The Black Keys To Honor Mississippi Hill Country Blues On New Album

The Black Keys have announced a new album, Delta Kream, that celebrates Mississippi hill country blues artists like R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough.

The band’s tenth studio album dedicated to their blues roots will feature 11 blues standards and will be released on May 14.

Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded Delta Kream at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville. They were joined by musicians Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton, long-time members of the bands of blues legends Burnside and Kimbrough. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph that is on its cover.

“We made this record to honor the Mississippi hill country blues tradition that influenced us starting out,” says Auerbach. “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.”

“The session was planned only days in advance and nothing was rehearsed,” says Carney. “We recorded the entire album in about ten hours, over two afternoons, at the end of the ‘Let’s Rock’ tour.”

Fans can listen to the album’s first single “Crawling Kingsnake,” a song recorded by Hooker and first heard by Auerbach when he was in high school.

In addition to paying homage to these Mississippi blues legends with Delta Kream, the band is working with VisitMississippi, the state’s tourism organization, to sponsor new individual markers for Burnside and Kimbrough on the Mississippi Blues Trail, which tells the stories of the state’s blues artists both renowned and obscure through words and images.

The album is available for pre-order now.

Delta Kream track listing:
Crawling Kingsnake (John Lee Hooker / Bernard Besman)
Louise (Fred McDowell)
Poor Boy a Long Way From Home (Robert Lee Burnside)
Stay All Night (David Kimbrough, Jr.)
Going Down South (Robert Lee Burnside)
Coal Black Mattie (Ranie Burnette)
Do the Romp (David Kimbrough, Jr.)
Sad Days, Lonely Nights (David Kimbrough, Jr.)
Walk with Me (David Kimbrough, Jr.)
Mellow Peaches (Joseph Lee Williams)
Come on and Go with Me (David Kimbrough, Jr