Photo: Ben Hsu/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images
As the Black Keys prepare to hit the road again, the band is finally revealing what caused them to cancel an arena tour last year. In short, as drummer Patrick Carney told Rolling Stone: “Shit happens.” The shit in question was low ticket sales for a number of dates, which was apparent when the Black Keys made the move. But the band is now blaming poor planning by Full Stop Management, mogul Irving Azoff’s management group, which they parted ways with shortly after. Carney said the problems started even earlier, when the band was on a European tour for their 2024 album Ohio Players. “After going to Europe 30 times in our career for tours, this was the most poorly orchestrated tour we had been on,” he said. The poor-selling American dates that followed, he added, “were just in rooms that they shouldn’t have been in.” Fans complained about high ticket prices, but Carney said he and bandmate Dan Auerbach “weren’t even asked” about them. “On this [next] tour, we realized that we have to be more involved in this,” he said. “The last thing Dan and I want to do is gouge a fan on a ticket.”
The Black Keys promised fans the canceled dates would be rebooked in smaller venues — as they’d initially been told by Full Stop. But “there were no holds on rooms,” Carney said now. “It was bullshit.” The band ended up canceling nearly $10 million in ticket sales. “We just had to take one on the fucking face,” Carney said.
That led to the band’s derided decision to play an “America Loves Crypto” concert last October in their hometown of Akron, Ohio — where crypto supporters were boosting Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, who eventually unseated Democrat Sherrod Brown. “We got offered a lot of money to play a show, and we saw that the Black Pumas had done the same event and we were like, ‘Book it,’” Carney said, citing unpaid retainers from the tour. He neglected to say if the band supported cryptocurrency — “We’re Crisco enthusiasts,” he joked — but said they were promised the event was bipartisan. “If us playing a concert for 300 people is going to sway the whole state’s vote, then we have bigger fucking problems, bro,” Carney said.
When the band parted ways with Full Stop after canceling the tour, a rep for Azoff told Billboard it was “amicable.” But Carney said now of Full Stop, “We fired their ass.” As for Azoff himself, Carney added, “I don’t even want to mention that guy’s name.” His bigger issue is with Full Stop’s connections, through Azoff, to Live Nation and Ticketmaster. “When you’re called into a manager’s office and he suggests something to you, I was naïve enough to think that that was on the up-and-up. And more and more, it’s just not,” he said. “So it’s a hard thing because I don’t think Dan and I want to sit here and look like whining bitches. But we got a little bamboozled here.”
