The influence and memory of Dan Auerbach’s father looms large over the Black Keys’ latest album Peaches!, a collection of obscure blues and soul covers that the band recorded while Auerbach’s father was in the final stages of a cancer battle. Chuck Auerbach died March 29, just a month before his son and Keys drummer Pat Carney dropped their LP on May 1. In a new interview with Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, Auerbach admits that Peaches!, despite its ebullient nature, can be hard for him to listen to, especially the track “It’s a Dream,” originally cut by Charles Fisher Jr.
“I feel like he would have loved that song. It was right up his alley. This whole life has been a bit of a dream and he helped put me here. So, that’s kind of hard to listen to, but it’s mostly joyous,” Auerbach says, holding back tears. “He gave me so much. It was like one last gift.”
Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studios in Nashville, where the Black Keys recorded Peaches!, is decorated with folk art, antiquities, and assorted vintage signs. One from a Freemasons lodge hangs above the studio floor. Auerbach says it’s all connected to his father.
“Everything about what I do is related to my dad, musically and aesthetically. He was an antique dealer, a picker. I knew how to pack a van for tour because I would pack the van for my dad’s antique shows. This shitty old rusty van, with a wooden rack on the top,” he says, recalling how his father would crank music in the van, especially the Allman Brothers’ “Ramblin’ Man.” “My dad listened to music louder than anybody.”
In this episode of Nashville Now, Auerbach talks at length about Gregg Allman — who died nine years ago today — and his enduring influence not just on the Black Keys but on all of music. Auerbach produced a new live version of the Allmans’ “Come and Go Blues,” performed by Marcus King, for the forthcoming documentary Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul. (The film opens Wednesday, June 17, including one-week engagements in Los Angeles and New York, as well as one-night exclusive screenings across the country on more than 200 screens. Tickets are available now.)
Watch Auerbach’s full episode below.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by Deputy Editor, Head of Country Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Vince Gill, Lainey Wilson, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Kings of Leon, the Black Crowes, Carly Pearce, Luke Grimes, Brandon Lake, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Noeline Hofmann, Adam Mac, Devon Gilfillian, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Ink, Ne-Yo, Rival Sons’ Jay Buchanan, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, Clever, Love on the Spectrum‘s Tyler White, Willie Nelson scholar John Spong, and authors Marissa R. Moss, Josh Crutchmer, Mark Gray, and Jonathan Bernstein.
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