Who's Who in El Cerrito: Fred McCarty

Name: Fred McCarty

Age: "I never tell anybody my age – I'm all grown up."

Occupation: Singer, songwriter, guitarist, composer

How long have you been playing at the El Cerrito Plaza Farmer's Market? Probably six years.

What's your experience of the market and the people who come through? It's nice. Small market, the people are really nice. I've never had any problem here, ever. Lots of families. Sometimes people bring the little daycare school – they bring all the kids by. I have a children's album, so I play (them) children's songs.

It's nice because I get to play for all ages. I do music – I do standard, I do children's songs, I do Irish, cowboy songs, whatever.

How long have you been playing? I can't figure how many years, but a long time. I started singing at three, piano at six, and guitar at eleven.

Do you make a full-time living out of your music? I try to. I mean, pretty much, yea, I support myself.

What do you think of the music community around El Cerrito? I don't know, it's hard to say. Most of the time when I run into musicians it's when I'm playing the market. There's a really nice guy, he's a jazz player. People sing with me sometimes – there's a lot of singer-songwriters and performers.

What would be your advice to aspiring musicians? Just stick to it. Be yourself. We've already got the Rolling Stones. Just do the music you like, and if you do it the people will like it. I think if you do music you don't really like that much, it's not going to come off very well. If you like doing folk music or Irish music, whatever it is, if you go, "I really like it," it's going to sound good, because you want to do it, you enjoy it. That's my advice.

And just stick to it, don't get too discouraged. It's not easy if you want to pursue a career as a musician. There are a lot of other things that you can do (in addition). You can work in a music store, you can teach, you can do music programs. If you're good at computers, there's all kinds of music things that you can do. The world of music has opened up a lot. 

When you do music full-time you do a lot of stuff. I work for an organization called Young at Heart. I do a lot of senior shows. A lot of musicians do that — that's another outlet. I do children's shows, libraries and schools…

Sometimes people do music and they just do one niche. That limits you a little bit. If you do one thing you have to play certain places, (for example), a certain festival that has a certain kind of music. I think if you do a lot of different things, it can work.