Lone Justice: Last News

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Among the great what-ifs for students of L.A. rock history is: What if Lone Justice had remained a somewhat obscure band….

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic From the early 1960s through mid-1980s, the preeminent rock ‘n’ roll club in California’s Orange Country was the Golden Bear. The intimate venue across from the Huntington Beach pier played host to artists ranging from Janis Joplin and Neil Young to Patti Smith and Steve Martin to Lone Justice and local-kids-made-good No Doubt.

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers’ ‘Long After Dark’ is on the way, and set to be released in October.The new version of the 1982 album will arrive in stores next month, more than 40 years after it was first released.Set to arrive via Geffen/UMe on October 18, the new variant will come as a double disc and contains seven recordings that remained unreleased up until now. These include Petty’s ‘Never Be You’, which became a chart-topping hit for Rosanne Cash in 1984, as well as ‘Don’t Make Me Walk the Line’ and ‘Ways To Be Wicked’.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Don Heffington, a beloved L.A. musician who died of leukemia in 2021, will be the subject of a charity tribute album coming out this fall, with featured artists including Jackson Browne, Fiona Apple, Buddy Miller, John C. Reilly, Dave Alvin and Watkins Family Hour.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Angela McCluskey, the Scottish-born, L.A.-based frontwoman for the popular ’90s band the Wild Colonials, died Thursday at age 64. The singer died after being in a coma following emergency surgery for an arterial tear. The death was announced in a post on McCluskey’s Instagram account Thursday night.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Gregg Sutton, a songwriter and musician who recorded as a solo artist, was a member of Lone Justice, toured with Bob Dylan and was the musical director for comedian Andy Kaufman, died Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 74. No cause of death was immediately given.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Robbie Robertson left a legacy of storytelling behind him when he died at age 80 on Aug. 9 in Los Angeles. It’s not just the tales he concocted for his work with the Band and, later, his solo records, but his prowess as one of music’s great raconteurs, whether he was harking back to an upbringing that had him visiting Native reservations with his mother or telling of the high life among the rich and infamous.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic California is in the house, and will be for the next three years, at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. A major exhibition, “Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock,” has just opened and will run through 2025. The must-see walk-through traces a history of roots music in L.A. rock that expands to include the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers and Michael Nesmith in the 1960s; the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris in the ’70s; and Dwight Yoakam, Lone Justice and Los Lobos in the ’80s, among many other influential and sometimes commercially impactful figures. Variety recently visited the museum and spoke with co-curators Michael Gray, the facility’s executive senior director of editorial and interpretation, and Michael McCall, the museum’s senior editor, about why the ’60s through ’80s were a golden age for country-inflected rock in Los Angeles. The two curators also spoke about a number of the artifacts on display, from numerous Nudie’s-tailored jackets that set the visual tone for the era to key musical instruments to handwritten scores and setlists and even band flyers — see the gallery of photos below.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticAttention, L.A. country music fans: It may be time to charter a bus.Come Sept.