MY DINNERS WITH FRANK

by William Eaton

Published online, Guild of American Luthiers, August 2024

Frank was a pal to me and pretty much everyone he met. He was one of the finest luthiers of our generation. I very much miss his presence, and I know the entire lutherie community feels the same.

Frank was a great friend and mentor to me and we worked together, through his association with the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery, for over 30 years. We met in Palo Alto at the first Gryphon Stringed Instruments location on El Camino Real in 1973. I had recently moved to Palo Alto to go to school and was looking for guitar strings, for a guitar I had made at Juan Roberto Guitar Works in Phoenix, in 1971. I found a couple of stores in the area and decided to make a visit to Gryphon. From that first visit I remember how knowledgeable Frank and his partner Richard Johnston were about guitars, and I learned on subsequent visits they had been building steel string guitars for many years. I left the bay area in 1975, but several years later reconnected with Frank and Richard at the Guild of American Luthiers Convention in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts.

In the following years I would stop and see Frank on trips to the bay area. I had helped to start the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in 1975, and by the 1990’s the school evolved to the point where we had the resources to bring guest lecturers to the school. I remember that Frank was our first call. Starting in the fall of 1994 Frank came to the school twice a year to lecture to our students in every 5-month Guitar Making and Repair Course until 2020. The recent pandemic halted those visits and then Frank’s health began to deteriorate, preventing him from long flights to Phoenix. Those 26 years of uninterrupted visits were memorable and exceptional. Sitting in on a Frank lecture was always a tremendous learning experience and extremely entertaining for me, the staff and our students. He had endless stories to tell from his experiences with clients through the years, which he would sprinkle in to his play-by-play, real-time demonstration of doing a neck reset and re-fret on a vintage guitar (usually Martin), among other repair operations. Frank had the uncanny ability to do these demo’s, with ease, wit and efficiency, all the while answering student questions and maintaining an impeccable concentration. In this context Frank was a real performance artist. He received a resounding ovation after every session, it was cool to witness.

Frank had a knack for figuring things out and problem solving. Each process he came up with always fit the job, conventional or unconventional, in both woodworking and metal working. In every case it was a demonstration of how familiar he was with tools, materials, construction design and techniques, fixtures, glues, a vast knowledge of guitar history, and a really big dose of common sense and practicality. Every lecture that Frank gave to our students he would at some point reveal the importance of being practical and straight forward. He often called himself Mr. ‘Good Enough Wrench’, nothing special, just getting the job done. He was a master at this; being humble, non-pretentious and just laying it out there.

My favorite personal memories of Frank were the many lunches and dinners we had all those years, followed by more conversation at my house in Tempe. It was like going to a GAL Convention where you get to talk ‘shop’ with your peers throughout the day and continue sharing ideas deep into the night. In the early years it was all about guitars, stringed instruments, repair work, customer relations, student learning experiences and the challenges of running a business. During that time Frank was also contemplating writing a book about guitar and stringed instrument repair. We talked about it often and it was apparent that Frank wanted to share his knowledge with other luthiers and beginners. He was a really good friend of Dan Erlewine’s and admired Dan’s knowledge of guitar repair and the articles and books he created – and considered sharing his knowledge through a book as well. I remember when Frank made the decision to start his website - Frets.com. He had an epiphany about this new opportunity of documenting his repair work through photos and descriptions and liked the informality of just putting stuff on his website without having to write a book. It really suited his personality as there was nothing ‘concrete’ about the format. He could make changes and just let it evolve. I remember many conversations we had about how to monetize this pliable web ‘book, but the financial aspect was never a real concern. Fairly early on he said I just want to put it out there for free. At first, he did make CD’s to sell, as there was so much content on Frets.com and CD’s served as a good, retrievable storage medium, as the internet could be slow, sketchy and undependable. That was a different era. We immediately signed on at the school and made this resource a ‘required learning resource’ for every student. As the internet and related technologies moved forward it became unnecessary for students to purchase Frets.com as a CD. In retrospect and currently, I don’t know of a website that has as much content as Frank put up on that site, and glad to hear that Joy (Frank’s wife) is committed to keeping the site available for now and the future, and I told her we (Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery) could also help make sure that the site was available and protected.

In the later years our dinner conversations gravitated to a wider scope. We still talked lutherie but meandered into ruminations on the nature of life, the mysteries of life, politics, history, religion, how we conduct ourselves, perception, the simple act of awareness, and the corresponding realities and alternative realities present before us. All of this with a bit of detachment and humor. We both corroborated, or rationalized, that the occupation of making and repairing guitars was an honorable enough profession and seemed to provide a good lens for observing and navigating the subtleties of life. Frank’s life seemed to be a life of destiny in that way. He was uniquely qualified to be ‘Frank’ – no one else like him. This past year we did talk about death a little bit, as I had learned through the years of Frank’s father having some of the same heart health issues, and he felt, through heredity, that these might catch up to him one day. Those were difficult conversations, and near the end, didn’t make ‘saying goodbye’ any easier.

Frank leaves behind an amazing legacy. He impacted the lives of thousands of students, luthiers, clients and customers. The repair techs Frank trained are all top notch and will continue to carry on Frank’s work. Frets.com will serve as an important resource for luthiers, now and for years to come. Gryphon Stringed Instruments, the music store that Frank and Richard started, shines as a beacon for how a music store can serve and positively impact a local and national musical community.

Frank, I miss you every day. I hope you’ve merged with the eternity that we could never fathom or explain. You’ll always have a place in our hearts. Rest in peace my friend.