Driven by Carney’s relentless grooves and Auerbach’s stunning guitar attack, The Black Keys draw from deep within the blues-music well while making free-thinking music with a modern experimentalism. A 2002 debut album on the small indie Alive Records label, The Big Come Up, led the band to sign with the tastemaking Possum Records imprint and issue two more CDs — Thickfreakness (2003) and Rubber Factory (2004) — that sealed the band’s rep with the musical cognoscente while their take-no-prisoners shows made The Black Keys a hot ticket on the touring and festival circuits. With 2006’s Magic Potion on Nonesuch, the little bluesy duo with a wallop of an impact has risen to the big leagues.

And now with this year’s Attack & Release, The Black Keys have come out of the cellar to be produced by Danger Mouse. “After doing four albums in the basement, we were ready to go somewhere else," Auerbach says. The project began when Danger Mouse asked the Keys to write songs for an album by Ike Turner. But when the r&b legend died last December, it became a collaboration that led to Attack & Release.

The new release leapt to #14 on the Billboard 200 and the trade’s Top Internet Albums chart, a signal that The Black Keys have arrived. And it’s still just the two of them creating music for millions. “Pat and I just click,” observes Auerbach of their simple-yet-potent equation. “We walk in to a groove quite easily. It's kind of hard to describe.” But a listen to The Black Keys tells the tale quite vividly.

Kennedy is running for President. Like the current Bush administration, Kennedy is on a mission to make the world a sexier place. He is a lightning bolt of freedom into the pants of millions of Americans. In a land of musical midgets Kennedy’s looms over the music business like Godzilla, knocking the other candidates on their asses.

Like Jimi Hendrix, but whiter and with stronger LSD, Kennedy’s musical genius took the UK by storm and is now conquering the rest of the world (Canada included). Kennedy is a cornerstone of the new UK music movement called DirtyPop. Led by British Garage pioneer DJ Sticky and producers Count Da Money, DirtyPop is hot, sexy, danceable and fertile. Kennedy is their poster boy, spokesmodel, and resident alien.

Kennedy’s music video for “Your Mama” is more than election propaganda; it is an internet sensation, cultural benchmark and pop phenomenon. After being viewed over 1 million times in it’s first week on YouTube and over 3 million times and counting, it makes the Paris Hilton sex video look like Cop Rock. It is a wondrous disco rollercoaster ride through a mystical land of MILF’s, Cougars, and disgruntled children. Some accolades include being featured on YouTube’s home page (on Mother’s Day no less), named one of iFilm’s viral videos of the year, and winning Fuse’s Oven Fresh competition, beating out the likes of Justin Timberlake, Fergie, Outkast and more.

Born Jack Kennedy to a father named John Wayne, Kennedy is a true American. Clawing his way out of the pop culture abyss Kennedy is songwriter, M.C., rock star, gigolo and future Commander in Briefs. Equal parts raconteur and provocateur, Kennedy is the consummate showman: a bit of PT Barnum, a dash of Woody Allen, a spoonful of Mark Mothersbaugh and a heaping helping of Dirk Diggler.

Long before Kennedy was a Presidential candidate, he spent his formative years in Hollywood working as a tape op at the legendary Cherokee studios. Here he learned the art of recording by working with acts like Mack 10, Taj Mahal, Nik Venet, Brandy, The Lemonheads and various Death Row Recording artists.

After being kicked out of L.A.'s Silversun Pickups for setting the singer's sweater on fire, Kennedy was selected to open for Jon Brion at Café Largo in Los Angeles. The name-dropping doesn't end there. Kennedy has also become a favorite among LA's hipster illuminati, sharing the stage with Fiona Apple, David Cross, Elliot Smith, Sarah Silverman, Diamond Nights, Aimee Mann, Tenacious D, The Black Keys, and many other somewhat talented artists.

In 2007 Kennedy signed a lucrative contract with Cordless Recordings, a Warner Music Group company. Kennedy’s new album “Kennedy For President” is the soundtrack to Kennedy’s political platform as well as the slow ballin’ album of the year. In a sign of cross-Atlantic political unity, the album will be released by Cordless Recordings in the US and Atlantic Records in the UK. Being christened “The most important album since Pet Sounds,” this record is an attention whore. Get out yer cash and pay the slut.

In addition to working together, the guys play in a duo called The Black Keys (named in honor of a schizophrenic Akron artist, who called the boys “black keys,” his phrase for people who weren’t quite right). Though they’ve known each other since they were kids, they’ve only been playing together as a unit for a year. They’d drifted apart in high school (“Most of Dan’s friends wanted to beat me up and I wanted to provoke most of his friends to want to beat me up,” Patrick says), but each was deeply involved in music; Patrick’s tastes leaned toward Devo, noise rock and hip-hop, while Dan, who had grown up playing old folk songs at family reunions, gravitated towards electric Mississippi blues.

In 2001, Dan had booked some time to record with his current band in Patrick’s primitive basement recording studio. When the group didn’t show, Dan and Patrick banged out the first Black Keys songs off the cuff. The demos recorded that serendipitous afternoon secured them a deal with Alive Records for their debut, The Big Come Up, and barely a year later, they’re sweating behind lawnmowers in the summer sun, looking forward to taking off in a busted hatchback the next week to see America on their first tour. The job is a vital component in the big picture. The plan is to work, save money, tour, come back to Akron, repeat ad nauseum. Humble rock dreams. So what do they do? They go and get themselves fired, that’s what they do. For not edging a lawn correctly.

Unemployment be damned, they blow Akron. Dan, quiet and wry, plays fuzzed-out guitar and sings—scratch that—howls sweetly and growls soulfully when he’s on stage, like a man whose only friends in the world are his songs of suffering and true romance and the guitar he plays them on. Patrick attacks his drums like they stole his mother’s purse. The combination sparks. Some folks actually show up at their debut shows, and The Big Come Up gets a four-star rave in Rolling Stone. All of a sudden getting a job once back home seems like an not-so-attractive Plan B. Dan and Patrick figure that if they spend almost every waking hour on their music—practicing, playing, touring, writing and so on—they can make this enterprise work. So the boys get busy. They rehearse non-stop in Patrick’s rat-infested basement. They undertake a punishing tour schedule, and in 2003, they record their colossal-sounding sophomore album, Thickfreakness, in Patrick’s basement studio for their new record label, Fat Possum, in one furious 12-hour session.

Later that year, the band takes up residence on the second floor of a cavernous former tire factory in a desolate section of East Akron. Putting together an ad hoc studio of second-hand equipment and old magnetic tape recycled from not-quite-right recordings of Mississippi fried chicken joint commercials, sessions for Rubber Factory, the band’s third record in as many years, begin in January and last until April 2004. Rubber Factory isn’t slick, it’s raw and it’s beautiful in a ragged way. The plan’s working: The Black Keys are touring the world, Dan and Patrick are able keep Akron as their base and stick close to their families and favorite haunts, and they still haven’t had to get “real” jobs.

Cut to early 2006—The Black Keys return to the basement (Patrick’s new, rat-free studio, Audio Eagle) to record Magic Potion, their fourth full-length album for new label Nonesuch. Despite its title, Magic Potion is ironically the sound of The Black Keys getting their signature sound down to a science—it’s the band at their heaviest, grittiest and most powerfully stripped down. From the nasty, sweaty strut of the album’s first single, “Your Touch,” to the to the sublimely narcotic devotional ballad “You’re the One,” right on down to the stomping, house-rocking call to arms “Modern Times,” The Black Keys have made the finest recording of their career.

A lot has changed since Dan and Patrick’s lawn-mowing days: albums have been recorded; relationships have been busted; tour transportation has been upgraded from a compact car to a passenger van; the band’s gone from playing empty clubs to selling out huge halls; The Black Keys have been praised by critics, fans and musicians ranging from Robert Plant to Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke, who specifically requested that the Keys accompany the band as their opening act this past June.

But strangely enough, things have also stayed the same. Dan and Patrick are still living in Akron, still barbecuing with their families, and still kicking up holy rackets of earth-shaking fuzz and booming percussion in basements. Magic Potion, in addition to being a hell of a rock and roll record, serves as a raised glass to the band’s home. As Dan says, “The idea was for people to be able to sit on a porch in Akron with a can of beer and blast the record through a boom box.”

Only history and the people of Akron will be able to tell if Magic Potion passes that particular test, but if the Keys have anything to say about it, they’re going to be tireless in their mission of bringing the gospel of Akron to the world. “People can depend on Pat and me to play music and be around for life,” Dan says, adding. “We have to; it’s the only job skill we have.”

For more information, please contact Mary Moyer or Carla Sacks at Sacks & Co., 212.741.1000, mary@sacksco.com, or carla@sacksco.com