Lone Justice/Maria McKee

Great post by Dave Alvin, thanks for the link---hope he'll write a memoir someday, if he ever has time.
Those live and demo Lone Justice round-ups that Omnivore's put out in the past decade (and maybe before?) are pretty refrshing, and Hip-O's McKee Ultimate Collection incl. some LJ with the Big 80s blare toned down--but I've always suspected that those who wanted her to be cowpunk *or* Pettysteen misunderstood her own driven theatricality etc., like I said in this ancient Voice piece about several female artists, "Alias In Wonderland":

The first time I laid eyes on another Hellywood Kid, Maria McKee, fronting
her "cowpunk" band Lone Justice (a name that makes the same kind of sense as
Blazing Saddles), I saw her as an ancestor/descendant of Bette Midler and Stevie
Nicks: a Gold Dust Woman, (re-)born to raise the stakes and stage in Silver
City (prospectors shooting down chandeliers in appreciation). (Bette Midler?
Western as Hawaii, as in "Who you think brought-um steel guitars, Paleface?" And speaking of Midler, she's Jewish, as possibly was Annie Oakley a/k/a Phoebe Moses---O rabbithole, spare me over for another point.)
McKee's new Ultimate Collection (Hip-O) , while discreetly tweaking Big 80s blare, nevertheless unleashes a careening career saga, yet leaves out her self-written, unreleased "To Deserve You" (credibly covered by Midler, on Bette of Roses). Here, a young girl avidly peers out the window at women whose otherworldly beauty and grace come from their virtue. She wants to "shine in
your eye like a jewel," to be as good as, well, gold. This song clarifies (or at least uncovers an especially striking facet of) MM's sometimes distracting, refracted raised-religious-in-Tinseltown
sensibility. She was onstage at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go with her big brother Bryan McLean,
ex-member of punk-psych pioneers Love (also a Christian-speculative songpoet),
when she was only three. And "Soup, Soap, and Salvation" depicts the wee McKee
as pounding a tambourine (and even the Sunset Strip?!), with her allegedly ex-beatnik/born-again parents, belting Gospel to the glitz-blitzed.
But Bryan also turned her on to Broadway, and Maria's teen dreams included
studying with Sondheim at Juilliard. Regarded by some in her hometown as a
proto-alt-country vanguard artist turned Corporate Rock wash-out, she wrote (and released)
"Panic Beach" (included on Ultimate...): She finds herself spending another day
by the bee-yootiful sea, taking her place in the sideshow of invisible
friends, eternal Hollywood Hopefuls, utterly ignored. It's like being trapped inside
the ever growing mural of "The Burning of Los Angeles" in Nathanael West's The
Day of the Locust. But all in her mind—-which is finally obligingly
noticed—and then swallowed, by the depths of the now alarmingly reverberating stereo
sky.
However, once in said sky, she learns to ride the whirlwind she hath reaped,
playing guitar like Mick Ronson and swinging by the star once called Ziggy,
into her personal-space odysseys (freshly cherry-picked for UC, from her 1996
breakthrough, Life Is Sweet). She even whistles like Bowie did in "Golden Years," but spookier, a
coded refrain, on "If Love Is a Red Dress (Hang Me in Rags)"—-from the Pulp Fiction
soundtrack, appropriately enough. She's one of those Western Women, like
Belle Starr and Calamity Jane, Billy Tipton and Brandon Teena, forever having to
migrate through dime novels and disappearances, trespasses and transports.
Straying is the tradition—that Satellite o' Love always needs more lasso.
(In mentioning the trans-living Billy Tipton and Brandon Teena and Lou Reed's "Satellite of Love" and Bowie and Midler etc. I didn't mean to imply that McKee was Queer, as she says now; didn't know about that, it just went with the dime novel, reinventive, shape-shifting aspect of the Wild West and so on. Oscar Wilde visited, as well he might.)

Oh yeah, and the Natalie Maines cover of "Panic Beach," on a tape her Dad Lloyd played for Marti and Emily of the Dixie Chicks, was what got her a meeting with them! Hasn't been on any of their albums, alas, but would think those DC/C royalties for "Am I the Only One (Who's Ever Felt This Way?)" have come in quite handy since the days of '98.

Surprisingly there's many more demos from those sessions, but I can see why they pared it down to something resembling an album rather than tapes just rolling at a demo session. (There's a great birthday performance that incorporates a caterwauling birthday song, followed by two takes of "Sweet Jane" since they don't make it all the way through the first one.)

Where did you hear all that?! Please point me in the right direction. Maybe Omnivore will put it all out there someday, like they did Big Star's Complete Third.
(Sorry for posting that Voice thing again, totally forgot I'd put it on here in 2016.)

I wish I knew. Sometime in the '00s, I must have downloaded, torrented or did a blanks-and-postage trade for that boot, and I forgot about it until I found it again and listened to it to compare to the officially released cuts. Not surprisingly, the official releases sounded like they were done from the original masters while the boot (which I labeled and misidentified as "The Complete Geffen Demos" or something close to that) sounded like a heavily noise-filtered transfer of a cassette dub.

I don't know where I put it, but it's got to be online somewhere. It was two discs total with no omissions (and had space leftover on both discs).

I did a cursory YouTube search and found what may be take 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uFeftHhqss

(Note the Merry Christmas ad-lib at the end - I'm wondering if I misremembered the happy birthday when it was a Merry Christmas message?)

Have always really liked the MK (of Nightcrawlers and "Burning" fame) remix of "To Deserve You" and had no idea McKee wrote it.

I had no idea video of their Palomino shows existed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX715b2PgcM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUu-DYEaZlU

O man, thanks! Yeah, as I prob mentioned upthread,and on xpost TS: Lone Justice or Cruzados or Drivin' & Cryin' or Green On Red or Del Fuegos or Jason & The Scorchers or Long Ryders or Bodeans?, Omnivore's released Live at the Palomino, The Western Tapes 1983: earliest known demos, and The Vaught Tapes: also 1983, their club setlist of primo material, live in the studio with no overdubs, (also a Martin E. solo album): https://omnivorerecordings.com/product-tag/lone-justice/

Excellent suggestions! I was caught me off guard by the different line-up on the Palomino and Western Tapes releases (which is pretty remarkable considering all three Omnivore releases were recorded in 1983). Different rhythm section on the Western Tapes, but by the time they play that Palomino show, Etzioni takes over on bass. Then the Vaught tapes ends the year with Heffington taking over on drums from Don Willens.

Had to do some digging to see what happened with Willens, especially given Etzioni and Hedgecock's very generous thanks in their liner notes for the Palomino CD. There's not much that's out there, but unfortunately what did turn up was incredibly sad - a book interview mentioning addiction problems and an obituary that suggests donations to the American Liver Foundation. (Willens was only 44 when he passed away.)

According to social media posts, Marvin Etzioni, Ryan Hedgecock and Maria McKee are working on a new Lone Justice album. Apparently Marvin showed Maria some old demos and they decided to contact Ryan about making some new recordings. As mentioned, drummers Don Willens and Don Heffington both passed away years ago, so this basically reunites the surviving core members.

Hello Lone Justice Heads!
In the studio with Ryan Hedgecock working on the forthcoming LJ album.
He's playing his 1982 Telecaster reissue. pic.twitter.com/PGFKTSeKcW

— marvin etzioni (@marvinetzioni) July 2, 2022

McKee also mentions working on the album in an earlier Instagram post.

oh wow

Honestly surprised she would be up for this, given how far afield she’s shifted

For those without Instagram, this is from Maria McKee's account, the text under a photo cropped from the cover of The Vaught Tapes 1983 from Omnivore Recordings:

(April 20) It's hard to believe it's been over a year since Don died. Marvin and I meet every few weeks at Factor's deli for latkes and do a stroll through the neighborhood, stop for rugelach and coffee. We talk about old times but not just old times. New life too. He recently spruced up some demos we made during the recording of Sin To Get Saved. "How do you want to release them, as MM? Or LJ?" "As LJ," I said. But we can't release it as LJ without Ryan. You will have to overdub some Ryan!" So that's what they are doing today.

And in the comments, there's a nice one from Benmont Tench saying he can't wait to hear these.

jesus what a voice

“If Love Is A Red Dress” just shook me to my core

yep