This Is Lone Justice: The Vaught Tapes, 1983

Fans who caught Lone Justice in concert in 1983 heard a sound that never quite made it to record. When the band’s self-titled major-label debut album landed in 1985, fans missed the easygoing but explosive fun of Lone Justice's live shows and watched the band never make the commercial connection that seemed like a foregone conclusion in their earliest days. This Is Lone Justice: The Vaught Tapes, 1983 is a 12-song demo cut live to two-track tape by engineer David Vaught in December 1983, and it gives listeners some idea of what all the talk was about. Singer Maria McKee had an ol’-time country voice that played well into the band’s shuffling mix of rockabilly and country led by drummer Don Heffington. Ryan Hedgecock’s guitar is lower in the vocal-heavy mix than expected, but one can hear the magic of “Cactus Rose” (even if you need to raise the volume for the guitar solo). Covers of “Jackson” and “Working Man’s Blues” make perfect sense.