The Black Keys
Pine Knob Music Theatre
Clarkston, Michigan
September 7, 2022
Someone might want to tell The Black Keys that they have already permanently cemented their place in the arena rock scene. The duo of dropouts brought their Dropout Boogie 2022 Tour to the Pine Knob Theater in Clarkston, Michigan on Wednesday night.
The pair of Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach have been making music for over twenty years together. I can vividly recall seeing them play before thirty people at The Majestic Theatre in Detroit in 2003. Now, they have a packed house of almost 9,000 patrons singing along with their full catalog of hits. It’s quite fantastic to see a couple of garage rockers from the Midwest achieve such a level of success, especially after years of grinding it out. Don’t forget that this is the same group that turned down 200,000 British pounds so their music wouldn’t appear in a mayonnaise commercial.
There was an extra satisfaction to Wednesday’s performance as the Key’s setlist was bifurcated into two distinct
parts highlighting their 2021 release of “Delta Kream.” Auerbach and Carney brought out Eric Deaton and Kenny Brown who Auerbach idolized in high school. Dan regaled the crowd with a story saying” I was a 17-year-old kid who watched Kenny Brown play with R.L. Burnside in Cleveland, and Patrick and I wouldn’t be here without this man right here!” It’s high praise for the relatively unknown Brown, yet you can certainly hear his influence on Auerbach and The Keys throughout their music. Auerbach and Brown trade off solos during the five-song set of “Coal Black Mattie”, Junior Kimbrough’s “Stay All Night,” John Fahey’s “Poor Boy Long Ways From Home” and John Lee Hooker’s “Crawlin’ Kingsnake.” They then immediately launch into another cover of Richard Berry’s “Have Love, Will Travel.”
The covers portion of the night is bookended by a slew of hits like “ I Got Mine” and Grammy Award-winning tracks like “Fever” and “Tighten Up” to open the show. Hit’s like “Next Girl” and the featured single off Dropout Boogie “Wild Child” keeps the fans singing and out of their seats the whole night. It seems like Auerbach plays a vintage guitar on every track from a Supro Martinique to a Guild S-200 Thunderbird, with all the incredible fuzz pedals in tow.
Closing out the night were songs “Little Black Submarines” which is such a captivating penultimate song to perform. It perfectly winds the crowd down and demands attention with the acoustic portion, and launches into a full-blown electric blues jam session that melds Carney’s drumming into Auerbach’s guitar.
The Black Keys certainly have earned every bit of success coming their way. This tour showcases the duo in the prime of their career and should not be missed, as these guys will someday be enshrined in their home state…..we are looking at your Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame!
