Lone Justice was supposed to be huge. Admittedly, there’s no shortage of bands that fall into that category from the era of burgeoning college radio influence from the mid-eighties to the early-nineties, but Lone Justice has long struck me as one of the more perplexing near-misses. They surely had the industry support with major figures like Tom Petty and Linda Ronstadt extolling their virtues and a major label plucking them from the L.A. club scene to make the band a showcase act on their roster. The press, too, lined up to celebrate the band, reserving special praise for the rich, throaty vocals of lead singer Maria McKee.

Looking a little like the subject Walker Evans might have selected if he’d indulged in a mid-career shift into fashion photography, McKee came across like a lithe, lovely firebrand. She was perhaps perfectly suited to appeal to moody, earnest boys toiling in student-run radio–I think it was almost a prerequisite to getting that FCC Operator’s License to have a little crush on her, at least for those who were so inclined–but perhaps less so for the wider masses who were settling on Madonna as the standard of pop star sex appeal. Similarly the earthiness of their music, merging a polished rock sound with rootsy songcraft, seemed increasingly out of place on commercial radio, which was becoming more preoccupied with bombast than ever before. Lone Justice was very good and resolutely true at a time when those qualities held little interest for those with the strongest influence on which performers broke through.

Arguably, the closest the band came was in 1986 with the title track from their sophomore album, Shelter. The song received decent airplay on rock radio and climbed up to number 47 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart before it ran out of steam. In reality, though, it wasn’t really the band that was reaching those heights. Most of the founding members departed after the debut didn’t live up to expectations, leaving McKee to recruit new musicians. She had sole or shared songwriting credit on all ten tracks of Shelter after contributing to only about half of the songs on the debut. The primacy of her authorship was fully confirmed when she gave up on the pretense of the band altogether, discarding the Lone Justice name and release her very fine self-titled solo debut in 1989. Again, except for a knowledgeable (and fairly small) crowd of devoted fans, no one paid much attention.

Like many songs that were more welcome on our college radio station airwaves than just about anywhere else, “Shelter” still sounds like a hit to me. It evokes the same sensation of broadly shared fondness that I have for actual smashes of the time frame from the likes of U2. I guess, in a way, I still hear what could have been nestled in those notes.

Lone Justice, “Shelter”

(Disclaimer: It looks to me like both Shelter and the apparently sole Lone Justice compilation are out of print. “Shelter,” like much of their music, can be purchased as MP3 downloads, presumably from a wide variety of online retailers, but that doesn’t put biscuits on the table of your friend local record store proprietor. It does look like you can go to them and request a copy of the band’s self-titled debut, which is an excellent record and highly recommended. There are also a few of McKee’s solo releases still readily available, and that’s not a bad route either. As always–well, almost always–the song is presented here with the understanding that it’s not something that can be purchased at an actual physical location in a way that will also provide compensation to the artist. Regardless, I’ll gladly remove it if I’m asked to do so by someone with the due authority to make such a request.)