before ever completing the album. Instead the band recorded those songs with production help from Danger Mouse, and ‘Attack & Release’ was born.

20. Even though he’s played on every single Black Keys song, Carney has never sang a word on any of them.

21. They were named by an artist friend of theirs, who called them “black keys” — his nickname for people he thought were a bit off center from the norm.

22. After dropping out of college, both Auerbach and Carney mowed lawns to make money, but they got fired from that because they “didn’t edge a lawn correctly.”

23. Another of Auerbach’s prior jobs included handing out flyers. However, that job lasted only two hours because his boss discovered 600 of the flyers he was supposed to distribute thrown in a sewer.

24. Johnny Depp joined them onstage when they performed ‘Gold on the Ceiling’ at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards.

25. The Black Keys once battled Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig on ‘The Colbert Report’ about whose songs appeared in the most TV commercials.

26. Early in their careers, they were offered a six-digit sum to put their music in a Hellman’s mayonnaise advert, but turned it down because they didn’t want to alienate their fan base.

27. When they won three Grammy’s in 2010 for ‘Brother’ they stayed at the ceremony for a total of 15 minutes.

28. Dan’s mantra for life is “the groove is king.”