Bringing Back the Spirit of Lone Justice with “Viva Lone Justice”

Rediscovering the Magic of Lone Justice: A Hidden Gem Revived

What if Lone Justice hadn’t been swept up by the mainstream music industry too soon? What if they had kept growing as an indie band, staying true to their unique country-punk roots? While history didn’t unfold that way, fans can now imagine this alternate reality with “Viva Lone Justice,” the band’s first “new” release in 38 years.

This album, released by Fire Records, brings together recordings from the early 1990s, initially made during casual living room sessions with Maria McKee, Marvin Etzioni, and Don Heffington. These tapes, rediscovered by Etzioni, were refreshed with new overdubs by original guitarist Ryan Hedgecock, blending old and new to keep the raw, lively sound that defined the band’s early days.

The Spirit of Lone Justice Revisited

For longtime followers of Lone Justice’s journey, the album is a rare treat. It recaptures the band’s energy from before their producer, Jimmy Iovine, nudged them toward a more rock-oriented sound. While their 1986 debut album was well-received, it didn’t fully reflect the band’s roots. “Viva Lone Justice” does just that, reminding listeners of the spirited mix of punk and country that made them stand out.

From Past to Present: How It Came Together

According to McKee, the discovery began when Etzioni found the old tapes and suggested putting them out. “I wasn’t even sure if I still had that voice,” McKee said, reflecting on her more recent operatic style. But the result, she agreed, is an exciting flashback to their unfiltered past.

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Hedgecock noted, “I wanted to add my touch to it without changing its essence.” The final product feels timeless, echoing the band’s original sound while carrying subtle updates that show their growth over the years.

Memories and Music Resurrected

Etzioni shared that revisiting these tapes and turning them into an album was unexpected but fulfilling. “If you told me years ago Maria would be excited about this, I wouldn’t have believed you,” he said. But something shifted, allowing for a reunion of their creative energy.

McKee was blown away when she first heard the completed project. “It’s got an amazing spirit,” she said. And even though most tracks aren’t new compositions, the one original song, “You Possess Me,” stands out as a powerful piece.

“Viva Lone Justice” isn’t just a look back; it’s a bridge between what was and what could have been. For anyone who loves the rawness and passion that Lone Justice embodied, this album is a must-listen. It’s a reminder of their roots, full of the joy and grit that only they could deliver.

“Viva Lone Justice” isn’t just another release; it’s a testament to the band’s rich history and the timeless nature of their music. For longtime fans, it’s a trip down memory lane, and for new listeners, it’s an introduction to an era-defining sound. Dive in and experience the energy that made Lone Justice unforgettable.

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.

“Jenny Jenkins” was really Ryan’s baby; he brought that to Maria and recorded it with her and Heffington about 15 years ago. We had the multi-track for that and I was able to overdub bass. Ryan had a lot more tracks on it, but when we worked on it, it was like, let’s strip it down and turn it more into a raw Lone Justice recording.

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

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 was 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 who 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?