It didn’t hit Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney until the first time he heard the vinyl test pressing, at his New York apartment.

His band’s next album was going to change their lives. “I knew it would,” Carney says now.

That album was “Brothers.” Released May 18, 2010, “Brothers” distilled The Black Keys’ bluesy sound into sharp, tight songs exuding contemporary appeal without sacrificing the band’s nonchalant cool.

“Brothers” launched top-five rock singles – “Howlin’ For You” and the chart-topping “Tighten Up” – and achieved double-platinum sales. (That latter plateau, something rock bands now can literally only dream of.) The success of “Brothers” transformed The Keys, who not long before that were still touring in a van, into arena headliners.

Since much of it was recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound, the album also helped return that Alabama recording Mecca back to contemporary music conversations. And mainstream spotlight.

Still, “The process of making the record was a little bit different than it usually gets talked about,” Carney says now of “Brothers.” “Even if you go on Wikipedia it’s not really clear, what the hell, how the record was made. We only recorded nine of the 15 songs in Muscle Shoals, but it was the most important part of the process.”

The story of “Brothers” actually begins in California. The Black Keys, an Akron, Ohio-founded duo fronted by bearded singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach, were playing some West Coast shows in 2008. Producer/engineer Mark Neill, who lived in the San Diego area at the time, had previously helped Auerbach set up a home studio and they’d become friends. During an off day or two, The Black Keys went to record with Neill at his house. The sessions yielded three songs, including sludgy stomp “Chop and Change,” later to surface on “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” soundtrack, and dynamic ballad “These Days,” which became the closing track on “Brothers.”

About six or nine months later, the band was gearing up in earnest to record their next LP.

“Dan and I agreed we wanted to have Mark engineer it and we wanted to leave town because we were working best at that point when we were able to get away from our personal lives,” Carney says. “The original plan was to go to a studio in The South. And there were three studios we were looking at. We were looking at Royal in Memphis, Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis and Muscle Shoals Sound Studios. Mark encouraged us to go to Muscle Shoals. There was a cool, real eccentric guy named Noel that owned it.”

Webster, a local music producer and machine shop owner, had purchased the iconic Muscle Shoals Sound building, located at 3614 Jackson Hwy. in Sheffield, in 1999, a period when, Webster says, “the building was condemned, the city was going to knock it down and they gave me 90 days to get it up to code.”

After acquiring 3614, as well as the building behind it, from a local doctor for a five-figure sum, Webster rebuilt the studio, which had a leaky roof overhead and dead dogs inside when he first acquired it. He was motivated to renovate Muscle Shoals Sound because growing up in Chicago he’d learned to play drums while listening to Bob Seger, Rod Stewart and Paul Simon tracks recorded there. Eventually Webster was able to get Muscle Shoals Sound listed on the National Register of Historic Places and attract some T-shirt-purchasing tourists.

Local bands, like Halo Stereo, and touring acts, including Band of Horses, came to record. Webster also acquired a large cache of vintage gear from a New York recording museum. He was selling some parts online, including eight-track Scully tape machine heads to Auerbach. “I started to talk with Mark about a lot of stuff, and he’s into vintage gear and that started a whole friendship there,” Webster says.

A month or two before departing for their 10-day session at Muscle Shoals Sound, The Black Keys got together at Auerbach’s studio and cut several tracks, including psychedelic-funk instrumental “Black Mud,” rifftastic “She’s Long Gone” and poignant “Unknown Brother,” all of which would end up on “Brothers.” Another session around then that Carney recorded on his laptop yielded falsetto purr “The Only One.”

Carney and Auerbach arrived Muscle Shoals Sound on August 16, 2009, in a van filled with their instruments and other equipment.

Stepping inside Muscle Shoals Sound for the first, Carney says “was really cool because it was totally broke-down. There was some weird rubber flooring all over the live room. All the original baffles were up. I think one of the speakers in the control room wasn’t sounding good, so we just decided since Mark has really cool old-school recording techniques that we were going to record the whole thing basically in mono anyway, as far as like drums, so we just monitored that whole album in mono.”

Auerbach made a curious request early on, Webster says. “He made us take some pictures down, He didn’t want Rod Stewart looking at him while he was recording, so that’s the first thing we did was take the pictures out.”

The funky surroundings suited The Black Keys, according to Carney. “I think Dan and I have always identified with underdog status and I think just being in that room in that kind of forgotten space was inspiring.”

There was also some intense personal stuff going on. About a week and a half before the “Brothers” Muscle Shoals Studio sessions, Carney split with his then-wife, who he’d been with for about nine years. “We were having normal problems you have when you get married too young type s—,” Carney says. This gives added context to valley-wide “Brothers” track “Next Girl,” which Carney recalls being one of the first songs they cut at Muscle Shoals Sound, along with the glam-gospel of “Everlasting Light.” “Whenever I go through a hard time I just listen to tons of music, so I think Dan and I were making each other playlist after playlist before we got down there, and when we finally got down to Muscle Shoals we were listening to tons of music. It’s August in Alabama, it’s hot as f— and I think we listened to music that had a lot of space to it.” Ann Peebles and Isley Brothers were among the artists they were frequently spinning. Neill, who was engineering and co-producing the sessions, brought his collection of classic Muscle Shoals vinyl singles for further inspiration.” Of course, Dan and Pat had figured out (The Rolling Stones hits) ‘Wild Horses’ and ‘Brown Sugar’ had been recording in (Muscle Shoals Sound),” says Neill, who now is based in Valdosta, Ga. “And I think they thought that was a pretty cool thing.”

Looking back on the “Brothers” sessions there, Carney feels there are several things Muscle Shoals Sound’s cozy confines brought out of The Black Keys, sonically.

“One, is that there’s a basement,” the drummer says, “that has about eight- or nine-foot ceilings if not higher and the floor is barely braced, so if you hit a kickdrum in there or something it definitely feels like it moves the room a bit. That’s kind of reminiscent to the kind of places that Dan and I recorded before, so it didn’t feel like a studio, which I think helped. When we were making it, we were having a lot of fun. And there were definitely some songs on there I thought were really, really amazing or cool or whatever.”

Tall, lanky and frequently sporting Buddy Holly-ish glasses, Carney checks in for this interview from the control room of his home studio in Nashville, where he now resides. His gold and platinum records are displayed on the wall there. But not his five Grammys – including three for “Brothers” – he keeps those on a shelf in the house he shares with his fiance, the singer Michelle Branch. As a journalist when you’re given a band’s drummer to interview it’s usually a let-down. But since The Black Keys are a two-piece and Carney has such an interesting personality and musical take, he’s actually the guy you want to talk with. He’s articulate, loose and funny, with a talent for dropping F-bombs in just the right places.

Perhaps the biggest impact on the “Brothers” material was The Black Keys had recently recorded an album called “Blackroc” of collaborations with hip-hop artists like Q-Tip, RZA and Ludacris. On “Blackroc,” the band was super-focused on rhythm, which led to an import change in how they cut basic tracks, Carney says. “Right before we went to Muscle Shoals, Dan and I kind of locked into this groove of he would play bass and I would play drums. So rather than write with the guitar, I think a lot of it we were doing with the bass and the drums.”

Auerbach’s handsome howl and Carney’s syncopated grooves gave their “Brothers” tracks a sexy, dance-y feel. After the album was released this helped The Black Keys significantly widen its fan base, going from being a band mostly only record store clerk dudes and other indie male types listened to, to a band all kinds of girls danced to. “We were just trying to get the thing to communicate to a broader audience,” Neill says.

Although the band’s road manager was around some it was mostly just Neill, Carney and Auerbach inside Muscle Shoals Sound working on the album. Neill had brought in some vintage instruments that shaped the sound, including a Gretsch drum kit with a relatively small kickdrum. “The whole thing about kickdrums,” Carney says, “is the smaller the kickdrum the more focus, so therefore you can sometimes get the biggest kickdrum sound out of a 20-inch kick, a 22 for sure. You go bigger than that and it looks amazing onstage, but you might not want to record with it unless you’re John Bonham.”

After laying down bass and drums for a song, typically then Auerbach would track guitar, write lyrics and do vocals and Carney would add keyboards and percussion. Neill says, “‘Brothers’ is a very retro sounding record, but it’s also very modern because the beats and the way the rhythm is constructed and the way the vocals play off it makes that.”

Although Webster had the studio outfitted with two analog tape machines, Neill brought in his 1997 RADAR digital recording system to cut with. Carney and Auerbach also owned RADAR rigs, making it easy for them to later exchange hard-drives, if needed. Unlike says, Pro Tools, Carney says RADAR is a platform, “that has basically no editing capabilities so it was all done live.” Neill’s recording techniques produced a warmth reminiscent of analog. After Neill played Webster back some tracks, the studio owner was impressed: “That doesn’t sound digital,” Webster recalls saying. “That sounds like tape.”

Neill had also brought in an old Studer console that folded up like a suitcase to track through. Carney recalls that console only having 12 channels, so while technically the RADAR system allowed for recording 24-tracks for each song, because of the console the band could only hear 12. So, overdubs had to be kept to a minimum.

“The record sounds massive and that’s partially because there’s so much space,” Carney says. “There’s not a bunch of s— filling up all the gaps. And I think if you listen to ‘Howlin’ for You,’ that floor tom takes up a lot of room but there’s really not much going on. It’s drums, bass, two guitars, a keyboard, backing vocals, vocal, percussion. That’s it. And having Mark there to capture everything so well, it was just kind of the perfect storm of us getting to our sixth record.”

Upon its release “Brothers” singles like the swampy “Howlin’ for You” and whistle-powered jam “Tighten Up” connected in a big way. But like all truly memorable albums, “Brothers” was also well-stocked with killer deep-cuts. The dark triptych of “Ten Cent Pistol,” “Sinister Kid” and “Go Getter” which opens side three of the double-vinyl, is particularly compelling. “Those three songs, that’s like the core of the album,” Carney says. “Aand those three songs if you look on like streaming services those are the least streamed songs, which is always the case. But they’re some of my favorites.” Neill recalls those cuts being recorded towards the end of the Muscle Shoals Sound session. “Those went down instantaneously,” the producer says. “There was no deliberation on that. Those may have been one take.”

The Black Keys were staying at the Marriott hotel in Florence. Carney thinks his room was on a floor with an even number. One night while taking a break in recording, The Black Keys, Neill and Webster grilled out filet mignon steaks at the studio to celebrate Webster’s birthday. Carney also recalls the studio owner taking the band to a family he was friends with, the Haynes, for a homecooked meal as well.

Early in the band’s time in the Shoals, they copped some local weed. “I don’t even really smoke it to be honest, but that stuff I could really get into because it was so weak that I didn’t get paranoid,” Carney says. “I just wanted to hear music. And we were smoking that like the whole time we were down there. It was just crappy weed. But it was perfect. And I think somebody could make billions of dollars selling it because it did exactly the right s—.” Perhaps this explains why the band often wore sunglasses while recording inside Muscle Shoals Sound.

One night after sessions had ended for the day, Carney stayed up late getting high and listening to his iPod. At some point, he texted The Black Keys’ manager in Nashville that the band had to have a harpsichord at the studio the next day. Not the most common keyboard request. “I woke up the next day, didn’t even remember sending that text, he showed up with a harpsichord,” Carney says with a laugh. The harpsichord features prominently on dreamy “Brothers” tune “Too Afraid To Love You.”

A cover of R&B singer Jerry Butler’s ’60s cut “Never Gonna Give You Up,” is probably the most “Muscle Shoals sounding” of the songs The Black Keys cut at Muscle Shoals Sound. Fuzz-guitar stands-in for where a horn section would normally be, on a Shoals classic. About 10 years earlier, Carney’s father had given him a CD containing Butler’s version. At Muscle Shoals Sound, the band and Neill had been tracking a song each day, but eventually they got stuck and wanted to just record a cover and Carney suggested “Never Gonna Give You Up.” On the very last day of the band’s MSS sessions, singer/songwriter and Shoals native Jason Isbell, whose star had yet to truly rise as a solo artist, stopped by. “We found out the whole time we were down there, there was a bar Jason was hanging out at right around the corner,” Carney says. “And I don’t think we even ever figured out there was a bar there.

The whole time The Black Keys were in the Shoals, Carney was also looking for an apartment in New York. About a week after the 10 days of Muscle Shoals Sound sessions were done and the band left town, he moved to New York. After sitting on their recordings for a couple weeks, Carney wasn’t sure they had a song that would get played on the radio. “And we’d never had a song played on the radio, but it was our sixth album and I thought we should try to write one more song just to see what the f— happens.” So, in New York the band recorded one more song for the record, with the producer Danger Mouse, who’d they’d made their previous album, 2008’s “Attack & Release” with.

That song was “Tighten Up.” It would eventually top the rock and alternative songs charts, but at the time the band wasn’t sure the tune fit in with the rest of album. They were also trying to whittle down the LP to just 11 songs. Eventually, The Black Keys decided to include everything. ” We knew people would probably say that it was too long, but for us it was the only way it would work, 15 songs,” Carney says. The band enlisted Tchad Blake, whose resume includes work ranging from Tom Waits to Christina Aguilera, to mix the record. “And I think hiring Tchad Blake was one of the smartest decisions we made because he tied all the sessions together from San Diego, Akron, New York and Muscle Shoals,” Carney says. “And it all felt seamless.”

Comments that appeared in two Rolling Stone articles, one several months in advance of “Brothers” release and another shortly after the LP’s release, caused somewhat of a stir back in Alabama. In the first story, writer Christian Hoard describes Muscle Shoals Sound as a “rundown building in a ghost town.” (The photo accompanying the online version of the story is also of the wrong studio, nearby FAME Studios.) In the second story, Carney described the 3614 building as “a sweaty, ashtray, grandparents’-rec-room type thing.” Fans familiar with The Black Keys’ irreverent sense of humor saw that statement as a lighthearted joke but some locals not as familiar took offense.

But the truth is Muscle Shoals Sound is a humble, cinderblock building. Which makes the staggering number of classics recorded there even more amazing and cool. And while the area definitely has charms there isn’t a whole lot to do as far as nightlife in the Shoals. Which is actually a good thing, if you’re trying to focus on music.

Carney says, “I’m from Akron, Ohio, I lived there until I was 30 years old basically there isn’t s— to do there either! [Laughs] I love it – Akron’s my home. In Muscle Shoals, if you don’t know anybody, there’s nothing to do. And that’s why people go there to make records. That’s why there are all these good musicians there. If there was s— to do, do you think people would be sitting around learning how to play the f—ing organ? That’s the reality. It’s hard to get good at something when there’s tons of distractions and that’s what makes that place special.”

After the 2013 film “Muscle Shoals” was released, Carney was “stoked” a documentary had been made about Muscle Shoals Sound and the area’s other famous recording facility, FAME Studios.

“Only in America would you find this great pocket of musicians and studios that people with really good ears in New York knew they had to go down there to get the right s—,” Carney says. “I wish the music industry was still like that, because now people just call up like (the producer/DJ) Zedd, and he brings his computer around and they make whatever they make. But it will never feel as good as real musicians playing in a room. The thing that’s interesting to me about Muscle Shoals isn’t the studios, it’s the musicians, songwriters, it’s The Swampers, the producers. And the rooms are the closest you can get to it, the spot where it was made, you know? But really it doesn’t come down to the equipment or anything. It comes down to the playing. Which I think was also inspirational to Dan and I when we were down there. We felt at home.”

Webster sold Muscle Shoals Sound to the Muscle Shoals Music Foundation in 2013, for a six-figure price, he says. He moved his studio and vintage gear to Huntsville, Ala., and still has the coffeepot The Black Keys brought to MSS because they couldn’t find a Starbucks. He thinks some locals overreacted to the Rolling Stone stories.

“It seemed to me that Pat was being funny and being a smartass,” Webster says. “During those 10 days we didn’t hang out all the time or anything but we hung out enough I got to know them and they were nice guys and fun to be around.” Webster recalls a reporter for a certain Alabama newspaper calling him up “for dirt” on The Black Keys, asking if “anything bad happened” while the band was at Muscle Shoals Sound. “I said, ‘What do you mean dirt? They came here and made a record.’ There was no animosity by anybody in that building. And they got a record out of there they couldn’t get any place else, I tell you that.” Webster says. The Black Keys also bought some vintage gear for him before loading up their van to drive back to Akron.

While Carney was psyched upon hearing the “Brothers” test-pressing,longtime friend Matthew Johnson, founder of Fat Possum Records, which had released The Black Keys’ strong second (“Thickfreakness”) and third (“Rubber Factory”) albums, was not impressed. “He told me that we’d lost our mojo,” Carney says, with a good nature chuckle. “He hated it.”

Millions of music fans would soon disagree. Through The Black Keys’ previous five albums, hard touring and generally making blues-rock seem fresh again, the band already had the ears of indie-minded music obsessives. But “Brothers” became a legit commercial breakthrough. Before the album’s release, Carney told his lawyer he’d be thrilled if “Brothers” sold 250,000 copies. It went on to do almost 10 times that. Then came accolades from Rolling Stone, Spin and MTV. The band performed on “Saturday Night Live.”

By this time, Black Keys songs had also scored a slew of TV and film placements, and even many TV commercials that didn’t license their music now aped the band’s signature sound. The end-sum result? One of the best and hardest working underdog bands reached saturation. The Black Keys didn’t let up. Less than a year after “Brothers,” the band’s blue-collar work ethic had them back in the studio to make an album designed to rock the arenas that now beckoned. Fast, fun follow-up “El Camino” reached number two on the Billboard 200 upon its 2011 release. A notch above the number three 2010 showing by “Brothers.”

(Interestingly, although “Brothers” was recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound long after the studio’s ’60s and ’70s prime, it’s one of the best-sellers ever made there.)

When a band blows up like that, if you’ve been following them their entire career, it’s easy to take the new music for granted. But there’s a reason “Brothers” became ubiquitous: the songs, sound and singing are just damn good. The material is as good as or better than any other rock LP released since.

And The Black Keys history with Muscle Shoals Sound may not be over just yet. In 2017, Auerbach cut some solo tracks there. So far that material is unreleased. Neill also recently returned to Sheffield, to produce tracks by rising blues-rockers Bishop Gunn.

Patrick Carney remains a busy guy. An accomplished producer – he helmed the first two Black Keys LPs, as well as music for Branch the band Tennis and Netflix show “BoJack Horseman” – Carney was behind the board for upcoming records by singers Jessy Wilson and Calvin Johnson.

So where does “Brothers” fall on Carney’s list of favorite Black Keys records?

“I’m having a kid in August and my kid when he asks me to hear The Black Keys, I would probably play him the first album,” referring to 2002’s “The Big Come Up.” “Just so he got an idea of where it started. And then I would play him ‘Brothers.’ I can speak for Dan too that we’re proud of all our records, but when it comes down to it, ‘Brothers’ is probably both of our absolute favorites.”

Although The Black Keys are currently on an extended break, it’s difficult to imagine them not reuniting. Their last album, 2014’s “Turn Blue,” hit number-one. And like many longtime bands, Carney and Auerbach have gone through all kinds of crazy good and bad together, and since there are only two musicians in this group, those bonds are probably particularly close. There’s a reason they titled the album “Brothers.”