Imagine the world's music producers and engineers in a line, then mark one end "Least Finicky" and the other "Most Finicky." After you reorganize them on that spectrum, who would be closer to one end, or the other? Nearer to "Most Finicky" might be well-known eccentrics like Todd Rundgren, Brian Wilson or Prince — on the other end, perhaps Gary Kellgren, the incredulous engineer who hit "record" and walked out while the Velvet Underground recorded "Sister Ray."
In many aspects of record-making, more often than not, you want a happy medium. Somebody invested, who cares, who listens, but who doesn't sacrifice happy accidents or the natural flow of creativity. And somewhere in that Goldilocks zone — not only of attentiveness, but of attunement to the future and the past — is Dan Auerbach, who has been producing and releasing records through his studio/label, Easy Eye Sound, since 2017.
"I think Dan is unafraid to embrace tradition, but is also not a purist," singer/songwriter and drummer Aaron Frazer, whose 2021 debut solo album Introducing… was produced by Auerbach, tells GRAMMY.com. "That's a really rare combination. He has an obsessive eye and ear for details, but he's playful with the boundaries between old-school and contemporary."
Of course, Auerbach is best known as one half of the Ohioan blues-rockers the Black Keys, who have garnered four GRAMMY Awards and 11 nominations across a quarter century-long career. In 2021, they dropped the beautifully ragged hill country covers album Delta Kream, which was nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Blues Album at the 2022 GRAMMY Awards. (Their latest album, Dropout Boogie, is due out May 13.)
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But that's not Auerbach's only presence on the GRAMMY nominations list. Guess who produced Yola's "Diamond Studded Shoes," the singer/songwriter's Stand For Myself cut that's nominated for Best American Roots Song? You guessed it. And outside of that list, Auerbach produced a litany of albums in the last year and change, from Introducing… to the Velveteers' Nightmare Daydream and Hank Williams, Jr.'s Rich White Honky Blues — all of which only bolster his reputation as a primary hub of roots music innovation and preservation in the 2020s.
Auerbach doesn't puff himself up one iota when reflecting on his rapidly expanding legacy, or his place in the universe of record production. "I feel like it would be hard to answer that question without sounding totally pretentious," Auerbach tells GRAMMY.com. "I just feel very fortunate that I get to make records with artists that I love, and people that blow me away. Getting to work with these different artists makes my life better, so I hope that I return the favor when I work with artists."
Despite this breezy magnanimity, Auerbach is a dead-serious student of the blues, both working with modern practitioners like Robert Finley and curating long-lost recordings by progenitor Son House. On top of it all, he’s a workaholic, notes Patrick Carney, Auerbach's partner in the Black Keys.
"He's able to work at a pace that most people couldn't fathom, as far as the amount of projects he's juggling at any given time," Carney tells GRAMMY.com. "I think he needs that outlet. It's just as important to him as the Black Keys, and I know that and support it wholeheartedly."
Frazer came to work with Auerbach in the least ceremonious way possible — which comports with Auerbach's who-me? vibe. "Dan called me directly on the phone while I was frying some plantains in my kitchen," Frazer says, placing the year around 2006 or '07. "That's a little different than how things normally work. With bigger artists like that, sometimes there's so much bureaucracy — it's label to management to management to label to artist, blah blah blah.
"But, God, he just called me directly," he continues. "He said that he had heard my music and loved the style, and wanted to make a record together." This was surreal for Frazer, who says he learned to drive and sing at the same time while belting Black Keys songs in his car.
In the studio, Auerbach blew Frazer's mind by bringing in studio cats of the highest order — including keyboardist Bobby Wood, who played on Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man," and Nick Movshon, widely known as a bassist with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. "He was bringing together people to bring out the best in an artist," Frazer says.
Frazer will never forget one piece of advice Auerbach laid on him before the session musicians arrived. "He was basically like, 'These musicians will play for you, and they will play exactly what you want them to play. But my advice is to first give them the room to explore and maybe find their own take on it first, because once you've been told a direction, you can't replace first impression, first inspiration.'"
Shannon Shaw — who leads of the rock band Shannon and the Clams, who released their Auerbach-produced album Year of the Spider last year, and whose 2018 solo effort, Shannon In Nashville, was similarly produced at Easy Eye — also recalls Auerbach's cogent in-studio advice. Again, that Goldilocks zone: Auerbach's input was clear and straightforward, but never harsh.
"Something I like about Dan is that he does not beat around the bush," Shaw tells GRAMMY.com. "He says exactly what he means — there's no tip-toeing, and he's very direct, which was really good for me. I don't remember him ever saying, 'That's not good.' He'd say, 'Why don't you try something else?' It was always positive and encouraging."
Shaw particularly remembers one moment that made "It's Gonna Go Away" (off 2016's Onion) pop — which is straight from the playbook of the most impactful blues and rock songs. "I wrote a chorus, and the chorus felt so good — it felt so right. I wanted the chorus to happen two or three times," she recalls. "And Dan was like, 'That chorus is so powerful, that you should only do it once."
At first, Shaw thought that would be counterintuitive — it didn't naturally spring from her voice and guitar like that. "I was like, 'No! That's not satisfying! I need it to happen!'" she says. "But Dan's approach was really good for me to learn, because it does make it stand out or feel more important if it only happens once."
That's how Auerbach works his magic — not only by engendering satisfying sounds, enlisting the right musicians, and offering germane advice, but stripping things to their very essence when need be. That's the magic of the blues, and why the Black Keys mean so much to so many. It's also why Auerbach is rising and rising as a producer, and his GRAMMY presence in that department only seems to be getting started.
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