Keith Jones (1955-2026) October 18 2026, 0 Comments

Tribute to Keith Jones (1955-2026)

I first came into contact with Keith in 1986, when he wrote to me in response to a personal ad I had placed in a NuWest magazine. He wrote me a little fantasy about playing on a Caribbean island together. And sent a handsome photo. But he was on the east coast and I was in California so our paths didn’t physically cross until 1991, when I returned to New York for my father’s funeral.

Keith came to my hotel and we spent many hours talking. We exchanged stories about our horrible fathers; his was a tough former marine who became a homocide detective. Keith did not have an easy childhood. His mother died when he was two and his step mother, or step monster as he called her, was not kind. From 18 on, he was self-supporting and soon went into the hard and thankless construction profession. 

During that first visit we planned how he’d come out to L.A. and shoot with us at Shadow Lane. He completely understood that I wanted to create a library of movies and magazines that women in our scene could enjoy, as previously, the entire industry catered exclusively for male viewers and readers. Shadow Lane’s angle was the Romance of Discipline, which meant that guys and girls who played these games had love and often marriage in mind as the ultimate prizes, not just endless ritualized punishment scenarios.

He did his first video with us that year, Cold Comfort Farm. In it he performed stunts like rolling down a hill. I think we did some retakes to get it just perfect. Keith went on to become enormously popular with our female models, who would be his co-stars as well as our girl and lady customers. 

As soon as we started having gala parties for our customers, Keith started coming out to the West Coast regularly to help us organize and run them. He always stayed with us and we usually shot some videos while he was in town. When we published Stand Corrected 11, with the iconic cover photo of Keith in a tux with the stunning Jennifer Brooks beside him, the image inspired many enthusiasts to start coming to parties, because it held the promise of a fun and normal social life to go along with the rarified fetish thrills.

Over the 28 years we hosted parties, Keith was always there with us, sitting at the reception table with Tony and Butch, helping us deal with whatever small problems occurred, and always charming the ladies. Keith had a great rapport with the women in our scene because he was courtly, respectful and listened to what they wanted. He always insisted on talking at length to someone before they played and that really counts.

Keith always gave us the longest videos. He was very methodical and loved employing the many straps and paddles he made himself. He was a good talker too, with a wry sense of humor that was lovely on film.

He was the handiest man I ever met, with a full compliment of survival skills. He could build things, all the way from furniture to houses and he could fix anything. Keith was a hunter, who went up to his property in upstate New York every Autumn to pursue deer. He would butcher and dress it himself and eat the meat all winter, all with great respect. His family wasn’t interested in his deer meat, but his black cat, Max who lived to be twenty, went crazy for it. I love picturing that.  

Keith was a martial artist and firearms enthusiast and often participated in militia exercises. But he also loved art, music and good entertainment of all kinds.

In 2000, Keith met a scene lady and they immediately fell in love. They got married and soon had a son, who grew up to be a handsome young man. Keith’s wife is a beautiful lady who nursed Keith through the last terrible ten years of his life, as he tried to manage a cruel and unusual disease called Morvan’s Syndrome, which mimics encephalitis of the brain. He had already been dealing with chronic neuropathy, possibly due to many years of hard construction work and/or exposure to dangerous chemicals in the process of taking apart and rebuilding houses. When he contracted the rare disease, other debilitating factors became ever present in his life. Still, he came out to parties and performed in our movies and did a few films for other companies as well, fighting through the pain as best he could. Numerous rounds of chemo counterbalanced with steroids and anti-seizure medications, defined the last decade of his life and in the end, brain cancer proved to be the final stage of his ongoing malady.

He managed to accomplish his lifelong dream of visiting Ireland a few years ago, but apart from that, his activities slowed to a sad halt in the 2020’s.

Keith was a great and loyal friend to Tony, Butch and I, and all of our cats. I recall he was visiting us for a party weekend when my fifteen year old Thistle was checking out, and he helped to lovingly see her out. In other words, you could always count on Keith to help you through anything, if he possibly could and if he was your friend.

This tribute has gotten very long, but when you know someone for forty years, that’s a lot of history. I look around my house and I see a fan, a faucet, a grab bar he put in. He was so much a part of my little Shadow Lane family and he did so much to make it better.

And then there are the videos. Back in the day I used to write very challenging dialog. And no one could fuck up a line like Keith, to leave the entire crew crippled with laughter for minutes on end. We’d laugh until our stomachs hurt. And no one would laugh more than Keith, turning red like he did, because he loved making fun of himself.

Keith Jones never pretended to be anything but what he was. He even used his real name. So real, so rare.

Eve Howard

October 11, 2026