Maria McKee Biography

Maria McKee Biography

 Maria Louise McKee (b. 17 August 1964, Los Angeles, California) is an American singer. A solo artist, McKee was a founding member of the cowpunk/country rock band, Lone Justice, in 1982, with whom she released two albums. Her band opened for such acts as U2. She attended Beverly Hills High School in Beverly Hills, California. When she was only 19, she wrote Feargal Sharkey's 1985 UK number one hit "A Good Heart", a song she has since recorded herself, and released on her album, Late December. In 1987 she was featured in the Robbie Robertson video Somewhere Down The Crazy River. She released her first solo, self-titled album in 1989. Her song "Show Me Heaven", which appeared on the soundtrack to the film, Days of Thunder, was a number one single in the United Kingdom for four weeks in 1990. She refused to perform this song in public up until recently when for the first time in 18 years she sang it at Dublin Gay Pride. She said "She felt it was the right time and place to sing it, I am proud of you". She is credited as a backing vocalist on the Counting Crows' 1993 debut August and Everything After, lending her voice clearly to songs like "Sullivan Street". Later her eerie, country-tinged single, "If Love Is a Red Dress (Hang Me in Rags)" was released on the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction in 1994. She is the half-sister of Love guitarist Bryan MacLean, with whom she played in a duo as a teenager. In the 1990s, she spent time living in Dublin and the East Village.