"I tried to make it without you," former Lone Justice singer Maria McKee told a grateful audience in Santa Ana, California, last night, where she kicked off her first tour in five years. "I had to come back."

Backed by a four-piece band that included her husband/producer Jim Akin, McKee rolled through a ninety-minute plus set that included favorites ("Shelter," "Sweet, Sweet Baby (I'm Falling)," "Panic Beach"), some surprises (the Lone Justice rarity "Dixie Storms," and a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Candy's Room") and a wealth of material from her forthcoming album High Dive.

As long as the lag has been between tours for McKee, it's been even longer since she's had a new studio album. High Dive is her first release since 1996's underrated Life is Sweet.

"Seven years went by so quickly," McKee says of the long hiatus, and at least she has some good excuses. First, she broke with her old label, Geffen, and then she and Akin took time out to get married (September 2000). Then, when it came time to come back to the music business, she had to decide where to go as an unsigned artist for the first time since she was a teenager with Lone Justice in the early Eighties.

Finally, she and Akin decided to put the album out on their own label, Viewfinder Records. But rather than go completely indie, the pair are getting some unlikely help from Jimmy Buffet and his distribution company, Mailboat. "We got such an incredible offer from the folks at Mailboat," McKee says. "We own the record, we get to keep the record, they're going to distribute it for us, and we have complete and utter creative control."

For McKee, releasing the record on her terms and knowing what will happen with it is paramount. Life is Sweet, she said at the tour kick-off, "is like my favorite album I ever made," but it isn't in print anymore.

She did get some satisfaction from re-recording that album's title track for High Dive. Though the song dates back to '96, it fits right in with the up-tempo, rock heavy numbers of the new album. And High Dive is an unapologetically rock record.

Live, songs such as "To the Open Spaces," "Be my Joy," "In Your Constellation," and "Something Similar," which closes the album, take on an especially ferocious intensity.

She will turn thirty-nine this year, but McKee has found her passion again. "I'm having more fun now than I've had in years," she says. "All the people I love the most in my life and coming on tour with me. There are no people standing around, being big wet blankets, saying, 'You can't do this, you can't do that.' It's very Grateful Dead."

STEVE BALTIN
(April 18, 2003)