[03:45] the prowl-dan auerbach

[06:18] Dan Auerbach live at SXSW 2009

(photos: anna webber)

Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys Live at SXSW’s Mojo Magazine Party at The Mean Eyed Cat

Danny boy Auerbach kills it again, slapping out the mean-eyed blues in the hot sun at Austin’s cherished Johnny Cash tribute bar. Hungover as we can so become after playing through a secret show till 5:00 the same morning, Auerbach still manages to thread together a thick dose of blues loud enough to stain any olfactory lobe within convincing reason. Chugging bottles of ice water, the globs of beard gum dripped quickly loose, hung, and at a moments notice landed if not on the high register, on one of us. He looses the tie fettered round his neck, and like mad, amounts to greatness. Though the delirium tremens clearly awoke the spins, he manages still to make good use of his loving arms (see below:)

It was an intimate gathering of saints, sinners, filthy blues and little or no upset. Backed by the San Antonio band Hacienda, Auerbach gave it as beautiful as always, his love for country and blues hardly unsurpassed. The girls were coming around serving ice cold Coronas, as if we looked like were lacking. They were happily accepted as we choked on our twelve bars of country twang, surely a day I had already concocted somewhere in dreams. It was the abrasions left on my psyche, applied by the unusual thing that is young Auerbach that convince me to remember it wasn’t just that.

Like a gentleman he took one of my photography postcards and stuffed it in between a few spent papers in his Moleskin. For a moment he had it rough and posed during a few photographs with the very tactile version of me, and, unsatisfied as they so become, he, along with Hacienda, had to bolt immediately for some tacos.

(Here are some photographs of the day. Click, they will become larger)

Looking forward now to Patrick Carney’s solo debut (drummer of The Black Keys duo), titled: Drummer. It  features Carney (on bass), Jon Finley from Beaten Awake (guitar/vox), Steve Clements from Houseguest (keys), Jamie Stillman from Party of Helicopters (guitar) and Greg Boyd from Ghostman and Sandman (drums). They are working on an album to be released in the fall on Carney’s label, Audio Eagle.