The Troubadour | Los Angeles, CA | November 18, 2017 | Photo Credit: ZB Images |
We’re not sure if the world is ready for Black Pistol Fire.
In September the twosome released their fifth full album, Deadbeat Graffiti; by far their strongest, most cohesive and fine-tuned fusion of the Led Zeppelin-esque dirty garage rock, soul and Texas-touched deep blues that they traffic in. It’s the stuff that gives the music-loving heart hope that rock is far, far from dead. We also don’t know what the hell Canada was thinking when it birthed Kevin McKeown (vox/guitar) and his partner in musical menace, Eric Owen (drums) but we’re glad that it did, and that the heavy-hitting (understatement) blues rock duo keep bringing their fierce, frenetic goodness back to Los Angeles, this time to slay every face in the sold out Troubadour.
From the moment they kicked off their set with Deadbeat Graffiti‘s first track, “Lost Cause,” McKeown and Owen were practically Pied Pipers leading their Troubadour followers anywhere and everywhere they wanted them to go. Dipping though their catalogue for songs like “Hipster Shakes,” “Suffocation Blues,” and even taking on Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” – oh hell – it was all nothing short of an incendiary display of beautifully unhinged, rock n roll abandon as Owen resembled the human manifestation of the Muppets’ Animal beating the art of rhythm into oblivion (and we mean all of that in the best way!) while McKeown defied gravity, released blistering guitar riffs, crowd surfed and dripped electric sweat upon everyone brave enough to get within swinging distance of his guitar head.
And he almost made through the entire show without breaking a guitar string. Almost.
Yeah, Black Pistol Fire, we’re not sure if the rest of the world is ready for the likes of you…but we sure are.
