How Lone Justice Came Together to Create First ‘New’ Album in 38 Years

Among the great what-ifs for students of L.A. rock history is: What if Lone Justice had remained a somewhat obscure band…. and how many great records could they have put out if they had? It’s almost a ridiculous scenario to imagine, because lead singer Maria McKee‘s vocal talent was such that quick discovery and absorption into the major-label system was beyond inevitable. But what if some divine hand had pulled a cloak over the music industry’s eyes, and Lone Justice had developed on its own timeline as a heavily country-influenced indie band, unencumbered by attention or expectations?

The result, in this alternate universe, might have been something like “Viva Lone Justice,” the album that just came out from Fire Records, which is being touted as the band’s first “new” album in 38 years. Maybe we can take the quotes off of that “new”: there really are fresh elements to these tracks, with additional parts being recorded and overdubbed on all but one of the 10 tracks. But most of the source material is vintage tapes that were laid down in the early ’90s by McKee and fellow members Marvin Etzioni and Don Heffington when they were about to go out on one of her solo tours, in spontaneous living-room sessions that were very much in the earliest, spunkiest spirit of early-’80s Lone Justice. Etzioni recently came across the tapes and, at the enthusiastic suggestion of McKee, went into the studio with original guitarist Ryan Hedgecock to flesh out the tracks, while still leaving them sounding minimalist enough to sound raw, rough and ready.

For those who were there to witness the band’s most seminal days, before Jimmy Iovine took over as their producer and steered the group toward becoming more of a Heartbreakers-style rock band, “Viva Lone Justice” is a godsend, finally capturing the spirit of that original lineup in a studio record, even if the “studio” was mostly Etzioni’s living room. And if you happen to also love that Iovine-produced 1986 Geffen debut — which happened to be pretty great, even if it was undeniably slick — you can stil get a kick out of “Viva” as a worthy spiritual prequel.

Variety talked separately with McKee, Etzioni and Hedgecock about how the album came together. (Heffington, their drummer, died in 2021, although he’s all over this record, as are past and present auxillary players like Benmont Tench and Tammy Rogers.) The following Q&A brings their voices together — edited for length, clarity and conjoining viewpoints — to discuss this worthy and highly unexpected effort.

How would you describe this record? Is it fair to say that it’s archival recordings that you finished up in the present day?

Marvin Etzioni: I would say that’s pretty fair. We look at it as a new album. But it wasn’t like the four of us got in the room before Don passed away and we all just bashed it out. My personal reference point might be (the Beatles’) “Let It Be,” where here are a bunch of tapes and (Phil) Spector went in and did what he did to it. It wasn’t like the whole band was there at the same time when those things were going on. Or “Free as a Bird,” where you take archive tapes and you kind of give it a sensibility where you are now.

Maria McKee: It’s archival with some overdubs. I didn’t do any (fresh) vocals; those vocals are from back then. I don’t even know if I could remember how to sing like that anymore, with that kind of country purity. I think I’ve been too operatic for far too long. But I mean, I wasn’t going to sing when I went on Dwight Yoakam’s radio show recently, and then he was like, “Oh, come on, let’s sing ‘Don’t Toss Us Away,’” and it came up and there it was. So you never know.

Ryan Hedgecock: To me this album was all about Maria’s singing. She was singing so good on this that I wanted to be involved with it, and I wanted to get out there and really add my Lone Justice edge to it. … In adding parts, I tried to keep it in line with what was already there. I tried to keep it so that you couldn’t really tell that parts of it were recorded 30 years later.

For us, I think it’s really exciting just the fact to have the original vision finally intact and out, for people to hear the effortless go-between between punk and country. That was what the whole thing was about, tapping into that exuberant energy of country that kind of got lost in the ‘60s and ‘70s. And it’s really nice to be able to see it out there with nobody’s finger in it. You know what I mean?

How did this all come together?

McKee: Marvin and I were hanging out. We would go for walks and we’d go grab a meal over in the Pico Robertson neighborhood at Factor Deli and get lattes and chicken soup and walk around, just talking about everything. And then one day he said, “You know, I have these tapes that we recorded at my house during ‘You Gotta Sin to Get Saved’ — you and me and Don, and Benmont’s on some of the tracks, Tammy’s on some of the tracks.. Some of it’s great. Should I clean it up and should we put it out?” And I was like, “Sure, why not?” And he said, “Well, do you want it to be a Marie McKee project?” And I’m like, “You know, I don’t really do hillbilly punk anymore, so much. So let’s get Ryan on it and then we can make a Lone Justice record.” And he said, “That’s a really cool idea. Let me call Ryan.”

Then Ryan had some tracks that he and I had done about 15 years ago in Heffington’s studio. And then Marvin dug around and found a few more tracks, and he and Ryan put it together. Ryan did a bunch of overdubs of guitars and vocals. And I didn’t hear it until it was done. We went to Willie Aron’s house and Marvin sat me down with a notebook, in case I had notes. And I was just floored. I just was like, “This is fantastic!” It is the greatest energy. And I thought I was in really good voice, and I was pretty blown away actually.

Etzioni: I had found a lot of quarter-inch tapes that had me and Maria, Heffington, and Tammy Rogers on fiddle and vocals, and sometimes Benmont would be there. I assembled an album’s worth for Maria and I said, “What do you think?” And she goes, “Why don’t we call Ryan and let’s see if he wants to add vocals and add some guitar — and it’ll be a real Lone Justice album.”

She could have put it out as a solo album. She could have said, “Oh, cool, just put it out as an archive record.” But I don’t even know if we’d be talking about it, if it was just “found tapes.” We kind of took it that extra step for it to feel like a current album. Even the way that I sequenced the album — I wanted it to feel like an album. Like, you’re not really sure what… like I love “Revolver” and the White Album. You’re never sure what song is coming up next, stylistically. So it did afford us that opportunity, especially when Ryan said, “Yeah, I want to be a part of this.” I was happy that he wanted to do that.

Hedgecock: We were one of those bands that you had to kind of be there to know about us, but it’s changing a little bit. I always kind of felt that one of the things about the early Justice is it was timeless. You know, you really couldn’t tell who the president was when you listened to it. And the same thing with this stuff too. It’s kind of timeless.

Etzioni: If you had told me five years ago, “Hey, you know, Maria is gonna really be into that next Lone Justice record,” I’d go, “What are you talking about? That’s not gonna happen!” Something about her and Lone Justice was like oil and water for a long time. But then something happened. Maybe it was the timing, and maybe it was just our reconnection. When I played her the initial archive tapes, and she suggested turning it into a Lone Justice record, I mean, you could have pushed me over with a feather.

So the fact that Maria and Ryan and myself can all sign off on a record in real time, and sign off on the sequencing before it comes out, that never happened before for me. That’s not how it worked on the first album (1985’s Geffen-released “Lone Justice”). I didn’t hear the album before anybody else did; I was sent the record in shrinkwrap —  it’s like, “Oh, that’s the sequence.” But here, I wanted it to be where everyone signed off on it, and I think everybody wanted to have that experience where either we’re all into it and it comes out, or forget it.

I played her the album at Willie’s house and she said, “This is the best thing we’ve ever done. It’s fantastic.” I said, “Well, great. I’m glad you like it.” I played the sequence for Ryan and he signed off on it: “I’m into it.” Everything else to me is just gravy. After all these years, we were finally able to put a bow on the box that says Lone Justice on it. I mean, when Willie heard it, he said, “Oh, you finally released your first Lone Justice album.” This feels like it could have been that early first release, this kind of sensibility that takes some chances and reflects what you guys do live, good, bad, or indifferent. That wasn’t a story that happened, but thank God we can do it now.

McKee: This is what people liked, our reworking of hillbilly and punk and country. It’s great, and it has great energy. But there’s only one original song on it. Somebody said, “Oh, the record company has you all saying this is the best Lone Justice album ever made.” And I was like, “Well, no, there’s no original songs.” You know, we were pretty good songwriters! But the one original song (the Etzioni-penned “You Possess Me”) is a doozy; it’s a great, great song.

You haven’t revived this type of sound very often in your career since Lone Justice broke up, Maria. What were your feelings about what the early band was like, now, listening back to this?

McKee: I was asked recently, “Have you seen the Ken Burns ‘Country’ series?” I hadn’t gotten around to it, and then I don’t know what possessed me, but I dove in and watched the whole thing in a matter of days. And I was just completely blown away, not just by the gravity of all the artists and songs and history, and the incredible filmmaking and storytelling, but just the fact that I knew almost every song. And that’s because of the work that Ryan and I did when we were kids, where we basically got a university degree in early music — hillbilly, country-bluegrass, Cajun, rockabilly, the Nashville Sound, outlaw. And all those songs had been stored away, and I was just singing along the entire time.

And then the other thing that came over me was this really intense wave of imposter syndrome. Because we had been placed in that exhibit in the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum, the “Western Edge” exhibit about the country-rock scene on the west coast, and  how we became a part of that. I just had this feeling of, why us? I grew up in this bohemian household on the outskirts of Beverly Hills; went to Beverly High; I was a theater major; my brother was in this baroque rock band (Bryan MacLean, of the ‘60s group Love); I was gonna go to Julliard and be the next Bernadette Peters. Marvin grew up in the Fairfax district as this Jewish kid who was into punk. Hollywood was not Appalachia. It was like, how in the world did we pull it off?

Now, Ryan and Don felt really authentic to me. Ryan felt authentic to me because he grew up in Torrance, and it wasn’t like he grew up around movie stars like I did, and became part of the Born Again movement, where it was all Hollywood folks… Now, my grandmother was sort of a California hillbilly, the eldest of 17 kids, and her dad was a homesteader and a medicine showman. They called him the professor; he was the proprietor of this mineral spring in Riverside County, which he inherited from the indigenous folks, and they mentored him in how to bottle this water that had this really intense mineral compound. He would go around to medicine shows and county fairs and sell this water, and my grandma and her brothers and sisters had a little band and they would play. So that’s some kind of hillbilly (pedigree) there, but it’s very Californian.

And so I was kind of going through this sort of thing of, “I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy.” And then I did Dwight Yoakam’s SiriusXM radio show, where we talked about California country for so many hours, he had to divide it into two episodes. And then I was like, “OK, yeah, California… even the Hollywood stuff, you know, Rick Nelson kind of invented rockabilly-pop. And he was a Hollywood kid. So, yeah, it can work.”

And then cut to being at Willie Aron’s house, sitting down and having Marvin press “play” on this album, and it just came over me in this wash and I was like, “You know what? It’s all right if they wanna include us in the canon of country music. I think it’s all right, because listen to this.” Whether it’s acting in our part, whether it’s cinema, whether it’s theater, or whether it’s opera, whatever it is — listen to it, you know? It’s all there.

People like Gillian Welch had to deal with that authenticity question in the early days, too. And for you, it’s not just dealing with how it goes over with other people, it’s how you deal with it yourself… especially when roots music turns out to be just one among many pursuits.

McKee: I mean, it’s a big pill to swallow. My last album was an Anglophilia chamber-pop rock opera, or whatever, and I’ve made so many different types of music that have very little to do with anything Americana. But I mean, the fact that this was recorded long ago, most of it, makes it kind of like, oh, OK — it’s a time capsule, so it works.

Let’s talk about a few of the songs on the record. There is your cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” which you never even did live, and of course it’s magnificent.

McKee: When I heard that, I was like, “Oh no, we’re not gonna put this out.” Like we can’t — how dare, like, no, it’s so audacious. But then I thought, you know, I don’t really care what people think. The only opinion I care about is Dolly’s. And she loves me. She’ll love it. So who cares what people think? They’ll be like, how can you touch that song? I don’t care. But I have no recollection of doing it, none whatsoever. I don’t even know how it ended up on this record, but there it is. And it’s not even the full song. Maybe I just started singing it and then… I don’t remember.

Hedgecock: You know, Dolly’s such a giant part of our story. She came to see us early on. And then later on when I was doing (the band) Rattlesnake Daddy, I ran into her at a Miley Cyrus show. I didn’t know, but Billy Ray had been a big fan. And she stood up in the middle of filming to have an intimate personal conversation with me while I stood in the bleachers, and she was just raving about Lone Justice —30 years later. And so when we did (an album of early demos called) “The Vaught Tapes,” we sent it to her, asking her if maybe she would write some liner notes. We were pretty much turned down until right before it came out, when we got a phone call from her assistant, who said, “Do you have a fax machine? Dolly heard this and loved it and she wrote a big (endorsement).” So I thought, you know what, we gotta give Dolly some love.

Etzioni: I don’t remember ever playing the song live with Maria. In the recording I think it’s only one take, and I think I had to do an edit because she stopped the song and then continued. It was really a moment. I don’t want to speak for her, but I really doubt if we went in the studio today, it would be like, “Oh, we’re gonna cut Dolly.” That’s like climbing Mount Everest. You don’t touch that. But it was so real  and it was just a moment that happened between her and Tammy Rogers, who did the harmony and the fiddle. And then Ryan wanted to add something more orchestral at the end, so that’s when I put him together with Tammy, who came up with the orchestral part. And we said, “Well, if we’re gonna go that direction, let’s get (pedal steel player) Greg Leisz in.” But under normal circumstances in a “normal” recording studio environment, I don’t think we would’ve cut that song.

You have a cover of “Sister Anne” by the MC5…

McKee: Benmont and I used to do that version at the Highland Grounds in Hollywood back in the early ‘90s, and then we incorporated it into the live show when I was touring “Sin to Get Saved.” We did it when they opened the Viper Room, and I remember because Jim Jarmusch was there. He came up to me and said, “That was so beautiful. I grew up in Detroit, the MC5 were my favorite band, and I’ve got a sister named Anne.” So I do remember us doing it live, along with (the traditional song) “Skull and Crossbones.” I don’t know if you remember the rockabilly band the Red Devils, but they were a big influence on me. Emy Lee was my favorite girl/lady frontperson, after Exene (from X), and I feel like I got that song from them.

The first song you released from the album as a single is “Teenage Kicks,” a cover of a 1978 punk song by the Undertones (whose Feargal Sharkey, as a solo artist, had a hit covering McKee’s “A Good Heart” in 1985).

Etzioni: “Teenage Kicks” was the only other song aside from “Jenny Jenkins” that was cut multi-track, with me, Maria and Heffington. I played the electric rhythm, and when we cut it, I said, “Well, we need a lead guitar. Maria, why don’t you play lead guitar?” She goes, “I’ve never played lead guitar before.” I go, “Great! You’re hired.” So if you listen to the middle of the song, you hear this real noise guitar, and we left that in the mix. Then Ryan added vocals, and that kind of Duane Eddy, low-end guitar is Ryan’s, so we were able to bring his sensibility into it as well, which I thought was tremendous.

The one original song, Marvin’s “You Possess Me,” opens the album. It’s such an outlier, as a prisine, contemporary-sounding ballad. What’s the story behind that?

Etzioni: I wrote the song for my son when he was born in 1986. In 1986, I was out of Lone Justice less than a year — six months or something like that, but I had the song. Cut to 1992. I got a call from my publisher at the time, who were in touch with Geffen when Maria was working on her second solo album. They said, “Maria’s looking for some songs.” I said, “Send her this one song.” I hadn’t worked with or really seen Maria since ’85 — it’d been about seven years. She called me and said, “Hey, I just heard ‘You Possess Me.’ Let’s get together.” So we got together and we went into this little studio to cut a mandolin-and-vocal version of the song, just to have it, and it kind of broke the ice between us.

While Ryan and I were working on these tracks, I found a box of DAT tapes that said 1992 on it, and I looked inside and it had the DAT of Maria’s “You Possess Me” vocal. Now, I had played the song solo some years ago, and there was a woman that created a string quartet arrangement of the song that fortunately was in the same key as the Maria vocal. I had the sheet music for the arrangement, and I called Tammy Rogers and said, “I’ve had this idea for a long time of having a string quartet doubled by a mandolin quartet.” Not to get too in the weeds, but the violin is tuned like a mandolin, a viola’s tuned like a manola, and the cello is tuned like a mandecello. So that’s why there used to be mandolin orchestras: They could actually play the exact pieces on the mandolin family. So Tammy fortunately could play all the instruments, except cello, which we had someone else play, but she performed the violin, the string quartet, and a mandolin quartet. And I said, “Double it.” She says, “I can do that.”

So, I didn’t know where else to put the song. It just seemed like it would be a really bold move to put it at the top. And when I played the sequence for Maria, she loved it. We felt like it was the beginning of a movie. She felt it was a very cinematic way to enter the album. So I was glad that she liked the end result on it. That’s a very long and winding road story to get the record that you ultimately are hearing now. And when I played it for Ryan, we jokingly, in a kind of sad way, were like, “Yeah, well, this would’ve been on the second Lone Justice record.” You can’t go back in time, but thank God for recording technology, that we can actually make this kind of (hybrid) presentation.

There’s just one track from the ‘80s on here, and it’s the one unaltered track, a live version of one of the band’s concert staples, “Nothing Can Stop My Loving You” — with an accordion part by Jo-El Sonnier, who died this year.

Etzioni: That is a board mix, and our roadie at the time probably pushed record on a cassette and sent it to us, and I put it on the record. I love those Neil Young albums that have a live track that comes out of the blue. That’s the only time Jo-El Sonnier played accordion with us, and to me, it just really took it over the top. That really was the true spirit of the band, recorded before the release of the first album. We were ready to make that great first, indie, in-your-face record in 1984, as you could tell.

How do you feel this record reflects the ethos of the original Lone Justice?

Hedgecock: The whole thing about Lone Justice, obviously before (producer Jimmy) Iovine got involved, it was really focused and there was a real, singular point of view that everybody had gotten behind, and people really responded to that. And that was the shame for me on the first record, that it was somewhat dilluted — and by the time we got to “Shelter,” that it was gone. And so it was kind of a shame to have this notoriety of stuff that we’d done that wasn’t exactly represented out there. So that was one of the things that Marvin and I were hoping to do with all those releases from ‘83 was kind of focus it back on the magic.

And, you know, this record is about probably as close to a new Lone Justice record as there’ll ever be. And it’s nice that we got to hit it. You know, we got to hit that same thing that excited everybody way back when. We were one of those bands that you had to kind of be there to know about us, but it’s changing a little bit… I always kind of felt that one of the things about the early Justice is it was timeless. You know, you really couldn’t tell who the president was when you listened to it. And the same thing with this stuff too: It’s kind of timeless.

Etzioni: I was thinking about this fairly recently, that R.E.M. and Lone Justice were kind of coming up around the same time, if I’m not mistaken. Around ‘83, they released a very indie-sounding record, “Murmur,” the first one. They didn’t even have a picture of themselves on the cover — like, who are these guys? It was kind of a great way to kind of build a fan base, and it felt very uncompromised. And unfortunately, in 1983, Lone Justice had two or three albums’ worth of material to record, but we didn’t release anything. I don’t think that was to the band’s benefit, to wait almost three years for it to redefine and reinvent itself. Nirvana’s “Bleach” is another good example: We didn’t do our “Bleach” in ‘83. Many great bands created albums in real time, and sometimes those albums would do incredibly well, and sometimes those albums would be just enough to get enough interest to kind of keep the band going to make another album. I kind of connect to those kind of artists that made records in real time, as they were developing and growing up in public, rather than holding it in and go, “OK, we’re gonna wait three years and we’re gonna give you something you’ve all been waiting for.”

My spirit was really into what we were doing in ‘83, ’84 — I liked that point of view that we had. And in a way, 40 years later, it feels current, the concept of Lone Justice and Lone Justice music. If Maria said, “You know, yeah, let’s do a couple shows,” we wouldn’t feel like an ‘80s band. It would feel like a current band — the kind of the hybrid that I think potentially we helped invent in terms of combining these elements. There was (the influence of) George Jones, and Maria and Ryan were really into X and Gram (Parsons) and Emmy(lou Harris), and I was really into the Velvets and Mott the Hoople. We kind of combined all these elements between the three of us. And with Heffington and his incredible sensibilities as a drummer, I really felt like he was our Ringo. We could go in any direction — we could go legitimate country, we could play a really hardhead song as good as any punk band — because his drumming was as good as anyone’s. Like Ringo offered that, Charlie Watts offered that, and Dave Maddox had that with Fairport, you know, certain drummers offer a band to flex. Dave Maddox had that with Fairport, certain drummers offer that flexibility and authenticity of being able to play a country ballad… and then he could play it really loud and aggressively when it’s called for. So we were really lucky. I thought that four-piece band was a good moment in time.

The recordings on this album, which primarily date back to the ‘90s in their origins, have a cool quality to them where the ones that are not multi-track recordings have the feel of field recordings… where not everyone is pressed up against a mic, but you’re still getting an incredible room sound.

McKee: It really is like a field recording, in Marvin’s living room.

Etzioni: I just had the mic set up literally in the living room. And we had great equipment, but the whole approach was, “Hey, let’s just play some songs. What do you feel like?” And then Maria would start a song and we’d all fall in and I’d look at the engineer, and he knew my signal, like, “Push record.” We never played the tapes back while we were there. It would just be, “How’s Thursday? See you then.” There was never a list of songs we were gonna do. I thought that it in a sense it really kind of captured the essence of Maria’s vocals in a way that has more of a Polaroid effect, which I really like in recording. And so I held onto ’em all these years and finally I gave ‘em a listen, and I go, “You know, there’s something in here.” I always knew there would be, but the intention at the time was that there was no intention, you know? And you hear what a liberating experience it was just to play music and jam and have fun, with no worries or cares while we were doing it… to record under conditions that have no conditions.

Marvin, you have an album coming out with your band with Willie Aron, the Holy Brothers? And you’re still producing other people?

Etzioni: It’s coming out next year. And the two of us about to do a Tom Petty tribute at Hotel Café, as we speak. The organizer asked if Willie and I would play “Ways to Be Wicked,” and I had this version years ago where I slowed it down and turned it into a ballad, so we’re looking to do that… Among the artists that I’m producing, I’m finishing an album with a guy from Kansas City named Revere Rivers … and then another band that I produced an album for 30 years ago, and they broke up right afterwards, but they wanted to do another record, called The Riflebird of Portland. And I co-wrote a couple singles on the new Trombone Shorty album…

Maria, you don’t have any new music on the horizon right now, do you?

McKee: Not right now. I feel like the pandemic kind of broke my brain a little bit — that combined with an ADHD procrastination syndrome. I mean, I have a little seed planted, in regards to writing a book, which I’m a little bit excited about. I thought maybe I’d start it in my 60th year. It’s not gonna be a music business memoir. There’ll be some stories, but it’s more about my sort of relationship to Los Angeles and my family, and it’s pretty interesting history.. And maybe there’ll be some music that will go along with that. So we’ll see. Or maybe I’m retired! I don’t know. My life is my dog and my goddaughter and being kind of devoted to the beings of love in my life, which is fulfilling. I quite enjoy doing nothing; I love it, love it, love it! So who knows?

Nothing can stop, stop, stop people from asking about a reunion, I’m sure.

McKee: People want a reunion. This is as close as they’re gonna get: us going out for coffee and cleaning up some old tapes and working on ’em together and hanging out. We go over old times and talk about music, and it’s nice. That’s not a reunion, but it’s family time, you know?