Even if this annoys Dan Auerbach at times, it’s hard not to note the many common points he shares with Jack White. These two singer-guitarists first participated greatly in the “return of rock” of the early 2000s, through duets: with drummer Patrick Carney, in the Black Keys, since 2001, for Auerbach, 41 years old; with the thresher Meg White, within the White Stripes, from 1997 to 2011, for the second.
Children of shattered towns in the northern United States – Akron (Ohio), long capital of tires, for the bearded man of the Black Keys; Detroit (Michigan), fallen automobile queen, for one who also guides the footsteps of the Raconteurs and Dead Weather – they each went down to Nashville (Tennessee) to pursue their careers and open a recording studio linked to their own label – Easy Eye Sound for the first, Third Mind Records for the second – allowing them to satisfy their passion for American “roots music” and vintage instruments.
Hypnotic groove
These two rockers having flirted with punk and garage rock have always proclaimed their fascination for the pioneers of the blues. But Dan Auerbach has distinguished himself since his beginnings by his reverence for the hill country blues of northern Mississippi and two of the figures of this long neglected rural microcosm, RL Burnside (1926-2005) and Junior Kimbrough (1930-1998). .
From the first Black Keys album, The Big Come Up (2002), the duo covered a song from each of these two idols. Auerbach and Carney pay homage to their roots again in an album, Delta Kream, vibrating with the hypnotic groove of hill country blues.
Nothing, however, had been planned. After the release of the previous Black Keys opus, Let’s rock, and several months of tour, Dan Auerbach had returned to the capital of Tennessee, in December 2019, to go about his business as a producer. On the program, the recording of one of his old protégés, Louisiana blues-soul singer Robert Finley. “I had asked Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton to participate in these sessions”, remembers Auerbach, reached by phone on May 4, when he was away in Iowa “Buy an old Harley-Davidson”.
“Kenny and Eric are the two musicians I admire the most”, insists the Black Key, recalling that Brown, the guitarist, and Deaton, the bassist, were two of the pillars of the groups accompanying Junior Kimbrough and RL Burnside. “Eric Deaton is a true encyclopedia of hill country blues and Kenny Brown has put his finger on albums like Too Bad Jim [1992], by RL Burnside, or Sad Days, Lonely Nights [1993], by Junior Kimbrough, which to me are classics. “
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