AMY SALISBURY
EDITOR IN CHIEF

Image courtesy of sacksco.com

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
No, no one’s getting married here, but Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney provide all four of these crucial components to thoroughly convince anyone to commit to their particular craft.
“Magic Potion,” the 2006 album by blues-rock band The Black Keys, may as well be called Love Potion no. 9 considering my reaction to it. As a 17-year-old girl encountering the muddy, breathy, beer-scented antics of The Black Keys, the magnetism of bad boys and rock ‘n roll overcame my senses.
The Black Keys formed out of Akron, Ohio in the early 2000s and swiftly released a debut album. Carney and Auerbach were close friends throughout adolescence, but a shared reverence for all things musical brought them out of the Akron underground scene and into stardom.
Auerbach explained in American Songwriter magazine that his interest in blues music came from “just listening to [blues] records and trying to figure them out.” I had never truly exposed myself to blues music out of genuine lack of knowledge for the genre. B.B. King occasionally flashed into my line of sight, sure, but The Black Keys were my first blues experience. I had something new and something blue.
Then I heard “Chulahoma.”
The strangely titled EP offered a borrowed counterpart to match with “Magic Potion”
in the form of blues legend Junior Kimbrough’s country styling. Kimbrough, a 1960s Delta blues musician from northern Miss., undoubtedly inspires The Black Keys in their original work, not to mention in their covers of Kimbrough on “Chulahoma” (appropriately named after Kimbrough’s birthplace).
I had all four pieces. The old and new borrowed blues melted into velvety riffs as Auerbach’s gritty voice roughened the riffs’ repetitions. I can’t get away with calling the blues clean, but the simplicity and consistency in the music almost lulled me into love the more I listened.
I understood what made The Black Keys respect Kimbrough enough to produce an EP entirely devoted to such an emotionally laborious craft. The blues is not only about sounds and patterns. The style holds its own within American history as one of the great emotionally exploratory genres. A blues musician certainly cannot be afraid to bear his soul.
And, perhaps, that is why people respond to the blues. If The Black Keys keep up this inspired recognition of good music (and make some more of their original music along the way), Auerbach and Carney fans have one spectacular, perpetuating honeymoon to look forward to.
The Black Keys’ latest album, “Brothers,” is in stores nationwide.