Revinylization

For musicians' sake, the terms "sure thing" or "a hit" should be permanently stricken from the music business lexicon. Like Beetlejuice, if you say it enough, bad things are sure to occur. But in the long annals of the music business crushing the dreams of artists who were a "sure thing" and singles or albums that were guaranteed to be "a hit," few have risen higher and fallen faster than Lone Justice. Rising stars on the Los Angeles music scene in the early 1980s, they melded punk-rock attitude and ethos with a love for classic country music. The New York Times called them "Impressive, ingenious, and forceful." After seeing them, both Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton genuinely praised their sassy young singer, Maria McKee.

Formed around McKee and guitarist Ryan Hedgecock, the band was completed by bassist Marvin Etzioni and drummer Don Heffington. Keyboardist Benmont Tench from Tom Petty's Heartbreakers and guitarist Tony Gilkyson often joined the band for live shows. Signing with Geffen Records, after Ronstadt reportedly intervened on their behalf, their self-titled debut was released to much buzz and fanfare in the spring of 1985.

As marketing strategies go, eagerly spreading the word that a band is unbelievable—a sure thing, America's Team—creates unrealistic expectations and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. So, it was no great surprise when the Jimmy Iovine–produced debut never caught fire with music fans or radio deejays. Despite its reputation as a flop, it reached #62 on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart and #56 on the magazine's Top Pop Albums list. The classic assessment of Lone Justice comes, not surprisingly, from Ira Robbins's ever definitive Trouser Press Record Guide: "It isn't that Lone Justice's first album is bad (it's not), but the ballyhoo that preceded the L.A. quartet's debut raised expectations that these frisky countryfied rock tunes (Linda Ronstadt on speed, perhaps, or Dolly Parton backed by the Blasters) couldn't possibly satisfy."

Listening to the album again, the first single, "Sweet, Sweet Baby (I'm Falling)," sounds better than ever—certainly a "hit" that should've been. And the first three cuts—the Etzioni-penned "East of Eden," McKee's "After the Flood," and Tom Petty/ Mike Campbell's "Ways to Be Wicked"—comprise one of the strongest openers in '80s indie-rock history.

As is so often the case, the first album's lack of success splintered the band. Etzioni and Heffington quit. And while McKee and Hedgecock subsequently rebuilt the band with four new players including Shane Fontayne (who later played on Human Touch–era Springsteen), a second album, 1986's Shelter, which abandoned the country flavors for synths and a modern-rock veneer, contained a single that sold better than those on the debut, but overall, the album sold less. Robbins pegged it as "a dynamic sound that is something like the articulate passion of an old Van Morrison record, pumped up by McKee's gospely fervor and walloping modern drums."

However today, after 40 years of hearing how they flopped, Lone Justice may get the last word, if not laugh. In the past decade, Omnivore Recordings has released a pair of unheard Lone Justice albums: This is Lone Justice: The Vaught Tapes, 1983 (2014) and Live at the Palomino, 1983 (2019). Now the surviving band members—Don Heffington died in 2021—have weighed in with Viva Lone Justice. Newly released on the UK's Fire label, the home of albums by Giant Sand and Steve Wynn, this recently compiled collection is proof yet again that the band was a formidable act whose heartfelt mix of country and cowpunk not only was ahead of its time but is now a seminal influence on all of the Americana that has come since.

Through what the album's press release calls "the advent of technology, sweat, and tears," McKee, Etzioni, and Hedgecock have assembled what is perhaps the best LJ album yet. What McKee has called "a cut-'n'-paste Lone Justice album," Viva Lone Justice is built around recordings made with Etzioni, McKee, and Heffington in 1993 around the time of McKee's second solo recording, You Gotta Sin to Get Saved. More recently, Hedgecock overdubbed guitar and vocal parts onto the tapes, and guests like multihorn player David Ralicke and pedal-steel master Greg Leisz added their voices. A live recording of George Jones and Roger Miller's "Nothing Can Stop My Loving You" adds a taste of what the band was like onstage.

Fortunately, the final product here is not a sonic Frankenstein. The sound is clear and reasonably defined. Musically, this cross-section of the band's interests contains a number of gems. An acoustic version of female rockabilly star Sparkle Moore's "Skull and Cross Bones" gives McKee room to work out her howl. A banging take of The Undertones' "Teenage Kicks" is a reminder that, as McKee has frequently quipped, most of the band were "old punks" at heart. And the opening track, "You Possess Me," with a new string arrangement added, is another example of what a powerful singer McKee has always been. Although they were, as McKee has said, "chewed up and spat out" by the music business, Lone Justice has now effectively and artfully written their own illuminating epitaph.