Dan Auerbach’s debut solo album, Keep It Hid, returns to print, with the seminal 2009 collection being reissued on vinyl, cassette, and CD via Easy Eye Sound—the label that Keep It Hid inspired Auerbach to create.
As Dan Auerbach’s first major work outside The Black Keys, Keep It Hid was the true impetus for Auerbach’s now multifaceted career as a Grammy-winning producer, mentor to emerging talent, and founder of Easy Eye Sound, Billboard’s reigning Blues Label Of The Year.
Auerbach celebrated the release with a music video for “Whispered Words (Pretty Lies),” directed by Robert Schober— better known as Roboshobo, the artist who has directed for Metallica, Green Day, The Killers, and more. Check that out above.
The Keep It Hid reissue is equipped with new album art, a limited-edition cassette release for the first time, and six updated vinyl variants: including exclusive variants for US Indie Record Stores (Orange + Black Marble), Tennessee Indie Record Stores (signed copies on Peach + Black Marble), Easy Eye Sound’s online store (limited signed copies on Orange + Yellow Splatter), Vinyl Me, Please (Maroon Marble, limited to 750 copies) and Newbury Comics (signed copies on Orange + Black two-sided vinyl).
Originally recorded by Auerbach as he was building his first home studio in Akron, Ohio—a precursor to his Easy Eye Sound Studio in Nashville, where Auerbach now records and produces most of the label’s current releases—Keep It Hid tapped into the now-veteran crate-digger’s penchant for rare finds.
Inspired by forgotten 60s psych rock, obscure British power-pop, bluegrass family bands, the collection spans from echo-laden garage rock (“Heartbroken, In Disrepair”) and fuzz-scarred blues (“The Prowl”) to haunted Southern soul (“Real Desire”) and bittersweet-country comfort (“When The Night Comes”).
The album was hailed as “intimate and thrilling” by NPR’s Fresh Air upon its original release, with reviewer Ken Tucker adding it, “sounds like a clearing of the throat and mind.” Dan Auerbach recently appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss Easy Eye Sound, his early career in music, his blues heroes, and more.
Buy or stream the vinyl reissue of Keep It Hid.
