AUERBACH NOT AT A LOSS FOR A SONG
“By the time the album came out we had recorded over 100 songs, with most of them fully produced with backing vocals and a pretty good mix!”
Clearly the wait wasn’t long when working on Dan Auerbach’s Waiting on a Song. In all, 100 songs were written and recorded for the Black Keys frontman’s second solo album before being whittled down to the final 10.
“Dan used to write songs as part of the recording process,” elaborated co-producer and engineer M Allen Parker about the Black Keys’ process. “Pat [Carney] and he were writing the songs in the studio while they were making the record. However, in Nashville there’s a long tradition of guys going into a room with just an acoustic guitar and a little later coming out with the better part of a finished song. Dan wanted to write more in that traditional Nashville way, which he had never done before.”
He assembled a team of co-writers that included Nashville legends like John Prine, Pat McLaughlin, and David Ferguson at his Easy Eye Studios in Nashville and got into a rhythm of “he and some others writing songs on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday,” explained Parker. “Then Thursday, Friday and Saturday we’d be recording and overdubbing. It would not be uncommon for us to track five or six songs on Thursday and Friday and then do overdubs on those songs on Saturday. The next Monday, we’d start again. By the time the album came out we had recorded over 100 songs, with most of them fully produced with backing vocals and a pretty good mix!”
The musical direction of his new album has a lot to do is a celebration of Nashville-inspired country and 1970s soft rock, so he gathered the old guard of Nashville to help deliver on the premise. The all-star cast included famous guitarists Mark Knopfler, Duane Eddy, and Jerry Douglas, as well as older session musicians with impressive track records such as keyboardist Bobby Wood (Elvis, Garth Brooks), bassist Dave Roe (Johnny Cash), guitarist Russ Pahl (Don Williams), drummer Gene Chrisman (Elvis, Bobby Womack, Aretha Franklin), and many others.
