Patrick Carney


Patrick James Carney is an American musician and producer. Carney serves as the drummer for The Black Keys, a blues rock band from Akron, Ohio. He currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Early life

Carney's father, Jim, is a retired longtime reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal and a music lover whom Carney credits with introducing him to various genres. His mother, Mary Stormer, is civil accounts supervisor for the Akron Municipal Court and is a former member of the Akron Board of Education. His stepmother, Katie Byard Carney, is a longtime reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal. His stepfather, Barry Stormer, owns B. A. Stormer Construction Services.
Carney has three brothers, William, who is an Amtrak supervisor, Michael, a graphic artist who has created the art for each of The Black Keys albums, and in 2017 launched the Central High t-shirt line, and Barry Stormer Jr., who is a capital markets analyst for Keycorp.
Carney's uncle, Ralph Carney, was a professional saxophone player, and played with Tom Waits, among others. Ralph died in December 2017, after falling down steps in his Portland, Oregon, home. After Carney's parents divorced when he was 6, he lived part of the time with his mother, Mary Stormer, and part of the time with his father, Jim Carney, who had moved to a different neighborhood in West Akron, Ohio. Dan Auerbach lived around the block in this neighborhood, and the two met and played tag football with Auerbach's friends, although Patrick and Auerbach did not become friends until high school. Carney stated in an interview with Modern Drummer that he never took drum lessons as a kid, but learned by mimicking friends that were also drummers, using a $150 drumset that he bought using money earned from a job washing dishes at the Mustard Seed grocery and cafe in an Akron suburb, Bath Township. As a teenager, Carney was musically influenced by bands such as Pavement, Captain Beefheart and fellow Akron band Devo.

Music career

In 2001 Carney and Auerbach, lead singer and guitarist, formed The Black Keys, releasing their debut album The Big Come Up less than a year later. This was followed by Thickfreakness in 2003 and Rubber Factory in 2004. The band's fourth album Magic Potion was released in 2006. Attack & Release, their critically acclaimed fifth album was released in 2008, with a follow up in 2010 titled Brothers. In 2011, the band released the album El Camino. The band's latest album is Turn Blue, released in 2014. They released their first single in five years, "Lo/Hi", on March 7, 2019.

Music Producer

Carney currently produces and writes music out of his Nashville, Tennessee-based recording studio, Audio Eagle. He has produced a range of artists from various musical backgrounds including The Black Keys, Michelle Branch, Calvin Johnson, Tennis, The Sheepdogs, Beaten Awake, Houseguest, Churchbuilder, Jessy Wilson, and *repeat repeat.

Audio Eagle Studio

Audio Eagle Studio is a recording studio opened in 2001 by Carney. The studio was located in Akron, Ohio and consisted mostly of a digital 12-track recorder. It went through many incarnations and configurations and was mainly used to record the first four The Black Keys albums. In 2010, the studio was relocated to Nashville, Tennessee.

Serious Boredom on Sirius XMU

Carney hosts a monthly radio show on Sirius XMU called Serious Boredom with Patrick Carney.

Vice News Tonight

Carney had a segment on HBO's news show, "Vice News Tonight", titled "Patrick Carney's High Standards Music Corner" where he listens to and judges new songs.

Other musical ventures

In 2009, while fellow The Black Keys member Dan Auerbach was on his solo tour, Carney formed a new band called Drummer in which he played bass guitar. Each of the band's members had played drums in another band. They released Feel Good Together, their debut album in the same year. Carney is the drummer on The Rentals' 2014 album Lost in Alphaville. Carney also contributed the main title music to the 2014 Netflix show BoJack Horseman. In 2017, Carney contributed music to the soundtrack of BoJack Horseman.

Personal life

Carney’s first marriage was to writer Denise Grollmus, in 2007, when he lived in Akron, Ohio. The two had dated for several years, since Grollmus was a student at Oberlin College in Ohio and Carney and Dan Auerbach launched The Black Keys. The couple divorced in 2009. Both talked about the messy breakup in the media; Carney in Rolling Stones May 27, 2010, issue and Grollmus in an essay - "Snapshots From a Rock 'N' Roll Marriage", published in Salon on March 3, 2011.
In 2010, Carney and his bandmate, Dan Auerbach, moved from Akron and purchased homes in Nashville. They recorded their El Camino album at Auerbach's newly completed Nashville studio, Easy Eye Sound Studio.
Carney married Emily Ward, whom he had met while living in New York City, on September 15, 2012, in the backyard of their Nashville home. Carney and Ward divorced in January 2016. Ward, a California native, had moved to Los Angeles by that time.
In 2015, Carney met Michelle Branch at a Grammy party, and the two started dating during the production of Branch's album Hopeless Romantic, which Carney produced. In 2017, Branch and her daughter Owen moved into Carney's Nashville home, which they share with Irish wolfhounds. Carney and Branch became engaged on her birthday in 2017. On February 11, 2018, Branch announced that she and Carney were expecting their first child. Their son, Rhys James Carney, was born in August 2018. Carney and Branch married in April 2019.

Discography

;The Black Keys
;Drummer
;The Rentals