Country-influenced Rock: Maria McKee's Peddlin' Dreams

Maria McKee is back with Peddlin’ Dreams. She’s back to 1989 and the sound of her self-titled solo debut. She’s back to songs that come from the loneliest corner of a shadowed, empty house. The sad longing for love in many of the songs from her solo debut made me want to rescue her (as wrong-headed and silly as that notion might have been). Now as she sings “love is not for me” on “My One True Love,” she’s back to a bruised place, a place that so heart-achingly speaksforth songs, but a place—if at all autobiographical, if at all like what the album pictures show—a place I don’t want Maria McKee to be—at least, I don’t think so.

As lead singer of Lone Justic, McKee belted out soulful, Gospel-like, punk energy vocals. Even on songs about being abandoned by love, her vocals showed a defiance. When she released her solo debut, many of those songs found McKee sounding broken, beaten by love-loss. I was even more drawn to these more intimate songs, but I didn’t want McKee to be in that place.

You Gotta Sin to Get Saved found more of the defiance back in McKee’s incredible voice, but Peddlin’ Dreams returns to the shadowed, empty house of loneliness. I had hoped for the defiant, blues-soaked attitude, but McKee instead has swept the corners, sending dust into the air, clouding the room with songs of life’s pains. Some part of me still want to rescue the freckle-faced darling who reminds me of a high school girlfriend I also wanted to rescue (what’s that? A hero complex?), but I should’ve learned by now.

McKee doesn’t need any rescuing (and neither did that girlfriend). McKee is defiant in these sad songs, because she is speaking what often gets left unsaid. She is making songs about the lonely rooms instead of just a storefront pleasure display. Rescuing her, ushering her back to the rocking and rolling would only serve the upfront appearance while not revealing anything about the heart of singer or listener.

So McKee sounds lonely, makes songs on Peddlin’ Dreams that come from that more fragile place, and her album pictures mainly show a hurt, child-like face. Yet, we listen to such music because those are our fragile places, too. There’s wrinkled sheets on empty beds, quiet rooms that are almost too loud, stories that should’ve never been told, longings that we don’t dare speak—and then McKee comes along to sing those things forth from our hearts.

McKee will capture your heart with Peddlin’ Dreams, and you will not need rescuing as much as you will need to sing with her for all of those dust-filled rooms. In that, McKee isn’t so much like your lover—the raw sexuality sometimes inherent in her defiant music. Peddlin’ Dreams brings McKee as much more of a confessor—someone who begins to speak about what is going on truly in life, eliciting our confession, our admission of the secrets, sins, and pains.

Then she kicks up the band and sings, “Everyone’s got a story/Someone had to get a stage.” It’s an absolution of sorts. We are not alone in our lonely, broken places. It’s not a far cry from Jesus telling His disciples as He ascended into heaven, “I am with you always.” We need to know that we are not alone—either as listeners to a singer on stage or as listeners for the voice of God.

Thanks to Maria McKee and Eleven Thirty Records for the review copy.