Enter To Win An Epiphone Casino Guitar In Worn Ebony Courtesy Of Black Pistol Fire

For the last 10 years, the Austin-via-Toronto duo Black Pistol Fire have been building a sound that sits at the cross-section of southern rock, punk, and blues. At the beginning of the year, the band released their sixth album, Look Alive. The latest collection finds Kevin McKeown and Eric Owen refining their style, making room for haggard rippers alongside tracks that incorporate funkier grooves or big hooky choruses. There’s probably no better example of the way Look Alive subtly expands Black Pistol Fire’s palette than its opener and title track, which rides tension-building piano and synths in its verses before breaking into a percussive riff and infectious chorus.

Black Pistol Fire also recently shared a video accompanying the song. Directed by Pooneh Ghana, the clip begins in a setting you might expect from the band’s whiskey-soaked Southern aesthetic, with a lone cowboy deep in thought before climbing into a vintage car and embarking on a long, searching night drive. The journey becomes more psychedelic as it goes on, strange backgrounds flitting by the car windows before the protagonist, and “Look Alive,” blast off into space.

Stereogum has partnered with Black Pistol Fire to give away an Epiphone Casino guitar in Worn Ebony (like Kevin McKeown plays) to one (1) lucky winner and a Black Pistol Fire t-shirt and vinyl merchandise bundle to five (5) runners-up. To enter, submit your email address in the form below or here. Submissions close on 6/4/21 at 1PM EST.

To be eligible to win, you must be subscribed to our newsletter, the Stereogum Digest. Winner and runners-up must be located in the United States or Canada and will be chosen randomly. One entry per email. We’ll contact you at that email if you win. Good luck!

The Epiphone Casino is the guitar of choice for Black Pistol Fire’s Kevin McKeown. “I’ve played Epiphone Casinos almost my entire musical career,” he explains. “It all began from the first time I ever saw John Lennon play an Epiphone Casino during the Beatles rooftop concert from Savile Row, which ended up being their last live performance ever. My Dad was a big Beatles fan and I remember, as a kid, watching them play over and over again and always zeroing in on that guitar, going, ‘I love that guitar. I’ve got to have that guitar one day.'”

“My Dad always encouraged me with music and guitar playing, and he taught me how to play guitar,” McKeown continues. “An Epiphone Sheraton was my very first guitar which he helped me pick out and buy when I was a youngster. I loved that guitar, and I still own it. It’s one of my favorites, but it wasn’t the Casino, and I really wanted a Casino, but could never find one. Then I saw Gary Clark Jr., who also lives here in Austin, playing a Cherry Red Epiphone Casino on the Crossroads Music Festival in 2009 or 2010. It was Gary’s very first appearance on Crossroads and he was blasting his Casino through a really gnarly fuzz pedal. I was like, ‘Whoa.’ Hearing him play and him getting those sounds was an eye-opening thing for me and I immediately said, ‘Oh, I’ve got to get one of those things, because that’s the sound I want.'”

“It took me a long time and I finally tracked one down in Canada. My very first Epiphone Casino was in Ebony. That guitar was very short-lived, and I only had that Casino for a few years. We were on tour with the Toadies, opening-up for them and during a show, I was down in the crowd and I tried to get back up on stage and I couldn’t climb back up with my guitar. I threw my guitar onto the stage too forcefully and it went to the back of the stage, shattering the neck and that was the end of that guitar’s music career. I do still have it at the house, I turned it into a lamp. I had to get another Casino immediately, and I currently play them now more than any other guitar in my fleet. My Epiphone Casino in Seafoam Green is a 1996 Casino and it’s still my go-to guitar because of how versatile it is, how it handles pedals and how many different tones you can get with it. Yeah, so Casinos are a big, big part of the Black Pistol Fire sound.”