By Clara Atwell, Business and Associate Editor
Walking into Daryl Redeker’s tiny studio, his passion for music instantly engulfs you. No bigger than a walk-in closet, the room is filled with close to a dozen different types of guitars, movies, a poster of the Beatles, a welcoming zen-like atmosphere and a tiny sepia photo of him at age eight with his first guitar.
Redeker, a local musician and guitar teacher, first experienced the power of music at age five while watching the 1947 “Tubby the Tuba” movie. Redeker’s mother recalls him being drawn to something powerful about these instruments in the short, stop-motion film uniting to play one symphonic piece of music.
“My mom said that she came in and I was pounding on the floor — just coming unglued with excitement,” Redeker said. “I got the sense that music was going to do something more than anything else [in my life] would.”
When he started playing guitar at age eight, his parents had to encourage him to practice through little bribes, but it wasn’t long though before they had to limit him to an hour a day so he would also do his school work.
“I would go in my room and play electric unplugged, and I would listen to music with the record amp without the needle” Redeker said. “I had no idea it was helping teach me [to play by ear], but if you listen to a bass guitar part with just a needle on the record player, you really have to listen hard, and I just did it to be covert because I wanted to do that rather than [my school work].”
Guitar was the closest thing Redeker had to a best friend while growing up in the 1950s. His father was in the Air Force, and their family got moved around a lot — from Spokane, Topeka and Omaha to Adana, Turkey and Tokyo, Japan. His family didn’t settle until Redeker was in eighth grade and they moved back to his birthplace, Spokane.
“[I moved] every 18 months, no roots, no friends; it was brutal because you couldn’t get very close to anybody because you knew you were leaving,” Redeker said. “I had a friend: music. I could spend hours with myself, and it was fun.”
Despite having six guitar teachers growing up, for eight years Redeker never played music which he felt that he was drawn to, and none of his guitar teachers taught him in a way that worked for him. This lead him to be self-taught — with the help of the Beatles, who to this day remain his greatest inspiration.
“My guitar teacher tried to convince me and my dad that [the Beatles] were cover — that there were people behind them doing everything: writing the songs, producing and all that,” Redeker said. “He was convinced that there was no way they could be that talented”
Redeker refused to believe this and instead would write out journals of every song the Beatles ever wrote and the chord changes within those songs.
“I was never this screaming fan,” Redeker said. “It was more like, ‘What are they doing as musicians?’”
Until his junior year at Lewis and Clark High School, Redeker had never played solo in front of an audience When he finally performed Mason Williams’ 1968 guitar hit, “Classical Gas,” at a high school concert, people suddenly began looking at him differently, and classmates who once paid no attention to him started conversing with him between passing periods.
“The response was huge, and I [thought], ‘Maybe I should pursue this,’” Redeker said.
Around this same time, Redeker got fired from his job as a dishwasher and sought out new work within the Spokane Parks Department as a guitar teacher.
After high school, he attended Eastern Washington University. However, after a semester and a half, Redeker had the realization that college was not the right place for him. He felt as if he was wasting his time, so he dropped out.
After an aborted stay in San Francisco, Redeker moved back to Spokane where he was approached by a woman who offered him a job teaching at Whitworth University. He taught there as well as at Spokane Community College for seven years, until he was 28.
He then took a gamble and moved out to Seattle along with his sister, where the music scene was better. Within two years, they were on the radio.
The pressure to be a commodity within the music industry soon began to take a toll on Redeker, so he left it and eventually moved to Vashon, where he set up a studio and began teaching again for the first time in over 10 years.
“I was such a terrible teacher,” Redeker said. “I had to figure out how to communicate.”
His greatest role model as a teacher was his high school choir leader, Gerald Hartley, who had the ability to make the 80 people in the choir come together as one powerful voice. This quality is something that Redeker admired and has applied to his own teaching over the years.
“Over time I learned that it wasn’t me handing knowledge down,” Redeker said. “It was more about me cracking the door and empowering [my students] — finding what someone’s got in them and [nudging] them a little bit, and they walk through the door.”
Redeker works within his students’ comfort zones and mindsets to make them feel safe and empowered to improve.
“Everybody’s got a gift,” Redeker said. “It’s incredible when you start to reveal what that is. It’s what we are meant to do.”
He takes time to get to know his students and works with students of all personality types, yet remains patient with them and supports them to play and write the music that reflects who they are.
“It’s scary to reveal who you really are, but that’s what people want to see,” Redeker said. “Develop your character, and believe in it.”
Redeker is a strong believer in welcoming an individual’s stories, passions and focus. Through music and meditation, he has found a way to have an open-minded view on the world, which has helped him in teaching.
“To me the story is what’s being told to you in film and songs, not the style,” Redeker said. “I’m not crazy about death metal or polka, but there is still a story inside there somewhere.”