By Corene Sullivan
The fans may not be screaming and tearing down his front door, but then again, David MacDonald doesn’t play regular pop or rock ‘n roll.
Christian contemporary music is the genre of choice for this Centretown resident, who says his music has brought him personal fulfillment as well as industry success.
Macdonald is getting good listener response, and his songs have lit up the phones at CHRI Radio, Ottawa’s Christian music radio station, says Brock Tozer, a morning announcer at the station.
“David’s music is on medium rotation at the station, and I think he’s on his way to becoming reasonably well-known across the country.”
The 43-year-old has performed on 100 Huntley Street, a Canadian Christian talk show, and local television stations. He sings every Sunday at his church, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, gives concerts at Christian venues, plays at retreats, and has sold approximately 2,000 CDs.
According to MacDonald, his songs are played on 10 to 15 different radio stations.
“He’s very passionate about his music,” says Dennis Girard, who often performs together with MacDonald. “He puts his all in his music, he doesn’t want to do anything second rate.”
MacDonald writes and produces his own lyrics and music, and plays the flute, the guitar and keyboard.
“I float between styles, reggae, rap…I do really good ballads, but I can breakdance too,” he says.
And he’s a great live performer, says Girard.
MacDonald began playing guitar when he was eight, and memorized the words to Jesus Christ Superstar by age 10, even though he never went to church, he says.
At age 19, he played at a Club Med in the Bahamas and then moved to New York, where he produced rap records, performed on Broadway, and acted in two movies.
With success came heightened involvement with drugs.
“There were a lot around, it was a bad scene,” he says. “I started tumbling not long after that.”
He says his career hit rock-bottom at age 24 while doing a U.S tour of Cats. He caught a bad cold but continued to perform against doctor’s orders, and lost his voice.
“I couldn’t talk for three years, I always had a notepad with me,” he says.
“I came back to Ottawa with my tail between my legs,” says MacDonald.
He says he knew something was missing in his life, and was interested in new age religions.
It was on his way to visit a guru in Montreal that he found Catholicism.
In Montreal, he saw several old women at a church, praying. “I kneeled down and talked to Jesus,” recalls MacDonald. “An incredible rush of energy came over me.”
But it was only in 1998 that music and faith came together for him.
He was with a group on a Christian retreat where the importance of love in Christianity was being discussed. The group was instructed to do something creative on the subject, so MacDonald picked up a guitar for the first time in ten years and sang.
“Playing for these 21 people was better than my Broadway opening, I felt I was doing it for the right reason,” he says.
Since then, MacDonald has been performing and recording. “I get a sense that God is working in my life, I want to use the talents He’s given me to help people become more aware of Him,” says MacDonald.
“People come to me and say their lives are better, or that they’ve resolved conflict with their parents,” he says.
And it’s not only teenagers that are listening to MacDonald’s music.
“My music isn’t so much an age thing as a headspace thing,” he says, describing that whole families come to his concerts.
Even though MacDonald is becomingmore popular, he still works part-time three days a week for a company that helps get people with disabilities onto computers. “It’s a really cool job, and you don’t make a killing playing Christian music.”