Thunder and blues: The Black Keys baptize Rogers in rain
By Troy Littledeer | @candyminksprings | Photos by Troy Littledeer
The name of the tour turned out to be a forecast.
By the time Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney walked onto the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion stage at approximately 9:10 p.m., the rain had been falling for a while and showed no interest in stopping. Lightning flickered somewhere beyond the hills. The lawn was soaked. Ponchos rustled across the crowd like a field of plastic wheat. Nobody left.
That is the thing about a Black Keys crowd. They came for something specific, and a little weather was not going to take it from them.
The duo opened with a medley — “Thickfreakness” into “The Breaks” into “I’ll Be Your Man” — three songs collapsed into one opening statement, a reminder that Auerbach and Carney have been doing this since they were two kids making noise in a basement in Akron, Ohio. The chemistry between them is not performed. It is structural. Twenty-plus years of playing the same rooms, then bigger rooms, then rooms like this one, have made them something rare in rock and roll: a two-piece band that sounds like more than the sum of its parts.
The set moved through their catalog with the confidence of a band that knows exactly what it has built. “Your Touch” gave way to “Gold on the Ceiling,” which gave way to “Fever,” and the crowd tracked every turn. “Lo/Hi” hit with the weight of a transmission tower falling over. “Wild Child” stretched out and breathed. “I Got Mine” was a reminder that before the alt-radio domination and the Grammy recognition, there was just the blues — raw, unadorned, and entirely their own.
“Everlasting Light” offered a moment of relative calm before “Next Girl” and “The Night Before” tightened the set back up. Then “Weight of Love” arrived and took its time. At nearly seven minutes in the studio, it is the kind of song that asks something of a live audience — patience, attention, the willingness to follow a guitar line somewhere it has not been before. The crowd at the AMP gave it everything it asked for, rain and all.
“Psychotic Girl” carried the low-end rumble that defines the Akron duo at their most elemental. The title track, “No Rain, No Flowers,” landed with the whole evening behind it — the weather outside had spent two hours making the song feel inevitable.
“Tighten Up” was the crowd’s moment. It always is. The riff hit and the poncho-clad faithful responded like they had been waiting for it specifically, which they had. Then came a cover of Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again,” a nod to the blues lineage that runs underneath everything the Black Keys have ever made, followed by “Heavy Soul,” “Howlin’ for You,” and “She’s Long Gone” to close the main set.
The encore was two songs and no wasted motion. “Little Black Submarines” built slow and then detonated. “Lonely Boy” closed the night the only way it could — loud, direct, and leaving nothing on the stage.
By the end, the rain had soaked everything that could be soaked. The crowd filed out looking like they had been through something, which is exactly what a Black Keys show is supposed to feel like. Auerbach and Carney did not acknowledge the weather much. They did not need to. The tour is called No Rain, No Flowers. They named it knowing the rain would come.
They played anyway. So did everybody else.
Troy Littledeer is a writer and photographer based in Northeastern Oklahoma. He is a member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and reports on tribal governance, education, and public accountability across Indian Country and surrounding communities. His work centers primary documents and recorded statements, with a focus on tribal law and the public record. Troy is a lifetime member of the Indigenous Journalist Association.
 | A guest post by
|