Guests on the show range from Steve Green, Sara Groves and Andrew Peterson to quite a few other biblical scholars.

I’ve been listening off and on for about two years myself and have really enjoyed it.

Third Day was featured on Atlanta’s local Fox affiliate Channel 5. They perform “Call My Name” and are interviewed. Mac Powell talks about this album having the same rock feel we’ve come to expect from the group but it has much bigger feel because of who they’ve brought in to help produce and develop the album.

Visit the myFox 5 website for the video and story

“What was funny with this record is that we got everything we could have wanted,” says Anderson. “We’ve learned that the limitations that people feel for Christian music are self-imposed. We can prevent our own progression. If we could just be bold enough to go for what we really want, we might actually get it. We’ve learned this over the years. We wanted Brendan O’Brien [Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Train] to mix our albums for years, and we were told that it couldn’t happen. So finally, I just picked up the phone, called him myself and he said, ‘Oh yeah, I love the band. I’d love to do it.’ Along the way, people were just assuming he wouldn’t do it.

How many times do I (or you) apologize and limit ourselves for what we think is reality which in God’s reality isn’t what we’d expect at all for our lives?

Source: Third Day: Bold Revelation – Interview by Matt Conner

In this video Steven Curtis Chapman shares the story behind the song “Cinderella”

There’s just not any other word to describe this event other than tragic. As I was driving into work this morning I was thinking about my own life experience. When I was a little boy, 4 years old I think, we almost had a tragic accident of our own. My dad ran over me in the car at a public park where we were celebrating a church fellowship picnic. I was thinking this morning how my dad must have felt about the situation until we knew that I was going to be alright. My story is a miracle of God’s protection in that I slid under the car and one tire ran over my chest. The doctor’s didn’t believe it happened until they saw the tire track bruises appear on my chest after the event.

Our prayers are with you Chapman family. May peace, strength and courage overwhelm you today and into the future.

One of my goals for this blog is to build some connections with Christian music artists and build some relationships with individuals and members of the groups that we talk about on this site.

Relationships, with people I’ve never met and may never get the chance to in real life. But, with the wonders of the Internet, one of the great ways to get to know someone more is by dialoguing with them on their blog.

More and more groups are actively blogging and communicating with their fans. One of the groups is Mercy Me. Their blog can be found at their website by going to mercyme.org/blog.

Reading an artist’s blog (at least ones that blog regularly) is like reading an ongoing, never-ending personal interview.

Bart and the rest of the guys have been blogging for quite awhile. Their first post was back on January 10 as they were starting the Winter Jam Tour.

Aside from just getting an idea of what the band is up to, you also get to really experience their lives outside of being on stage. You see pictures of their families. You see them goofing off and just having fun as individuals. They’re also posting a ton of videos that they’re posting on YouTube. It’s so much fun just to read through all their entries and watch the videos.

I’ll be sharing more Christian musician blogs as I come across them and will be sure to share them with all the readers here.

Now here’s a good review of one of the acts that’s appearing in Winter Jam 2008, Barlow Girl. This article talks about their success in mainstream music radio along with bands like Relient K, Switchfoot and Lifehouse, but the articles shares that Barlow Girl isn’t interested in crossing over.

“They can cross over to our side,” eldest sister Rebecca Barlow says defiantly. “We are writing songs that God put into our hearts. If He opens those doors, great — but we would not change the themes of songs. We’re going to be who we are. What God put in our hearts to write about is blatant.”

The other thing I like about the article is it shares about the music Barlow Girl sings, “which echoes Evanescence’s emotional piano-rock”. That’s one thing I wish I could do better when I listen to album’s and review them. I wish I could immediately connect their sound and feeling of music with a secular band. Not that I want to compare them to the secular band, but I want people that are familiar with the mainstream pop group to have a Christian band’s name in their head to try out.

The article shares a lot about the three sisters and how they got started in music. It’s a good background piece about them.

Right now we’re listening to Keith Green’s top songs in our office. A song came up that I’ve heard before, but this recording has Keith adding some dramatic speaking and additional lyrics to the song. What made it powerful was that he was using excuses that we’d hear come from the mouths of many Christians and they made perfect sense. They were phrases I could actually imagine people saying.

The song is taken from Matthew 25:40. The parable is titled “The Sheep and the Goats”, which is also the title of the song.

One of the responses was that they didn’t Jesus in his time of need because it wasn’t their ministry. Whoa! Convicted? Guilty?

This particular recording is one you should really look for and listen to it closely. You can find it Yahoo LAUNCHcast.

A couple of days ago I spoke about my lack of experience and real knowledge of the Christian punk music scene. Another genre of Christian music I’m not well versed on is Christian heavy metal. The extent of my experience probably only goes back to the days of Stryper and even then they were “weird” to me. Just don’t ask me to see my collection of Christian rap music. I LOVED THAT STUFF!

Anyway, as with the Christian punk music, luckily I’ve got contacts that know far more about this genre than I do.

Scott at MetalMarytr.com has written an intersting post about heavy metal Christian music for all of those holy-head-bangers out there. Go give him a visit at his MetalMartyr website and let me know what you think.

Scott had this to share with me about the genre and his site:

The bands, All That Remains and As I lay Dying are bands with deep Christian lyrics, from songs such as (As I Lay Dying’s) Losing Site and (All That Remains) One belief, show that Christian metal is alive and well and to be taken seriously. Anyway, enjoy and God bless.

Sounds good to me. Would love to hear what you think.

Upcoming Tour Dates

• Dec 4 Dallas, TX
• Dec 5 Dallas, TX
• Dec 7 El Paso, TX
• Dec 8 Scottsdale, AZ
• Dec 9 Los Angeles, CA
• Dec 11 Rocklin, CA
• Dec 13 Redding, CA
• Dec 14 Tualtin, OR
• Dec 15 Redmond, WA
• Dec 17 Edmonton, AB

For more details, visit the concert info page on Smitty’s website.

The free song currently available is “Hibernation Day” by Jars of Clay on their new Christmas Songs album.

They have such a great sound. This is just a fun, happy song that meshes so well with their style. Here’s a video of them performing the song on YouTube.