Even though their psychedelic new album sounds like they should be playing hookah bars instead of sports palaces, the Black Keys are sticking to arenas on their newly announced tour, which will include an Oct. 24 date at Target Center in Minneapolis.
The bluesy Ohioan rockers announced the itinerary this morning with a quirky video showing a fake, laugh-track-filled press conference (posted below). More seriously, they also announced they would be selling tickets on their tour through a new, paperless Ticketmaster ticketing system designed to prevent scalping. However, that won't be in use for the Target Center show because the arena exclusively uses AEG's in-house ticket system, AXS.
Tickets will be priced $35, $55 and $75, and they go on sale next Friday, May 16, at 10 a.m. via AXS.com, 888-9-AXS.TIX or the arena box office. The Minneapolis date falls about halfway through a North America trek that kicks off Sept. 5 in Columbus, Ohio. The opener for our stretch of the tour will be young but classic-sounding British rocker Jake Bugg, who was very impressive in his First Ave debut last year (St. Vincent and Cage the Elephant are opening other legs of the itinerary).
After a decade of steadily working their way up through clubs, Keys makers Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney successfully made the leap to Target Center in 2012 with an expanded four-man lineup and their equally beefed-up 2010-2011 brawn-rock albums, "Brothers" and "El Camino." Their latest record, "Turn Blue," has a much mellower and muddier tone that could add some interesting new elements. Or it could just bore the hell out of an arena crowd.
