The Black Keys landed in headlines and caused some concern among fans when they abruptly canceled their 2024 arena tour last month, seemingly due to poor ticket sales. Now, in the fallout of the bungle, the duo has dismissed its managers, Irving Azoff and Steve Moir.
The news of the split was first reported by The New York Times, and has been confirmed by a representative for Azoff, who told Billboard that it was an “amicable parting.”
Azoff — an industry legend and former Ticketmaster CEO — and Moir first began repping The Black Keys in 2021. The now-canceled “International Players Tour” was slated to begin in September, but will evidently be reimagined into a “similarly exciting, intimate experience for both fans and the band,” according to a statement the band shared.
As of now, though, their only upcoming date is a set at the NASCAR Chicago Street Race festival on July 6th.
The Black Keys’ twelfth studio album, Ohio Players, arrived this past April, featuring 14 new songs and contributions by Beck, Juicy J, and more. Notably, the album is their least successful commercial release in nearly two decades, debuting at No. 26 on the Billboard 200 and sitting there for only a week before falling out of the chart completely — a far cry from 2014’s No. 1 hit Turn Blue, or 2010’s No. 3 hit Brothers, which had a spot on the charts for 145 weeks.
The Black Keys aren’t the only major artist to call off an arena tour recently though, thanks to the cancellation of Jennifer Lopez’s summer tour last week.