(photos: anna webber)

The Black Keys guitarist, Dan Auerbach, Solo Record

The Black Keys‘ guitarist Dan Auerbach has announced what was to me, a pretty surprising rescript… a solo debut! Keep It Hid, will come out February 10th on Nonesuch records. Though at this point it’s going to be pretty difficult to beat the Key’s last album Attack and Release, which was, in my gracious opinion, the best album released this year, right next to Radiohead’s In Rainbows, and Beck’s Modern Guilt. Auerbach is said to get up against the line of scrimmage, facing up with the drums, keyboards and six-strings — his uncle James Quine contributes guitar to “Street Walkin,” and his father originally wrote “Whispered Words.” “This record is a mixture of things I like to listen to, psychedelia, soul music, country harmonies,” Auerbach says in a statement with Rolling Stone Magazine.

Looking forward to this more organically homegrown record, partly recorded when on tour with the Keys’ and during the recording of Attack & Release in the studio with Danger Mouse — also responsible for the A1 fabulous Beck Album. Anything that man touches is turning into dddirty dangerous philly cheese steak sandwiches with a bucket of au jus positioned beneath to catch the drips.

Dan Auerbach’s Solo tour dates:

February 28 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
March 1 – Boston, MA @ Paradise
March 2 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
March 3 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
March 5 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom
March 6 – Chicago, IL @ Metro
March 7 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
March 10 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
March 11 – Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
March 13 – San Francisco, CA @ Bimbo’s
March 14 – Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey Theatre

(i’ll be at the El Rey show shooting).

listen to ingrid here: [03:27] Keep Breathing – Ingrid Michaelson

Michaelson collapsed all sense of expected genteel ladylike-ness on stage last Thursday at the El Rey, throwing the audience with a clandestine back-room chatter in between songs that shot out in spastic spurts throughout her soft, honest set.

Her voice is timeless, it speaks an old love song against a solo ukulele, the kind of ballad we don’t hear anymore, the kind our 90 year-old grandparents sing themselves to sleep with.  She really is timeless, talking love, inciting peace, some Republicans might even call her Socialist: “Let’s get rich and buy our parent’s home’s in the South of France / Let’s get rich and buy everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance / Don’t you worry there my honey, but we got our love to pay the bills.” In between songs, she was really, very honest and paid no never mind to whatever social tact we might be used to: “My girlfriends always tell me I shouldn’t talk about bowel movements onstage because it makes me seem less sexy. But I don’t really care.”

She didn’t care what she said, what we thought, and that’s really her message. Whipping up a carefree provocation to the rigid rest, to get loose and to say what you feel, feel what you say.