I can’t recall when exactly The Black Keys started appearing on my radar, but I guess the connection with the old blues guy Junior Kimbrough probably had something to do with that.
Also appearances of their songs in soundtracks, e.g. Howlin’ For You in Limitless (2011) encouraged me to start taking them more seriously.
Enough to say that I became a kind of a fan, really enjoying their stuff.
However this post is not really about the Keys, but about one of the founding members: Dan Auerbach.
Occasionally his name was mentioned in reviews of other artists albums, either as a guitarist and/or producer, obviously the man was very active on various fronts!
But the real reason for this compilation was a blog post from one of our colleagues who wrote that he ’just makes everyone sound like Dan Auerbach, for better or worse?’
Some of the artists/groups mentioned there I was familiar with (Dr. John, Pretenders, Tony Joe White) but plenty more not (The Velveteers, Cadillac Sky, Jon Muq) and it seemed like a fun project to set up.
The result is a 22 song compilation in which Dan (& at times his record label Easy Eye Sound) was involved and I feel it holds up pretty well, but you should judge for yourself of course.
I know he has worked with others not included here and if there’s enough interest I might do a follow-up!
