The Black Keys find solace in new album as they hit Vegas

The Black Keys have turned a heavy time into inspired music.

The veteran rock duo of singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney is playing The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas on Friday night, on their “Peaches ’N Kream” tour. The show supports the band’s latest release, “Peaches!,” a collection of obscure blues covers issued last month.

The album is the follow-up to 2021’s “Delta Kream,” also a covers compilation. The tour borrows from both releases.

“Peaches!” was created to help Auerbach cope with the illness and passing of his father, Chuck, in April 2025.

The band had set up a tour of Latin America to open in March 2025. But the previous fall, Chuck had become seriously ill. The elder Auerbach was diagnosed with terminal cancer in January and moved into his son’s house. The upcoming tour was shelved.

Carney, who has been Auerbach’s partner in The Black Keys for 25 years, felt his friend’s struggles.

“One thing I know about Dan is he loves to be in the studio,” Carney said in a recent phone chat. “He loves to have something to do, to work on, and there was nothing for him to do during the day. So I suggested it might be a good idea for us to just go into the studio and record for a few days.”

“Us” included legendary blues musicians Kenny Brown on guitar and Eric Deaton on bass. Both had played on “Delta Kream.”

“We just brought in the same dudes that we played with on ‘Delta Kream,’ because we had a list of songs that we wanted to record, and we’d done a session with those guys like a year and a half earlier,” Carney said. “It just seemed like the right kind of creative project to pursue at the time, because there was no writing involved. It was just channeling music, having fun in the studio, basically noncritical thinking so Dan could just shut it off and go home to be with his dad.”

‘It was very heavy’

The album has an unvarnished blues sound, which Chuck Auerbach preferred. Dan’s father was an icon in the band’s native Akron, Ohio, an antique and folk art dealer who loved music and was deeply proud of The Black Keys’ success.

“It was very heavy. Dan was really going through it,” Carney said. “But you know, he was definitely very engaged in his sessions and wanted to do it. I think it was very good for him. So we did these recordings, and then his dad passed away, I think 10 days later.”

The album kicks off with “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire,” by Willie Gibbons, which captured Auerbach’s mood. As he said in an interview with NPR, “I think that the song — just the recording, the original recording — is just kind of haunting and spooky and weird and maniacally out of tune. And I just remember, the first time I heard it, it kind of blew me away.”

The duo had thought of calling the new album “Delta Kream Part 2,” the second in a series, for all the reimagined covers. Then Carney found a photo by William Eggleston, famous for his vivid, color images of the South. The band had also used an Eggleston photo for “Delta Kream,” a shot of a burger stand in Tunica, Mississippi, in the 1970s.

The shot chosen for the new album depicts a fruit stand, the sign “Peaches!” shouting from the top.

“There was no thinking about that,” Auerbach said in a social media post about the new album. “It just named itself.”

‘Having a blast’

Carney says the ongoing tour, which includes guitar great Jimbo Mathis from Squirrel Nut Zippers, has been especially rewarding.

“Musically, I think it’s the best tour we’ve ever done. I mean, we’ve been having a blast,” the 46-year-old Carney said. “We’ve been changing the set list a lot every night, and you know, we have Jimbo Mathis, who also played on ‘Peaches!,’ and I’m such a huge fan. Just being in a room with him and being around his energy is great.”

Though malleable, the set is anchored by the duo’s best-known songs, among them “Wild Child,” “Gold on the Ceiling” and “Lonely Boy.”

The latter song has featured prominently in The Black Keys’ Las Vegas history. Auerbach and Carney summoned “Big Wayne” — Mr. Las Vegas himself — to join them in that song during the 2019 Life is Beautiful festival in downtown Las Vegas.

As Wayne Newton famously said of that performance, “The crowd went ape!”

Carney let out a laugh at the memory.

“Honestly, it’s one of the highlights of our performing career,” he said. “It was awesome.”

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykatson X, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.