According to multiple reports, the Black Keys have signed on as new clients with Red Light Management – trading one mega-management company for another after a public spat with Irving Azoff after their fall arena tour was cancelled last month. Red Light is headed by Coran Capshaw, who has grown the firm to one of the largest in the world following his rise as the manager of the Dave Matthews Band in the 1990s.
To date, neither the Black Keys nor Red Light have confirmed the news of the management switch. The band does not currently appear listed among the management company’s roster of artists.
A week ago, Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney made waves after news broke of his band’s termination of its relationship with Azoff and Steve Moir with a semi-cryptic tweet. “We got [expletive]ed,” he posted on X late at night on June 10. I’ll let you all know how so it doesn’t happen to you. Stay tuned.”
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That post has since been deleted, but Carney later responded to old tweets posted by Azoff on social media implying that posting disparaging comments in public can’t get someone in trouble provided what is said is true – those posts have also since been scrubbed.
Azoff and Moir had been fired by the Ohio-based duo a week prior, after having managed them since 2021. That came less than two weeks after news broke that the band had cancelled its entire International Players Tour, which many blamed on the outrageous ticket prices the band and its management were attempting to charge for the run of 30+ arena dates.
At the time of the tour cancellation, the group said that plans were underway to bring the tour out on the road in the fall, just in more intimate venue settings rather than arenas. It is unclear when such plans will be announced, but the hiring of a new management firm to take things over is a good first step.
Interestingly enough, Corin Capshaw and Irving Azoff have close ties as well through the industry lobbying group the Music Action Coalition. Both managers serve as board members, with multiple aligned artists and longtime business partners also serving on the board. It has been a significant public supporter of the Azoff-led Fix The Tix coalition, which markets itself as a grassroots organization but is pushing an identical legislative agenda to the Live Nation Entertainment “FAIR” ticketing program.
Capshaw has publicly stated in the past that he has a sizable stake in Live Nation Entertainment, while Azoff is the former CEO of Ticketmaster and chairman of Live Nation Entertainment who has allegedly served as its “pimp” and “hammer” while his Oak View Group business chose to collude with rather than compete against Live Nation according to the Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit filed seeking to break it and Ticketmaster up.
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The Black Keys are not listed as supporters of the Music Artists Coalition, nor were they signers of the Fix The Tix letter earlier this year.