Rock and roll legends the Black Keys have announced their tenth studio album, Delta Kream. Recorded here in Nashville at singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound with the help of blues giants Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton, the record celebrates the band’s roots with eleven Mississippi hill country blues standards. The lead single “Crawling Kingsnake,” which was written by Big Joe Williams and popularized by John Lee Hooker, is Rev’s DJ Pick of the Week!
“We made this record to honor the Mississippi hill country blues tradition that influenced us starting out. These songs are still as important to us today as they were the first day Pat and I started playing together and picked up our instruments. It was a very inspiring session with Pat and me along with Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton in a circle, playing these songs. It felt so natural,” Auerbach said in a press release. “The session was planned only days in advance and nothing was rehearsed. We recorded the entire album in about ten hours, over two afternoons, at the end of the ‘Let’s Rock’ tour,” drummer Patrick Carney echoed. The music video for “Crawling Kingsnake” was appropriately recorded at Jimmy Duck Holmes’ Blue Front Café, which is the oldest active juke joint in the US.
The band isn’t just indulging in nostalgia, though. They’re making a difference too by working with Mississippi’s tourism organization to sponsor new individual markers for R.L Burnside and Junior Kimbrough— two of the artists whose songs appear on Delta Kream— on the Mississippi Blues Trail. The album will be available May 14th via Nonesuch Records.
Be sure to tune into 100.1 FM or lightning100.com to hear “Crawling Kingsnake” by the Black Keys featured as Rev’s DJ Pick of the Week. Be sure to let us know your thoughts! Tweet at us with #L100DJPick and share your take on the track.
