Patrick Carney

Patrick James Carney (born April 15, 1980) is an American musician and producer best known as the drummer for The Black Keys, a blues rock band from Akron, Ohio. He also has a side-project rock band called Drummer.

Carney's father, Jim, was a reporter until his retirement from the Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio, where his stepmother, Katie Byard, still works. His mother, Mary Stormer, is an Akron Municipal Court deputy clerk and is a former member of the Akron Board of Education. His stepfather, Barry Stormer, owns B. A. Stormer Construction Services. His uncle, Ralph Carney, is a professional sax player, and has played with Tom Waits, among others. 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 on the west side of Akron, Ohio. Dan Auerbach also lived in this neighborhood, and the two met and played tag football with Auerbach's friends, although they 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. As a teenager, Carney was musically influenced by bands such as Pavement, Captain Beefheart and fellow Akron band Devo.

Carney playing with The Black Keys in 2010

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.

Both Carney and Auerbach record with Nonesuch Records. In 2009, Carney joined the 9th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to support independent musicians' careers. Carney has produced records for Beaten Awake, Houseguest, Churchbuilder, and The Black Keys. He is the founder of Audio Eagle Records.

Drummer

In 2009, while fellow Black Keys member Dan Auerbach was on his solo tour, Carney formed a new band called Drummer in which he played bass. Each of the band's members had played drums in another band. They released Feel Good Together, their debut album in the same year.

In 2012, he produced the self-titled album for Canadian rockers The Sheepdogs. Atlantic Records released it on September 4 of that year. In 2011, he produced the second studio album by Tennis, titled Young & Old, which was released on Fat Possum Records on February 14, 2012. Carney also contributed the main title music to the 2014 Netflix show BoJack Horseman.

Carney is the drummer on The Rentals' 2014 album Lost in Alphaville.

Audio Eagle Records

In 2005, Carney created Audio Eagle Records, an independent record label. It signed acts such as Houseguest, Royal Bangs and Carney's own side-project Drummer. Carney shut the label down in 2010.

Vice News Tonight

Carney has 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.

Patrick Carney, playing at the House of Blues in New Orleans, LA, on September 21, 2010.

Carney married his first wife, writer Denise Grollmus, in 2007. The couple acrimoniously divorced in 2009. Both talked about the messy breakup in the media, Patrick in the Rolling Stone's May 27, 2010, issue and Denise in her essay, entitled Snapshots From a Rock 'N' Roll Marriage, published on Salon on March 3, 2011.

In 2010, Carney and his bandmate, Dan Auerbach, moved from Akron, OH, and purchased homes in Nashville, TN. They recorded their El Camino album at Auerbach's newly completed Nashville studio, Easy Eye Sound Studio.

On February 13, 2011, hours before the Grammys in Los Angeles, CA, Carney proposed to his girlfriend, Emily Ward. They married on September 15, 2012, in the backyard of their Nashville home. The wedding ceremony was officiated by actor Will Forte. The wedding party included Ward's siblings Danielle Shuster & Henry Ward, Carney's brothers Will Carney, Michael Carney, & Barry Stormer, and the couple's Irish wolfhound, Charlotte. Wearing Carolina Herrera, Ward walked down the aisle to Crimson and Clover by Tommy James and the Shondells. Carney and Ward invited 350 guests, including bandmate Dan Auerbach and professional snowboarder Shaun White, who was later arrested and charged with vandalism and public intoxication at a hotel in Nashville, TN after the wedding reception.

Carney and Ward divorced in January 2016.

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.

• The Big Come Up (2002)
• Thickfreakness (2003)
• Rubber Factory (2004)
• Magic Potion (2006)
• Attack & Release (2008)
• Brothers (2010)
• El Camino (2011)
• Turn Blue (2014)

• Feel Good Together (2009)

• Lost in Alphaville (2014)

Producer

• The Sheepdogs (2012)
• Tennis (2012)
• Tobias Jesso Jr. (2015)