Cash News
AKRON, Ohio — Had things gone as the Black Keys planned, the Grammy Award-winning, Akron-born rock duo would have been basking in the glow of another successful arena tour this month, having just played a sold-out gig at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland to celebrate the release of its latest album, “Ohio Players.”
But singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney have had a few tough months. They canceled that planned Oct. 12 Cleveland concert, along with every other date on their “International Players Tour, due to low ticket sales. They also parted ways with their management. They seemed destined for a long rebuild.
It turns out that they did make it back to Ohio for a hometown show this month, but it was a strange one for sure — a small, pay-to-play private gig Friday night at the Akron Civic Theater sponsored by Stand With Crypto, a non-profit political outreach group that, among other things, grades political candidates based on their support of legislation favored by the crytocurrency industry.
Far from being a musical event, the Friday concert was part of a well-funded, national political campaign that is spending tens of millions of dollars to influence state and federal political races nationwide. That includes Ohio, where pro-crypto political action committees, including a Super PAC called Fairshake, have pumped more than $40 million into ads to support Bernie Moreno in his race to unseat incumbent U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, a longtime crypto critic.
Stand With Crypto is backed by several cryptocurrency companies, including Gemini and Coinbase. The latter is currently the largest U.S. crypto exchange, and according to a recent analsysis by Politico, has spent more than $50 million in the past two years to influence — some would say intimidate — candidates about crypto legislation and policy.
In Ohio, that has meant endorsing and financially assisting Moreno, who founded the blockchain firm Ownum in 2018 and gets an “A” grade from Stand With Crypto. He is its recommended Ohio senate candidate. Brown, meanwhile, gets an “F” for being “strongly anti-crypto.”
The super PAC Fairshake has donated $1.8 million to Stand With Crypto, according to Politico. It has poured millions more into super PACS that, according to a recent investigation by the New Yorker, intimidate politicians into supporting its pro-crypto agenda.
Fairshake-financed ads in Ohio criticize Brown and praise Moreno, a former car dealer, as a smart self-made businessman and decent human being. None of the ads ever mention the special interest group’s crypto-focused agenda. Fairshake’s website claims it “supports candidates committed to securing the United States as the home to innovators building the next generation of the internet.”
What all of this has to do the Black Keys, which rose from its humble roots in Akron to become one of the biggest bands in rock ‘n’ roll, is anybody’s guess. The band’s management declined to talk about Friday’s gig in Akron, which was part of a nationwide “America Loves Crypto Tour,” that also featured shows in other cities by Big Sean, The Chainsmokers, Black Pumas, Jessie Murph, 070 Shake and Lauv.
To enter the event in Akron, fans were required to RSVP with their contact information online, and then download and install the Coinbase wallet app to receive their digital entry pass.
Auerbach and Carney said nothing about crypto — and very little else — onstage Friday, playing a 45-minute set of Black Keys hits and fan favorites.
The staging was unique, with the band setup facing the backstage area, with about 200 standing-room-only fans also on stage. The orchestra level was left empty and the rest of the fans who RSVP‘d for the show were in the about 2/3 full Akron Civic balcony. watching the back of the vertical lighting rig on the stage, the back of the band’s heads and the faces of the onstage fans. A very odd setup for a rock concert.
The duo was augmented Friday with keyboardist Ray Jacildo, bassist-vocalist Zach Gabbard and guitarist-vocalist Andy Gabbard. They also record as the Gabbard Bros. and were members of the groovy Cincinnati psych-rock band Buffalo Killers, whose second album “Let It Ride” was one of Auerbach’s early production credits.
The band tore into “Gold On The Ceiling,” which turned into a singalong that had some in the balcony dancing in the aisles. Per usual, Auerbach kept the banter to a minimum mentioning that another of the band’s singles, “Your Touch,” was “recorded right down the street from here.”
While the gig didn‘t have the mass-frenzied atmosphere of a packed arena show or the sweaty, communal feel of a good club concert, the Keys played well, offering a loping, funky “Tighten Up,” some fine screaming six-string fretwork from Auerbach on “She’s Long Gone” and “Howlin‘ For You,” and a soulful “Little Black Submarines” with Auerbach‘s going from its gentle acoustic opening to heavy bar chords for its rocking coda.
After a suitably stomping take on “Fever,” Auerbach turned to the folks in the balcony, waved, and asked, “How ya doin’ up there?” receiving cheers from the seemingly faraway fans.
“Weirdest gig we‘ve ever played,” he said, turning back around to count off a slow-crawling “Next Girl.” The show ended with a bouncy sing-a-long “Lonely Boy,” ending the Keys’s first hometown show in 15 years.
Before the Keys took the stage, fans of the band and crypto gathered loosely outside the Akron Civic Theatre. Once the doors opened and fans entered, they were greeted with a branded Stand With Crypto swag bag filled with free crypto-friendly trucker hats, and large signs with “I Vote For Crypto” and “I Stand with Crypto.” Some folks happily took the free stuff, others politely declined.
The Akron event was the last stop on a cross-country seven-date Stand With Crypto Tour, which featured other artists, including rapper Big Sean in Detroit, Lauv in Philadelphia, and The Chainsmokers in Washington D.C.
The concert was preceded by speeches advocating for crypto and crypto-friendly candidates from Ohio, prompting one onstage concert-goer to joke,” I knew there was a catch. It’s a time-share!”
Crypto folks including Andrew Burchwell of the Ohio Blockchain Council, who brought up various “blockchain innovators” and speakers to pump up the future of crypto and the importance of voting pro-crypto. Each speaker talked about how crypto is simply misunderstood by most folks and praised the blockchain’s potential to help in areas such as “public sector transparency and secured voting and digital identity verification. They also touted what they claim is the bipartisan nature of their mission and the importance of America leading the way in the coming global crypto economy. When a women in the audience asked loudly,” Why should we vote for crypto?” she was summarily ignored.
Other speakers talked of innovations such as a data center that used the immense heat generated by crypto mining to fuel a greenhouse that grows food it donates to local food banks. Another data center was praised for having a system that, should the electric grid fail, will quickly shut down and disseminate the incredible amount of energy data centers require so that the regular folks in the community will still have energy.