Took a leap of faith, and I stumbled
Tried to live outside grace and I was humbled
But I'd like to bet if I lived to fear regret
Then we never would've met.
- 'My Girlhood among the Outlaws'

While she is perhaps one of the most talented vocalists in rock, country, or any other genre you care to name, Maria McKee has for the most part avoided the mass popularity afforded those with lesser talents, by dint of being too edgy, too eclectic, and (perhaps most fatefully) too unsure of her own direction. Born in 1964, some 18 years after her older brother Bryan (MacLean, of the band Love), she carries some of the sensibility of the '60s generation while being burdened by the built-in lack of identity of her own.

Justice in LA

After playing music for a time with MacLean, she formed the band Lone Justice in the 1980s. The band were inevitably patronised by the already-famous of Los Angeles and signed to David Geffen's eponymous vanity label, releasing two critically acclaimed albums: Lone Justice (1985) and Shelter (1987). Therein lies the problem that has dogged McKee's career. She has always been too popular with the rock and country cognoscenti, and the steamroller of other peoples' expectations squashes flat her own better judgement and wishes. Lone Justice had a slight cowpunk feel, some decent songs, and standout vocal performances, but Shelter is (to use the words of Dr Seuss) a frightful bombastic aghast: big drums, layered guitars, and overdubbed backing vox. It's good, but almost too good for a small band from LA to crank out as a second album; Maria fled the box into which she was being squeezed for a solo career¹.

Solo

What the record company wants, and what Maria McKee wants, are often incompatible. Produced by Mitchell Froom, her first solo effort, Maria McKee, is a long way from both Lone Justice recordings. The cover art shows an ethereal Victorian beauty, frail and vain, and the production values are smooth, tasteful, and mature. This is rock for the first CD generation: the edges knocked off and any suggestion that the singer might actually, you know, sweat, is kept from our attention. There are some beautiful songs here, and some great vocal performances, but catch McKee live in this period and you realise what you're missing.

Appearing boiler-suited, shaggy, and not in the slightest way Victorian, McKee bounces on stage and simply lets rip a series of extraordinary performances that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. No recording engineer has thus far been capable of capturing more than 50 percent of the power of her voice. Record producers use compression to squash the peaks in a sound recording, so as to stay within the limits of the recording medium, and avoid distortion. Singing live and at the top of her form, Maria McKee is beyond such artificial limitations. Unfortunately, live recordings made by the BBC when she was in Lone Justice seem to have coincided with a head cold.

Maria McKee made no impact in her home country, but the classic record company tactic of getting her to sing on 'the song from the film' Days of Thunder paid off with chart success. The single 'Show Me Heaven' stayed at number one in the UK for several weeks. When she performed it live, however, Maria stripped the arrangement down to a simple keyboard accompaniment, and let her voice make the thunder.

Again, McKee set out to shed the skin offered by her packaging, and returned in 1993 with You Gotta Sin to Get Saved, a return to Lone Justice-style noise making. The cover features a moody dark-haired woman, who is surely not the Victorian beauty of 1989... For the first time as a solo artist, a listener gets a feel for the personality behind the voice (especially on the title track), though there are nods to her previous rock-star patrons on the Tom Petty-like 'I'm Gonna Soothe You', the Dylan-like 'My Girlhood among the Outlaws', and two Van Morrison covers ('The Way Young Lovers Do', and 'My Lonely Sad Eyes').

The follow-up to this was more, and less, of the same, with the indie-flavoured Life is Sweet, released in 1996, and to date the last album of all new material released by McKee. Life is Sweet has divided critics and fans, with some claiming it to be the perfect expression of this most talented artist, and others complaining of the almost complete lack of good tunes. The guitars are there, and the great voice, but there is little to satisfy the fan looking for some rollicking good songs. McKee herself ranks it as her favourite album, though she is currently very enthusiastic about her next project (at the time of writing), which is yet to find a distributor. When released, it will be her first outing since the death of her brother (from a heart attack) in 1998.

More Info

Fans can read news from Maria (scribbled characteristically in manic handwriting on a yellow legal pad and scanned) on the Maria McKee Website, and post messages there on her forum.

Selected Discography

Lone Justice: Lone Justice (1985); Shelter (1986); This World is Not My Home (1999, compilation)

Solo: Maria McKee (1989); You Gotta Sin to Get Saved (1993); Life is Sweet (1996); The Ultimate Collection (2000, compilation).