Doug Clark: Humble picker changed Spokane music scene

Frank Wagner called JayDean Ludiker last Sunday night with instructions.

“You’re in charge of the music at my service,” the dying man told his longtime friend, adding that they would get together later this week to go over tunes.

It wasn’t to be.

Leukemia got the best of the guitar player and retired Spokane firefighter on Monday. He was 74.

But rest assured that whatever music Ludiker comes up with will make the angels sing.

Ludiker, after all, is a two-time national fiddle champion.

But more to the point, she can trace her virtuosity back to the beginnings of one of the most amazing and unselfish methods of teaching music that I’ve ever encountered.

For 40 years, Wagner held weekly music workshops and jam sessions for youngsters and anyone else wanting to learn to play the fiddle (or pick a guitar) with a blend of bluegrass and country.

“We’ll never know how many he influenced,” Ludiker said Wednesday.

“Thousands. And all of it for free. Frank never charged a dime.”

Over lunch a couple of summers ago, I told Wagner that his impact on the area’s music scene made him one of my heroes.

Wagner looked genuinely surprised. He considered himself a regular working stiff who, with wife Karin, raised two kids. Fiddles? Guitars?

That stuff was just a hobby in his mind.

Granted, not many players rose to Ludiker’s level.

A few blew in and out of the workshops that were held in whatever grade school or middle school space Wagner could arrange for free. Many youngsters stayed and learned something.

Everybody, I’m betting, sensed the genuine passion this man had for music.

Much of the credit goes to the devilishly simple way that Wagner organized his workshops.

“You didn’t have to play a song perfect, just try,” Ludiker said. “You didn’t even have to know the song, just try.”

There was just one ironclad rule, which Wagner revealed in a 1983 newspaper story.

“My only requirement,” he said, “is that once someone knows a song, they teach it to someone else.”

The concept was ingenious.

“We taught each other and it just exploded,” said Ludiker, who now teaches 120 students a week.

I learned about the Wagner edict the first time I met him.

Wanting to check out the workshop, I grabbed a guitar and drove to a Spokane Valley elementary school.

We met in a hallway, where we played a couple of tunes together. He had a swinging rhythm style.

Ten minutes later, Wagner took me to a room and put me to work teaching my songs to a group of junior guitarists.

“He wanted to get the kids out performing,” Ludiker said.

“As soon as you play in front of people you’re not learning to play the fiddle, you are a fiddle player. Frank knew that.”

The workshops were just part of Wagner’s legacy.

He organized acoustic jams and was a huge supporter of local talent.

He was also a fixture at the National Oldtime Fiddlers Contest, held yearly in Weiser, Idaho. In 2012, the organization recognized Wagner’s efforts by inducting the guitar-playing accompanist into its hall of fame.

“You wanted to know my reaction to this award and I find it a big surprise and honor,” he wrote in an email to me.

It’s “quite humbling and at the same time (I’m) kind of proud. Wow, never thought anyone noticed what I’ve been doing.”

I can’t credit Wagner enough for the time he put into Spokane Street Music Week, the annual charity event I began in 2002 to help Second Harvest food bank.

Recruiting musicians to play on the sidewalks of downtown Spokane was slow going during the early years.

Wagner, however, could always be counted on to show up with a vanload of young pickers and fiddlers.

Sam Saxton, a fine guitar player and one of Wagner’s closest friends, went to his first workshop 22 years ago.

“I was kind of new to the whole fiddle thing,” he said, “but we just hit it off.”

It wasn’t long before Saxton was a regular, playing with Wagner at backyard parties and for toe-tapping seniors in nursing homes.

Saxton visited his friend not long before the end. Wagner wanted to hear the Hank Williams’ classic “A Mansion on the Hill.” Saxton obliged.

Even as sick as he was, Wagner was the same unassuming guy.

“He was always upbeat. He never whined or moaned about that stuff,” Saxton said. “When you start thinking about it, what he did is just incredible.”