Enigma Jones 3

Enigma Jones 3

No good deed goes unpunished

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There were a lot of hugs, especially from the girls. They were impressed by my beard and long hair. I told them I was trying to give a tortured artist vibe, but I got lazy. Mom frowned, and I knew I'd get a lecture about cleaning up, but she held her tongue. After a quick meal of grilled burgers and chicken breasts, with all the summertime side dishes one would expect, we all trooped out to the shop.

Annie handed me a list of ten songs, way more than enough for a full album. She blushed a little, saying it all came from the first box, and she wasn't entirely through it yet. "We're gonna pick six more for the second. I'm pretty sure there's more than enough material to flesh it out."

"Making long-range plans, are we?"

Star didn't even blush, looking me in the eye. "We're gonna be stars, baby. It would be so much better if you joined us. The chemistry we have is magical; everyone says so."

"I would ask who everyone is, but it doesn't matter; still not my dream."

Star looked stubborn and wanted to argue the point, but Annie laughed. "Give it up, hon. Darrin is a bonafide artiste now, with a big following. You and Heather are like me and Star. We're good separately, but together, we're so much more. I wanna mug like you gave Star, and don't dare think about charging me!"

"I'll think about it. Now, show me what you got."

They played three of them, and they had the bones down but lacked polish. I suggested a lick here and a chord change there, and they worked on the improvements. I stopped them after two hours. "I think we're getting stale here. Let's sleep on it and start fresh tomorrow."

I thought about it as I lay in bed. The songs were good, but they were raw. They needed professional input, and I resolved to book studio time and let Jack work his magic. Dad agreed when I floated the idea the next morning, and when we called Jack, he seemed excited. "I wondered when you would be back! The guy I was recording managed to get drunk, cause an accident and flee the scene, and when they checked his car, they found an ounce of cocaine and some meth. So it would appear he won't be able to record for a while. It was trash anyway, and if this makes him clean up his act, I'll reschedule. The point is I got three days where I don't have to work with anyone else, so get your butts over here."

He had them play everything they wanted to put on their record, no doubt making mental notes and chose three that showed the most promise, concentrating on those. He had made sure he had a drummer and a keyboard whiz available, and they ran through the songs and then played them raw. The keyboard player was a genius and worked part-time for Jack as an engineer. We left them, taking the drummer with us, and went to lunch, grabbing food to take back.

They had only worked on one song and played it back as they tore into their food. Star had her mouth hanging open, and Annie looked like she was about to burst into tears; it was that good. I thought they needed to replace us with professional musicians, and Jack agreed.

It upset the girls, so we stayed a couple more hours and added parts here and there. I played harmonica on one, Dad played slide on another, and I played bass on two more. That night, we told them we wouldn't be coming into the studio anymore. "If you want to make it, you don't need amateurs. You need pros good at their job, for their insight as well as their playing ability. Jack will take care of you."

By the end of the next day, they admitted that the songs were better. Jack would introduce them to some club owners, find a venue to debut their sound, and several record companies after he gave them some advice. "Get a lawyer, the best you can find. I know a couple that could guard your interests, and before you talk to anybody, make sure they know your lawyer will be present. They'll tell you the same thing I'm telling you: be careful what you say, or they can claim verbal commitment."

They ended up with a woman with thirty years of experience in entertainment law, concentrating on musicians.

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They signed a two-record deal. The company had a good reputation, and they also provided guidance. The label they signed with was one of four that showed interest, and Jack told them they had chosen the right one. The first order of business was a tour, both in high-end nightclubs and opening for regional acts within their label. Up until that point, all they'd played were small. Intimate places and festivals around campus. They assigned a tour manager to watch over them; finally, it was time.

I'd returned to my wheel, working with Heather on a few things and throwing three kilns worth of product. Mom called me, bubbling. "They're having a kick-off celebration to start the tour. We are commanded to be there. Annie says if that doesn't work, to tell you she'd beg. Neither would be where they are now without your words. So, get a nice suit, and be there!"

I sighed. "Yes, Mom. Can I wear my bells as well?"

Mom giggled, telling me this was to be a bell-free event.

I grinned as I hung up, turning to Heather. She was visiting for a few days to glaze the jugs we'd created. She usually worked from home, but uncured pottery didn't travel well, so she came to me. The deal was next time, I'd spend a few days at her house and throw there, so she wouldn't have to travel. "Looks like you're on your own next Saturday. I've been commanded to attend a musical event, the kick-off for Starshine. It's in Charlotte at the Neighborhood Theatre, and I'll probably stay the night."

"Oh! Can I come? What they've released on YouTube is sensational. I can't believe you're friends with them!"

Instead of going into detail, I'd told Heather we were friends from college, and I'd introduced them to cigar box guitars, and Dad had built some of their instruments. I didn't tell her I'd written the lyrics for every song on the album. When this started, I told them I didn't want my name anywhere near it, afraid it would affect my career. Jack grinned. "Use a fake name. Songwriters do it all the time."

"What would you suggest?"

He thought for a minute. "Well, some use bizarre names. My dad was a big fan of a band called Steppenwolf, and one of their songwriters went by Mars Bonfire. Most use some kind of enigmatic first name and something dirt common for the last, like Smith or Jones."

I smiled, catching my Mom's smirk when I gave him the name I wanted to use: Enigma Jones. Jack liked it: "It's simple but memorable. You need to make sure the label knows. If they let it leak who you are, then the girls can't use your poems anymore."

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Heather called home to tell her husband where she was going, and he grumbled a little. "Damn! I wanted to see them. You owe me. Hot sex and a promise that we'll see them when they come to town will go a long way."

She could hear the humor in his voice. "Done! I'm already almost a week behind, so get some rest and have one set, or the other grandparents keep Sissy the night I get home. Love you, honey."

We went down early and found the upscale hotel where my parents had made reservations. Then we all went out for dinner, arriving at the venue at eight. VIP passes were waiting, and we were ushered backstage. Annie and Star screamed and wrapped us all up in hugs that seemed to go on forever.

"Nervous?" Both nodded. "Well, don't be. Go out there and let the music carry you until you hit your groove. You'll do just fine."

They had picked the name Starshine as a play on their names. Annie had a nickname at college, Sunshine Annie, because she was so upbeat. They'd nabbed the keyboardist and drummer from Jack, found an outstanding guitar player who could swap to bass when Annie needed to play, and rehearsed until they were seamless. The crowd was loud from the start, but halfway through the show, the level had risen so high I wished for earplugs. They took a short break to introduce the band. Then Annie grabbed the microphone.

"We'd like to thank some people, people that if we hadn't met, we wouldn't be where we are. First, I want to introduce Darrin Osprey. We met in college, and he taught us cigar box guitar. We'd also like to thank his parents. We stayed with them while the record was being made, and they became surrogate parents. Thanks, Mom and Dad. Also, Dad is the owner of Birdbox Instruments. Most of the instruments I play he built for me."

Then she paused. "Finally, I want to thank Enigma Jones. He wrote all the songs on the album, as well as enough for our second. He's prolific and talented beyond words. He's also horribly shy, but we're working on it."

Heather was amazed when I got called onto the stage to play slide on Annie's four-string on the old blues classics Key To The Highway and Come On Into My Kitchen. Then I sang backup on Soulshine. Those were the only covers; the rest of the songs were originals. They played two encores, songs on the new album, and the crowd didn't want them to leave. The management had to shut things down due to liquor laws, and the girls stayed swamped until they managed to get away.

The next day, they did a post-concert review and got a rave from the local paper's music critic. She sang songs of praise for them, then closed with a footnote. "As talented as these women are, they would be lost without their lyricist. If I ever meet Enigma Jones in person, I think I'll kiss him, just for the lyrics on All I Ever Wanted. Keep an eye on Starshine because if their next efforts are the same quality as the first, they'll be headlining in two years."

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They'd given Heather backstage passes when they passed through their area at the end of the tour. She talked about them at one of the expos we worked. "They were in fine voice, even tighter vocally than in Charlotte, but they looked tired. Annie told me they had two more dates, and it was home for two weeks before they started working on the next album. Star would have kept touring if she could talk Annie into it, but they'd already extended the tour by three weeks and four performances, and she said enough was enough."

I caught clips of their performances occasionally, and Annie looked tired. Star looked energized, and since she wasn't bound to an instrument, she could work the stage. She garnered most of the attention, and I wondered how Annie felt about that. They'd gone in as full partners; any change in dynamics might affect their relationship.

They came home, and Annie decompressed with Mom and Dad for a week. Then she came to see me, admiring my place, grinning. "You're entirely too comfortable, Dar. You need a woman to mess that up."

I laughed, but I had been thinking the same thing. At twenty-five, the urge for a life partner was beginning to surge. "Maybe I'll find one. Are you taking applications?"

It was cute to watch her blush, but one of the main reasons we were such great friends was because I never hit on her or Star. As our friendship grew, I knew dating one or the other would mess up the balance, so I walked a fine line. "Not at present, but if you leave your resume with my assistant, I may get back to you."

Then she laughed. "I don't have time for romance. I plan to have a nice little music career, maybe five years, and when it runs its course, have enough time and money to find a soulmate and live happily ever after."

"That sounds like a plan, but from my observations, when love comes, it arrives on its own schedule. In fact..." I pulled out my latest notebook and showed her the poem. Her eyes were shining when she finished. "Please, please, please, can we put it on the next album?"

"You can if you sing it."

"Why me?"

I wasn't about to tell her I wrote explicitly about her, so I told her I thought her voice was best suited to it and that unless she sang lead on it, she couldn't have it. She looked undecided. "As soon as she sees it, she'll want it."

"Star is old enough to realize you don't always get what you want. I've stated my terms. If she has a problem with it, she can call. Speaking of Star, how's she handling the success?"

Annie didn't look happy. "She's doing everything short of eating it like a drug. Instead of relaxing, she's doing interviews, hyping the new album when I can't get her into the studio. I saw her yesterday on a noon talk show, singing with their band."

"All I can say is, she better remember to 'dance with the one what brung her', as my greatuncle often remarked. Star is a great singer, but she's less without you, and she needs to remember that."

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Heather and I were getting our publicity, and when one of the most famous singers in the world showed up at her house, wanting a face jug of her baby, we were overwhelmed. I must have thrown and destroyed two dozen jugs before deciding I got it right and showed it to Heather. "She is going to flip when she sees it! I'll start glazing as soon as it cures."

I'd never seen her so nervous as she mixed the glazes to get the right skin, hair tone, or eye color. When we fired it, I don't think she slept for two days, and when it was finally cool enough to empty, she was the first one in. We cleaned it off, sitting it on the shelf and admiring it. "That's about as perfect a jug as I've seen, Heather. Well done."

"Glazing means diddly if the jug wasn't right. WE did good."

She showed up with her movie star husband, just them, no entourage. "You wouldn't believe how nice it is to go where no one knows who you are and talk to people who have no agenda. Will and I have admired the scenery here. We're considering getting a few acres and building a little getaway."

Their toddler was asleep, but when he woke up, he wanted to explore, so her husband and I walked him around to burn some energy off. He liked the small pond, with the ducks and the hound a neighbor had given me, tussling with her in the yard. "He'll get dirty," I warned.

"He's a kid. They wash off pretty easily, and he's having a ball. Let him play." When we walked back into the shop, they were hugging, and when we came in, they grabbed us as well. You rarely get a cuddle from people worth over a hundred million dollars, but it was nice.

Then, they had to have pictures. Her husband took one of us with her arms around us, then she took one of her husband, then set a timer and took one of us, Heather holding the child. I thought it was just a keepsake, and it was until an entertainment reporter was interviewing him about the new movie coming out. He interviewed in his mansion, his wife by his side. The reporter admired how well the home was decorated, and she noticed the jug, commenting on it. "Thank you. Of everything in this house, all the antiques, the art, if our house caught fire, this would be the first thing we grabbed. Darrin Osprey and Heather Thomas did it. He did the jug, and she did the glazing."

Then he pulled up the pictures they had taken. We didn't follow celebrities, so it was quite a surprise when our friends lit up our social profiles and phones, telling us to check them out. I tended to shun the limelight, and Heather became the face of our partnership. Requests flooded in from famous people, offering ridiculous amounts of money. We had enough work to last two years, and few argued over the timeline.

Heather was shrewd, insisting we make no more than twelve a year so we didn't flood the market and reduce the value.

The singer noticed pictures of Annie and Star, one from their debut album, most casually, us hugging and grinning. Heather explained we were old college friends and that my father had custom-built Annie's guitar and all the cigar box instruments. I was really glad I hadn't hung the gold record I'd gotten for the first album.

That excited her, and I called the folks. "Fire up the grill; you got company coming. They got a little boy just past two, so make sure there's something for him. We'll be there in a few hours."

If you'd touched Mom with a feather, it would have had the same effect as a sledge when she saw who her guests were, but after an hour, she had calmed down. Dad built for some of the top performers in the world, so he was a little more relaxed. They ate, and the toddler ended up in Mom's arms as she fed him the home-churned ice cream, smiling and giving me pointed looks.

Then we all trooped over to his new and improved shop, three times the size of the old one with state-of-the-art equipment. They were suitably impressed, and he showed them a new electric he was working on, using his hand-built pickups. It reminded one of a Telecaster, but Dad was smart enough to make small changes so that he couldn't be accused of patent infringement. It also had a half-size Bigsby-type tailpiece, which was later custom-fit to her hand, and the head was somewhere between a standard fender and a more square, traditional head with soft curves.

Monica Rose (her professional name, she had introduced herself as Maggie) begged him to sell it to her. "It's not done yet!"

"I can wait if I know I get it when it's done."

They haggled, not over the price, but over the delivery date, settling for no more than six months, and he promised it to her. Nine months later, she played it on stage. It had an Artic white finish, with a red rose carved into the body, and the fretboard was a long rose vine, with miniature roses in different colors denoting the key frets. It also had his logo, a small birdhouse with a tiny bluebird, on the headstock. She was asked about the guitar, and she couldn't wait to sing the praises of the instrument's tone, action, and beauty. All the hardware was plated in 24-carat gold. Her insurance company appraised it, considering that it was completely custom, who it was built by, and the provenance of being explicitly built for her, and putting a hundred thousand dollars' value on it.

Then she talked about Birdbox guitars, naming other artists who owned Birdbox instruments, including the fish-shaped four-string that Samanta Fish played on stage and the flying V-shaped banjo that Annie played. She didn't own it, but I did, and I knew she would take care of it, so I let her use it on tour. Dad didn't have time to answer the phone, so he hired Mom. She would prioritize custom orders and run them by Dad, and if he felt it was worth the effort, he'd discuss it with the potential buyer. Mom got used to big names popping in, and one shop wall was filled with photos of them hugging famous people.

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Jack worked with them on the second album and called me, complaining. "Annie's a dream to work with, but Star is getting to the point that she believes her publicity. To put it bluntly, she's becoming a diva, and her ego is starting to get out of control. I stressed to them when we started that I wouldn't put up with shit like that, and if she keeps it up, she's gonna learn the hard way. You got time to come over and straighten her out?"

I wasn't looking forward to it, but I felt I owed it to them, so I went. I took my new girlfriend along because she really wanted to meet them. Annie welcomed her with open arms, telling her to lock down on me. Sara giggled and told her she was trying. Star was cool to her, but for some reason, none of us understood.