“What If I Told You Rahm Emanuel Not Only Worked At An Arby’s, But He Sliced Two Of His Fingers Off Doing It?”
Last week White Sox Dave and I flew down to Nashville on a moments notice to meet up with our co-host Colin from Foxtrot and The Getdown to interview the one and only Patrick Carney from The Black Keys.
Yah, it didn't make sense to us either.
Even writing this I still can't believe it happened.
We started this thing over Covid, well actually Dave and Colin started it with Kenny Carkeet from AWOL Nation, and eventually invited me to join.
We've been rogue since day 1. Never getting any help from the mother ship but also never really needing or wanting any. We've got this music industry rebel thing going for us and it seems to be working. In the first 2 minutes of sitting down with Patrick Carney, and asking him what in the hell he was doing making time for our nobody-asses, he said that he actually listens to our podcast.
Patrick Carney of The Black Keys, one of the biggest rock bands in the world, listens to our fledgling little podcast, "On The Guestlist".
Yah, we don't get it either Bert Kreischer. But it's fucking awesome.
This gets said a lot, usually in a half honest, half ass-kiss king of way, but Patrick could not have possibly been any cooler. And I mean that with 100% sincerity.
He showed up, (5 minutes early) with an iced coffee in hand, flip flops, and an outfit on that screamed he'd either just come off the back 9, or just rolled out of bed and forgot he had an interview to go to. He is way taller than he looks on tv or in pictures. He also rolled solo. No manager. No "handler". We began shooting the shit immediately about the Guardians and baseball in general, his kids and being a father, and he had us cracking up. Sadly we weren't sitting down or rolling cameras. He didn't give us any of the usual "lets talk about this and avoid this stuff". The only point he brought up was that he said he had somewhere to be in an hour. We told him we wouldn't take up more than 30 minutes of his time.
What transpired over the next hour and a half was some of the funniest, most casual and light-hearted conversation between three-nobodies and one of the most talented musicians in the world that you'll hear anywhere.
We talked about literally everything under the sun.
As you'll see from the interview, Patrick bleeds Cleveland sports. Loves cheeseburgers. And loves working on and playing music but not so much discussing it.
Which is why he and his bandmate Dan Auerbach are so elusive for interviews.
Aside from Joe Rogan, (no joke), they don't really do any. Much to the dismay of Rolling Stone.
Which is why the very first thing we asked him was "what the fuck are you doing on our show"? Because we honestly couldn't understand it.
As it turns out, Patrick is a listener, and had his team reach out to White Sox Dave (not a joke) about setting something up.
Aside from giving us all major anxiety now wondering what other mega-stars out there might listen to our thoughts and ramblings on a casual or regular basis, it was pretty awesome knowing somebody of Patrick's stature even gives a shit.
As for the title of this blog, Rahm Emanuel, yes, Patrick told one of the more ridiculous stories you'll hear concerning Rahm. When headlining Lollapalooza in 2012, Emanuel, a big fan of the band, greeted Patrick and Dan backstage before introducing them to the crowd of over 100,000 packed into Grant Park for their headlining set.
Upon shaking Emanuel's hand, the irreverent, and honest, Carney blurted out "whats the matter with your hand?".
As it turns out, and as Rahm explained to Patrick, two of his fingers were the misfortunate victims of an on the job accident slicing meat at Arby's.
Carney's mind was blown, rightfully so, that Rahm, aka "Rahmbo", once had a summer job at Arby's, and even more so that they used to actually slice meat there…
So much so that while on stage performing in front of one of the largest crowds of their career, he couldn't stop thinking about it.
Absolute gold.
And that's just one of like 20 awesome stories he told us in this interview.
You've got to set aside some time (roughly 90 minutes, because he's such a good guy he went well over what he originally told us he could do) and listen to the entire thing.
You also need to check out The Black Keys' new album, Dropout Boogie, available on Nonesuch Records Inc. and streamable on Spotify
and Apple Music
We cannot thank Patrick enough for his time. And for being so cool and down to Earth. It's really amazing when you meet people you look up to and hold in such high regard and they're not assholes. It's fucking incredible when they're normal people who just enjoy normal things and appreciate common sense.
Check out "On The Guest List" and please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE on Youtube
Spotify
and Apple Music