Lancaster, Pennsylvania, four-piece Black Cowgirl have just completed recording a new six-song demo (the band was previously put On the Radar for their last release) at Westtown Lake Studios, and to celebrate, have announced a 10-day tour as direct support for long-running mischief-makers CKY. Black Cowgirl was kind enough to give me my pick of the songs to host, and of course I went for the longest — the catchy seven-minute jam “Eclipsor” — which you can stream on the player below.

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The new demo, aptly-titled Black Cowgirl is available for purchase here and at the band’s shows, and I thought “Eclipsor” made a pretty good representation of what they’ve got going on: Melodically-aware and straightforward heavy rock with solid-packed groove, memorable choruses and an eye for letting the parts ride out. The fade-back-in jam at the end is a lot of the difference between “Eclipsor” and the other tracks I’ve heard, but even so, Black Cowgirl change up their sound and put enough of the Pennsylvanian countryside in there to make it pastoral in atmosphere.

Says Black Cowgirl’s Ben McGuire of the song:

“Almost all of our songs come together through collective stream of consciousness. One of us may have a riff or idea but we try to let the songs write themselves as much as we can without interfering then we tweak them. “Eclipsor” was a perfect example of this process. We had a main section and the rest came out on its own. The lyrics came out just the way they are the first time we played it through. We never plan them or pick a topic. The best way to describe how we write is it is like using a Ouija board, we just put our hands on our guitars and hope they take us somewhere cool.”

Demo track listing:
1. Talk of Wolves
2. Roadmaster
3. The Ride
4. Alkaline
5. Dead House
6. Eclipsor

Black Cowgirl on tour with CKY:
03/17 Lancaster, PA Chameleon Club
03/18 Philadelphia, PA Theater of the Living Arts
03/19 New York, NY Gramercy
03/21 Hartford, CT Webster
03/22 Allston, MA Brighton Music Hall
03/24 Asbury Park, NJ Stone Pony
03/25 Morgantown, WV 123 Pleasant St.
03/26 Buffalo, NY Mohawk
03/27 Baltimore, MD Bourbon Street
03/28 Richmond, VA Canal Club

With members on board from Backwoods Payback and Electric Horsemen, you probably already know Black Cowgirl is going to be some hard-hitting stuff. But the four-piece take a surprising tone, injecting a kind of psych-garage rock vibe into their songs, like early Nebula driving while later Nebula rides shotgun. Not that they sound like Nebula or anything.

All kidding aside, Black Cowgirl (what is it with these Pennsylvania bands and their awesome names?) throw a little Americana into the mix as well — a bit of Neil Young pops up during the quiet part of “Dirt,” despite the rest of the track’s boogie shuffle — but basically, this is the kind of rock that those who have been around the scene for a while will have no problem recognizing or welcoming into their ears.

The production of the tracks on their MySpace is a little rough, but how much of that is crappy MySpace compression and how much is the band’s actual sound, I couldn’t say. Nonetheless, I think the fuzzy garage stomp of “The Prowler” has no problem getting its point across. Oddly enough, my favorite of the three Black Cowgirl tracks online is the one without a name, unless it’s actually called “…” or “[Elipsis],” which has a more laid-back style and spacier groove. I received a disc compiling several songs together, but no tracklist, so specifics are hard to get to at this point.

I have no fodder to set the rumor mill in motion as regards future recordings, so I’ll just say keep an eye out for Black Cowgirl updates and if you get a second, click on their MySpace to check them out. If you’re looking for some classic-style rock that won’t make you feel like you need to write a dissertation about it, you could do a hell of a lot worse.