Black Pistol Fire at recordBar, Kansas City, MO (10 August 2022)

This was no bad habit as again; we were floored by their live-energy–

Austin, TX came to Kansas City for a night, as a pair of bands headlined by duo Black Pistol Fire played the recordBar downtown for a memorable, adrenaline-fueled show.

The evening opened with a forty-minute set from Austin, TX band Shooks, led by Marlon Sexton, the son of famous TX guitarist Charlie (Bob Dylan, Double Trouble, Arc Angels) Sexton and though he looks very much like a younger version of his father, the band’s music is much more neo-psych and garage post-punk, than the straight-ahead blues rock of his father.

The band has released a recent six-song EP, Pet, and follow up single, “O2” (which opened the set), so are really just getting started, with this tour being their farthest reach to date outside of the Texas area, but they’ve been gradually building heat, especially since SXSW in March.

“Drama” is their newest single, just out this week, and features jagged guitar riffs and crashing cymbals, “You Know I’m Right” might be their most accessible sounding song, and closing with “SFTW”, this young band is one to keep on the radar.

As the Toronto-via-Austin duo (Kevin McKeown- guitar/lead vocals; Eric Owen- drums) of Black Pistol Fire jumped to the stage to begin their seventy-five-minute set, we could only wonder why they still remain somewhat of a kept secret. Fans of rock power duos like The White Stripes, Black Keys and more, should be all over this band, and though the club was full, they probably deserve to be playing bigger venues as they enter their second decade together.

We’ve documented the band since 2012, seeing them live finally in 2017 and again in 2021. Their stomping high-energy garage rock blues blend takes inspiration from the likes of Zeppelin, Nirvana, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and more, but the sound is their own, and as usual, they exploded out of the gate, opening with 2021’s “Pick Your Poison”.

Their show setlist for the evening seemed to be an impromptu mix of songs new and old, (including most recent single, “Bad Habit”), based on tempo and McKeown’s mood and vibe of the crowd for the night, as evidenced on their “setlist” picture, which offers some additional song possibilities outside of their more known songs, categorized by their speed.

Drummer Owen almost immediately shed his shirt, as if it was slightly holding him back, and was a bare-chested frantic swirl of bobbing long hair for the remainder of the set. Their Childish Gambino cover of “Redbone” slowed things down momentarily, flipping the song into more of an aching blues track, with McKeown adjusting his vocal growl, into more of a falsetto to fit the song.

The duo brought Sexton back out to help for a driving Strokes cover of “New York City Cops” and last year’s “Hope in Hell” would end with a blistering McKeown guitar solo, and the octane would immediately go next level with a blistering late set cover of Nirvana’s “Aneurysm”, that was sonically threatening to blow the roof off.

The encore-less set would end with an extended “Run Rabbit Run” that included (no, our ears weren’t deceiving us), a snippet from Harry Styles’ “Watermelon Sugar” complete with tempo changes, ballistic guitar riffs, and a crowd clap-a-long before the momentum changed into a more frantic pace.

The gleefully tired audience clearly wanted more, still clapping and yelling for one more song, even well after the lights went up, and background music was cued, but will have to wait until Black Pistol Fire returns to the area once more.