We are the Champions (of the Arts): It couldn't happen to a nicer guy than Mac McDonald.

If you've ever been out on the town on the Peninsula, especially in the proximity of live music, you might have encountered a big, sunny disposition of a man, beaming underneath a signature gray fedora, salt and pepper goatee, sensible glasses and button down shirt (always untucked), smiling a smile that said: "I'm so glad to be here." If you encountered such a man, that was likely Mac McDonald. 

This Saturday he's being awarded the Champion of the Arts trophy for Luminary by the Arts Council for Monterey County for his decades of buoying and promoting live music around here with his generous and steady flow of writing and listening.

The former Herald columnist was too busy with he and his girlfriend's relocation to Orange County to make it back to town for the Rock Scully tribute at Museum of Monterey last Saturday. And you can be it was high on his list of local music events.

But it's a testament to the longtime local music writer's willingness to change course and try something new, and commit to it, that makes his move a promising one for him and the community in which he'll live. His girlfriend is opening a European lingerie shop down there in San Juan Capistrano. And what's Mac doing?

"Hopefully I'll be able to do some freelance writing," he says. "I'm kind of checking out the music scene. It's a little scattered in South Orange County, Irvine, Costa Mesa. Here in San Juan Capistrano, Los Lobos just played. The Jayhawks and Edgar Winter just played, Tower of Power. Other smaller places are pretty much local bands. I'm learning my way around the music scene down here. It's scary and exciting at the same time."

He says what he'll miss most about Monterey County are his friends. But also the landscape and the Monterey Jazz Festival.

"The Jazz Festival is probably my favorite music festival of the year, because I've been going for so long and know it like the back of my hand. I haven't missed one in 35 years, since I arrived on the Peninsula."

He says he'll be back for it. Until then, he says he doesn't know what he'll say to the assembled audience at the Arts Council when he's up at the podium at Saturday's Champions of the Arts gala. He's never been before. But he'll be in his element: in Monterey County, addressing the many, talking music.

Not unlike he did on his drive-time radio slot on KRML, where he used to do "five at five"—five songs at 5pm revolving around a theme.

"Every day there was a theme to the five songs. Love, bugs, cars. It was a lot of work, narrowing my column down to five minutes, distilling [it]."

Maybe he can turn to music for inspiration. The Beatles, perhaps: "There are places I remember/ All my life, though some have changed."