Transcript

File: macdonaldward06-oh-youngergeneration_M.mp3

Speakers:

WM – Ward MacDonald

WM: I definitely see people giving too much recognition to some of the younger kids. It's not that the fans of the music mean to do it. But I know they are trying to encourage the kid; they want to see the kid keep going and be a player. But they have to be careful – Like the fans, the older people too, should be careful about giving them too much credit. ‘Cause you don't want them to think that their work is done, you don’t want them to think that, “I come off the stage and so-and-so told me that that was absolutely fantastic, so why would I spend any more time trying to make those tunes sound any better.” You don’t want them to get that idea in their head either, because with music like anything, you should always want to get better, you should always be trying to make it sound better. Because if you don’t, if you're not constantly learning something your music will stagnate, you get tired of it and you don't feel like playing as much. It's when you learn a new thing that you're excited about it, whether it’s a simple place to put an ornament in one tune, or whether it’s a new group of tunes. If you’re learning new things you’ve got a greater enthusiasm for your own playing, and you’re just a better player, I find. The players I enjoy the most are the ones that are still excited about it. They’re still excited about playing a set of tunes like they were when they were 10 years old, because there’s probably new tunes in that set that they’ve never played for anyone before. I worry about some of the kids that are 15, 16, 17, and they or their parents or whoever are putting out thousands of dollars on recordings, and then the pressure comes right back onto that kid to produce, and go out and play as many gigs as you can, and sell as many CDs as you can, because you got to make that money back. And the phone is going to ring off the hook, because there's always a group of people running ceilidhs that want entertainment. So I really do worry about some of those kids that get all this pressure dumped on them. If they waited till they were 18, or 19, or 20 they'd be better off, ‘cause they'd be better able to manage the business side of it too, as well as just the music performance and that sort of thing.