JUSTIN McKEE
JUSTIN McKEE
ABOUT
I'm a song-and-dance man, wordmonger, and flâneur.
I am not my rodeo cowboy doppelganger, despite this preschool printout circa 1988:
In addition to my less onerous work as a wayfaring artist, l've been a bartender, bellhop, dishwasher, ditchdigger, dogwalker, doorman, farmhand, groundskeeper, lifeguard, signpainter, short-order cook, and valet, to name but a dozen. I did this work because I needed to eat, but also because I wanted to understand intimately and limn singularly the picaresque variety of life. It is this motif, as well as an interest in exploring societal dissonances and disparities while advocating for the more vulnerable among us, which serves as the basis and bedrock of my artistry. For me, music and writing are concomitant callings; this homespun website is intended to be a simple artistic portfolio featuring some of my more redeeming efforts.
MUSIC
My musical disposition has been informed by what I've absorbed from the streets and small venues of New Orleans, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco; from the front porches and juke joints of the Mississippi Delta; from the old records I'd find at the public library and the sounds of my hometown jazz radio station, KCSM. What gets me most is music being made in a particular moment, embracing environment, imperfections and limitations, musicians playing not to package a product but for the muse...
I grew up in San Mateo, California, making music with my first and best friend, neighbor, and guitar hero David Giannini.
We busked our parents' dinner parties and neighborhood Happy Hour gatherings, and in bedrooms and garages we recorded ourselves on a Tascam 4-track; these performances and demos were all highly regarded--alas, none of the tapes survived.
I also sang doowop and formed boy bands with friends to croon to our crushes and serenade our sweethearts.
After high school, I began working as a singer/songwriter in San Francisco, playing cafes, night clubs, cocktail parties and art galleries, and I wrote and recorded a studio album I titled Entelechy. The experience was constructive but ultimately saw me reluctant to continue the career trajectory and newly intent on embracing simplicity, idiosyncrasy, and intimacy as hallmarks of my music. Inspired by the great bluesmen and an indefatigable tap-dancing impresario at the Powell Street cable car turnaround, I returned to busking and playing guerrilla gigs, writing and recording for various Bay Area artists, and was half of the short-lived but seminal Punk Crunk duo ZOO.
Years of wayward troubadouring followed. I made recordings on rooftops and street corners and in gardens and boudoirs, using GarageBand and the built-in MacBook microphone or an old Tascam and a single Shure SM57, and a parlor guitar, Telecaster, keyboard, or whatever instruments were accessible to me at the time. While I do tend to favor a more minimalist production value, it's never necessarily been my intention to affect (or effect) a punk ethos with recordings; I'm just doing the best I can with what I've got.
My recorded music is available for purchase here, and can also be streamed on all the major platforms; additional content (eww) can be found on my personal Youtube channel. Live performances may or may not be announced here. For private bookings, please drop a line in the Contact section.
Some abiding musical inspirations include Mary Lou Williams, Skip James, Roger Miller, Charlie Christian, Leroy Carr, Memphis Minnie, Professor Longhair, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Elliott Smith, Anthony Hamilton, Amy Winehouse, John Lee Hooker, James Brown, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Lead Belly.
WRITING
From as far back as I can remember, I've been enchanted by the majesty of the written word.
Throughout my adolescence, I was an ardent scribe of letters, stories, sketch comedy, screenplays, and song lyrics, albeit often of the incongruous variety. I penned adoring missives to various artistic heroes and choleric dispatches to captains of industry.
I also tried my hand as a ghostwriter for fictitious teenage girls and submitted embarrassing stories to Seventeen for publication; I must have overshot the target, as my exploits never made it into the magazine.
Recent years have seen my writing take the (slightly more disciplined) form of vignettes, short stories, essays, editorials, letters, lyrics, and a novel. Despite my lifelong studies, fieldwork, and best efforts, I remain essentially bootless in this domain; my public output is sporadic and decidedly unprolific--but then I have to step to the music I hear, however measured or far away. And also I'm still at it.
The following are some elements of my writing portfolio:
The Raffish, for which I served as Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief/General Dogsbody, was an offbeat literary magazine featuring the work of prisoners, combat veterans, laborers, and others. It was published in print and online from 2017-2020, distributed internationally, and garnered praise from such disparate parties as a world-renowned author and my grandmother.
Divagations is a Substack of brown study & blue notes.
As It Were: The Long-Lost Blue-Noted Romance Yarn by Amos Bankhead is my first novel, a forbidden love story wrapped in a crime saga inside a travelogue intimating a blues tune, released in serial format on the Substack site and soon to be published in print.
Sink or Swim is an autobiography by Trenton Grant to which I lent an editorial and collaborative hand. It was first published in The Raffish and remains a personal favorite of mine on account of his inimitable voice, perspective, and perseverance through the tragicomedy of life.
Among the writers that have influenced me are Henry David Thoreau, Bill Watterson, John Steinbeck, Carson McCullers, Ralph Ellison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Mitchell, Joan Didion, Flannery O'Connor, Julio Cortázar, Sherwood Anderson, Dorothy Parker, John Fante, Toni Morrison, Henry Miller, Mark Twain, and William Shakespeare.
PHOTOGRAPHS
A smattering of my photographs are included here at the behest of my creditors, and nod to Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sergio Larrain, Robert Capo, Gerda Taro, and Ernest Cole. Please contact for prints and gallery showings.
CONTACT
Acquisitions, Bookings, Collaborations, Commissions, Fan Mail, Grievances, Press, and Other Inquiries: