Eric Owen and Kevin McKeown – Black Pistol Fire
It would next to impossible to bucket Austin, Texas based, via Toronto, Canada, powerhouse Black Pistol Fire into any particular genre of music and quite frankly, I don’t think drummer Eric Owen nor guitar player and front man Kevin McKeown would have it any other way.
Sonic elements ranging from southern rock, indie, pop, punk, garage as well as 70’s inspired fuzz and distortion exquisitely intertwine with one another to formulate Black Pistol Fire’s one of a kind sound.
Deadbeat Graffiti, the band’s most recent and critically well received received LP, exemplifies the band’s uncanny ability to blend these divergent soundscapes with one another to birth a record that warrants, if not demands, it be listened to in its entirety.
The album puts on for full display Owen’s and McKeown’s resplendent songwriting and musical chops while also amply rewarding the listener for diving deep into all of the record’s tracks, again and again.
Black Pistol Fire’s shows are also the stuff rock legends are made out of. If Sid Vicious from the Sex Pistols were still alive and had the opportunity to bare witness to a Black Pistol Fire performance, he’d likely turn to his band mates following the show and say, “Those fucking wankers, fuck them. Now one of you arseholes go find out if they’ll tour with us.”
Ahead of Black Pistol Fire’s performance this Monday November 20th in San Francisco at Bottom of the Hill, drummer Eric Owen spent a few minutes with Rock Revolt to muse on a variety of topics ranging from the endless comparisons to another well known two man band, how a fan petitioned the government of the Czech Republic to pay for them to tour the country and what it’s like to play shows where the audience just stares back at the band in dead silence.
Rock Revolt: Have you grown tired of the comparisons to other two member bands, most notably the Black Keys, and do you think some music critics and fans are being lazy in making those benign analogies without perhaps taking the requisite time to properly explore Black Pistol Fire’s music?
Owen: On one hand it’s incredibly frustrating and on the other, I kind of get it. But it does seem incredibly lazy. I will say it’s good that people have some point of reference though.
Do I listen to the Black Keys, no, but I do respect the hell out of them. It does makes me wonder though if we had a third person in the band, even if that person just stood on stage and didn’t even play an instrument, would anyone ever make that comparison?
You take songs of ours like “Watch it Burn, “Fever Breaks or “Silent Blue,” those songs don’t sound like anything the Black Keys have ever done, not even close.
Black Pistol Fire – Live at the Mercury Lounge – NYC – “Oh Well”
Rock Revolt: Can you talk to me about your specific drum style and your thoughts on drumming in general.
Owen: I’ve never been a drum solo guy and to be honest I’m not a fan of drum solos. I’ve actually gotten more into the simple side of drumming because sometimes simple is better.
I go back and listen to some of the songs that we recorded back in high school and think to myself, what the hell was I doing with all of those drum fills. Looking back now that stuff kind of sounds stupid (laughing).
Rock Revolt: Can you touch on the diverse nature of Black Pistol Fire’s music?
Owen: There is a deliberate attempt on our part to craft different sounding songs but for the most part, it all just came about organically.
Part of it stems probably from the fact Kevin and I listen to a lot of different music. Our listening habits aren’t just focused on rock or garage rock. We listen to just about everything.
We kind of think of crafting an album in terms of creating something along the lines of a Spotify playlist where you can start out by listening to Iron Maiden and then the very next song is by someone like Rhianna.
Rock Revolt: There’s this deliberate restraint in your music where you seem to allow your songs to breathe and build towards these mammoth crescendos of rock and blues based riff bravado.
Has it always been your and Kevin’s intent to create this condition, not just on record but to use those tense build ups to create palpable astriction at your live shows?
Owen: I think so, although we never really talked about for a long time. The first couple of years we toured we didn’t have many songs, so we kind of just built these spaces into our songs where they could be different live than they were on record.
Then we started noticing that if we really slowed a song down to half the speed of the record and then built it back up to ten times that speed, it’d have this big impact while making those songs hit that much harder.
So I think in our early days there may have not been a concerted effort to create that kind of effect but these days we’re definitely doing more of it deliberately because it makes things interesting. It forces you to pay attention more, it commands focus and that’s something we’re very aware of.
Black Pistol Fire – “Lost Cause” – Deadbeat Graffiti – Modern Outsider
Rock Revolt: Have you ever run into a scenario at a live show where you felt as though you were killing it, leaving it all out the stage and the audience just didn’t seem affected or moved by your performance?
Owen: It definitely has happened. There have been shows where people have just stood around and watched, which is fine, but if everyone is just standing there just staring at you, it does makes things harder.
Years ago when we weren’t very good we played Lubbock, Texas. It wasn’t a packed house by any means and we thought we were playing well but we weren’t getting any crowd reaction when we finished playing each song.
People wouldn’t even clap, there was just this dead silence. What’s weird though is we had to do three sets that night and between sets people would come up to us and tell us how great we were and how they wanted to buy us drinks. So that turned out to be a bit confusing (laughing).
Rock Revolt: Has the band done much touring in Europe and if so can you talk about the fan base there and how they’ve embraced you differently than say North American audiences?
Owen: We’ve been to Europe twice. The first time was right after the first album came out about six years ago where we ended up going over to the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
We had this one fan in the Czech Republic who told us he had been listening to our first record six times a day in its entirety. I made that record and I don’t think I ever listened it to that much. (laughing)
This fan basically filled out all this paperwork, had people sign petitions and then he went to the Czech Republic government to pay to bring us over to the country.
Then two years ago we went over to London, Hamburg and Frankfurt with Gary Clark Jr. and those shows were amazing.
There are two countries we seem to get a lot of constant feed back from outside of North America. Not a single day goes by where someone doesn’t write on our social media, when are you coming to the UK?
And then there’s France. It’s funny because whenever we announce a show or tour even if it’s in the U.S. there always seem to be someone that will leave this exact comment, “When in France?” (laughing)
Black Pistol Fire – “Hipster Shakes” – Live on KEXP
Rock Revolt: Can you touch on Black Pistol Fire’s approach to making music your full time job and what you think any band has to have in their corner in order to make being a musician a viable financial career theses days?
Owen: Ours is a very unique situation because from the very beginning we were lucky enough to do pretty well in the licensing world.
If you want to make a living doing this you have to be beyond committed to it and accept that for a long time, you’re probably not going to make a whole lot of money doing it.
When money does come, it’s going to come in incremental steps. So when you first start out you’ll probably still have to have another job.
The days of getting signed where some record label is going to give you a hundred thousand dollars that you can just go out and spend don’t exist anymore.
I’d also try to fund everything yourself and try to get someone to work your licensing for you to license your songs for commercials or movies. It’s good money and it can help keep your career going.
Also early on when you’re going on the road there’s not going to be a lot of people or a lot of money but you have to keep going at it.
Perseverance. You have to be willing to persevere. The glamorous rock and roll lifestyle, it does exist but it’s going to take a long time to get there. There’s no such thing as instant fame and fortune in this business. Do it because you love doing it.
Rock Revolt: What does the immediate and long term future hold for Black Pistol Fire and are there any musicians or producers you’d like to collaborate with that fans may be surprised by?
Owen: Record wise we kind of want to keep challenging ourselves to do different stuff. The next full length record will probably be pretty expansive.
In the meantime we’re probably going to go and record a trashy low-fi punk kind of EP on eight track that probably won’t be of the highest sonic quality but it’ll be different.
In terms of producers it’d be cool to work with someone like Rick Rubin or to have someone like a Dave Grohl or a Butch Vig at the controls.
We actually tried to make it happen on this last record and it didn’t come together but we’d love to have either Damian Marley or Nas on a song.
On the live side of things the festival that means the most to us would probably be Bonnaroo. Headlining the second set at Bonnaroo would be amazing, not that we wouldn’t be open to headlining the main stage (laughing).
The other festival that would be a big get for us, that’s more internationally oriented, would be Glastonbury over in the UK. We love to be a part of that someday.
Black Pistol Fire continue to tour in support of 2017’s Deadbeat Graffiti. For tour information, news and all things Black Pistol Fire related, simply click on the links below.
Catch Black Pistol in San Francisco November 20th:
Where: Bottom of the Hill – San Francisco, CA
http://www.bottomofthehill.com/20171120.html#.WhJnE7Q-eb9
Black Pistol Fire continue to tour in support of 2017’s Deadbeat Graffiti. For tour information, news and all things Black Pistol Fire related, simply click on the links below.
Connect with Black Pistol Fire (click icons):
All Writing: Robert Forte
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/40_photography/
