Nashville Scene36%
The Black Keys Dive Deeper Into North Mississippi Music 2%
By Daryl Sanders2%
7/29/2026, 3:00:00 AM
Topics: Music, Interviews
BS Summary: This article contains 18 faulty reasoning types, including Overconfidence Bias, Framing Effect, and Optimism Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 5% saturation with 44 hits. Analysis detected 396 faulty-reasoning hits from 887 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 9.2% and a BS Rank of 2% (25,048 of 25,564 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 98.00% of the article peer group.
The Black Keys weren’t planning to make a new record when they went into Easy Eye Sound Studios in March 2025 with the core of musicians who had accompanied them on their chart-topping 2021 album Delta Kream.
Drummer Patrick Carney just wanted to take his partner Dan Auerbach’s mind off a difficult family situation — his father Chuck Auerbach had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
“His dad fell ill in the fall, and it progressed to a terminal illness that was officially diagnosed in February,” Carney recalls in a recent interview with the Scene.
“I could tell it was really hard for him.
I suggested that we call [bassist] Eric Deaton and [guitarist] Kenny Brown, the guys that we made Delta Kream with, back up to Nashville and do some recording.
Just casually in the afternoon, for like four days or something.”
As Carney had hoped, the sessions were cathartic for his bandmate.
“We weren’t making a record, we were just jamming, like, this is for us,” lead vocalist-guitarist Auerbach says in a release.
“Really primal, in a moment when all the nerves were raw, just kinda screaming.
… I think my dad getting sick made me not give a fuck and just wanna scream for a bit.”
During those sessions, which included multi-instrumentalist Jimbo Mathus of Squirrel Nut Zippers fame, the duo recorded 15 songs, eight of which are featured on their latest album Peaches!
Released May 1, Peaches!
is in many ways a sequel to Delta Kream, their 2021 exploration of North Mississippi blues, but it’s a louder, more raucous record.
With the exception of a few vocal and percussion overdubs, everything was recorded live and unrehearsed in one or two takes, with all the musicians in the same room.
It’s probably the rawest record the group has made since their debut album, 2002’s The Big Come Up.
A number of tracks feature a three-guitar attack, with Mathus on rhythm, Brown on slide and Auerbach on lead.
“Delta Kream is more like a trance,” Carney says.
“There’re moments where this kind of sounds like The Stooges.”
As they were for the earlier album, late North Mississippi juke joint legends R.L.
Burnside and Junior Kimbrough are the musical touchstones for this record.
They were the first two artists Auerbach and Carney bonded over when they were becoming friends in 1997.
“When we were like 17, Dan came to my house and was looking through my records,” Carney recalls.
“I had just gone to a record store and bought the R.L.
Burnside ‘Georgia Woman’ 45.
He saw that and was like, ‘You know who R.L.
Burnside is?’
… I was the only guy that he knew that had even heard of those guys.
So he said, ‘You need to check out Junior Kimbrough.’
So the first thing we shared in common was Junior and R.L.”
Peaches!
features 10 songs written by other artists.
There’s a song by Burnside and two by Kimbrough’s son David Kimbrough Jr., as well as material by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, Ike Turner and Dr.
Feelgood among others.
“I don’t want this to be perceived as a covers record,” Auerbach says.
“It’s so much of a retelling that to call it a covers record would be to oversimplify it.”
“We never even referenced the originals,” Carney says.
“We just recorded them on the floor live.”
A pair of tracks — “Stop Arguing With Me” and “Fireman Ring the Bell” — feature two drummers: Carney and another of Junior Kimbrough’s sons, Kenny Kimbrough.
Those songs were recorded in 2024 when the same lineup minus Carney was working on an album for Robert Finley.
“I’ve only played double drums a couple times in my life,” Carney says.
“So I just popped over to the studio, and yeah, it was cool.”
Once the tracks were completed with backing vocal overdubs by Andy Gabbard and percussion overdubs by Chris St.
Hilaire and Sam Bacco, Carney and Auerbach began mixing the record.
“The mixing took a long time because the vocals and everything were live in one room,” Carney explains.
“It was slightly difficult to balance all the bleed coming through everything, so it took us like three weeks to mix it.”
The songs chosen for Peaches!
grew out of Auerbach and Carney’s keen interest in obscure recordings.
That shared obsession has led to them occasionally hosting record hangs open to the public.
Over the years, they’ve hosted a couple in Nashville, including one at Skinny Dennis in September.
Carney says they may host another record hang when they bring their Peaches ’N Kream World Tour to Nashville next week for a pair of shows, Aug. 6 and 7 at The Pinnacle.
“It’s essentially like a dance party, but trying to play stuff that’s relatively obscure,” Carney says.
“Songs that sound like they should have been hits, but weren’t hits.
… We pick a spot and pop in.
We try to avoid rock clubs.
I think we’re going to do one in Nashville after The Pinnacle show on [Aug.
7].
Part of the fun is to announce it last-minute, because you want the people to come that are gonna dance.”
Anyone interested in dancing should keep an eye on the duo’s Instagram page for an announcement of the location.
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