Recap: The Black Keys at Red Rocks
by Jonathan Cohen
For most bands, the third show of a major tour is a time when they’re still finding their footing on stage, especially when its their first extended run of concerts in three years. Throw in a venue as formidable as Red Rocks Amphitheatre outside Denver, and you have the makings of an up-and-down night of live performance. But on July 13, these challenges were quickly overcome by The Black Keys during a 21-song set that hit all the high points of the Akron, Ohio-reared rock duo’s two-decade career.
The group’s 2022 tour ostensibly comes in support of its new album, “Dropout Boogie,” but on this night, only two songs were played from it. Instead, vocalist/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney gave a major tip of the hat to their Mississippi hill country blues influences by covering songs by R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, John Lee Hooker, John Fahey and Richard Berry, many of which were included on their surprise 2021 release “Delta Kream.”
Those tunes were made all the more thrilling by the presence of guest guitarist Kenny Brown, who played with Burnside for years and is an acknowledged master of the slide guitar. “Definitely without a doubt there would be no Black Keys without this man here on guitar,” Auerbach said of Brown before the musicians launched into Hooker’s “Crawlin’ Kingsnake.” Indeed, an 18-year-old Auerbach once drove from Ohio to Mississippi to see his blues idols in person, and what he learned from them remains readily apparent in both his playing and singing to this day.
At Red Rocks, it could be heard during Keys tracks like the new album’s “It Ain’t Over,” which featured an excellent solo, and “Wild Child,” which delighted with its thick, screaming riffs. Show opener “I Got Mine” and the stomping “Your Touch” were also nice nods to the Keys’ early days emerging from an Akron basement and into a professional studio for the first time. They were also the oldest original songs on the set list, which omitted any non-covers from the Keys’ first three albums.
That left classics such as “Tighten Up,” “Howlin’ for You,” “Gold on the Ceiling” and “Lonely Boy” to carry the lion’s share of the show, which they did with aplomb thanks to backing by the Keys’ trusty touring band of keyboardist Ray Jacildo and guitarists/bassists Andy and Zach Gabbard. Encore opener “Little Black Submarine” offered a momentary change of pace from the down-and-dirty rock’n’roll, with Auerbach starting the song alone on acoustic guitar before the band kicked back in. The mournful “Ten Cent Pistol” also demonstrated the band’s well-honed dynamics, with Auerbach emoting under a lone spotlight prior to the tune’s final chorus.
Although the Keys traditionally play a similar set list from night to night, the group had something very special in its back pocket after “Little Black Submarine” when it paid tribute to close friend and collaborator Richard Swift, who died in 2018. With surprise guest Nathaniel Rateliff handling most of the vocals, the Keys covered Swift’s “Broken Finger Blues” for the first time ever (longtime Denver resident Rateliff also worked closely with Swift on his first two albums with The Night Sweats). The performance upped the emotional quotient of a show that had already rocked quite hard, proving that The Black Keys can hit you in the head just as well as the heart.
