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D
avid McDonald knows
who his worst enemy is:
himself. But acknowledg-
ing that and trying to change it
are too different things.
“I do sometimes make my life
tougher for myself, tougher than
maybe it needs to be, because
I can’t suck up. Some think it’s
arrogance. I don’t know,” said
the candid owner of the Academy
of Fretted Instruments. “I
definitely do things my own way,
but I think the end results speak
for themselves. I’m not looking to
change.”
What he’d rather change is
the trend away from teaching
children music in the schools
(learning instruments, mostly)
which he believes is dangerous in
that culture is being taken from
those who need it most.
“There are so many things I
want to do for the community,
for the schools. I can’t do it alone,
but I can get some things started
here and maybe in the schools.
Somebody has to teach these
kids,” McDonald said during
an interview at his studio inside
the Contemporary Art Center,
305 SWWater St. in Downtown
Peoria.
McDonald, 37, has been going
his own way since he was a
freshman at Morton High School
and told his father, baseball coach
Mike McDonald, he didn’t want
to play ball any more. Music
was what he wanted to pursue
instead (rock music, in particular,
thanks to the influence of MTV)
and he felt he had to grow his
hair long and go barefoot and all
the other trappings he imagined
he needed to be taken seriously
as a musician.
His parents, including his
mother Peggy, a nursing
instructor at Bradley University,
supported his decision. “My dad
said he’d rather have somebody
who couldn’t play third base as
well but wanted to be there than
somebody who could play it but
didn’t want to,” he said.
Before then McDonald had
taken enough piano lessons to
know more than the basics, but
he became more interested in
guitar after an uncle showed
him a few riffs and how to shape
cords. With time away from
music to pursue martial arts in
the fourth and fifth grades, he
returned to the guitar in junior
high and has stuck with fretted
instruments ever since.
David McDonald is all about music - his way.
by Paul Gordon
42
thePeorian.com