The late American journalist Helen Rowland once wrote, “Life begins at 40—but so do fallen arches, rheumatism, faulty eyesight, and the tendency to tell a story to the same person, three or four times.” But Rowland, who died in 1950, never got to experience today’s entertainment industry, so she wasn’t aware of the fact that the window of opportunity in the music business begins to close much earlier. Almost everything—vocal talent, musicianship, and songwriting skills—is sacrificed on the altar of youth and pop culture. Once a pop singer hits 30, especially a female performer, she is considered past her prime.

After spending time with four gifted Christian women, all who’ve made their individual marks on the landscape of gospel music, I’m convinced nothing is further from the truth. For CeCe Winans, Kim Hill, Margaret Becker, and Bonnie Keen, life is so much more than music. And, contrary to what Rowland wrote, the fourth decade is finding these women standing stronger, seeing more clearly, and more aware than ever of who they are in Christ. […read more]

Blessed Be Your Name, In the land that is plentiful, Where Your streams of abundance flow, Blessed be Your name. Familiar with these lyrics? Of course you are. Not only was “Blessed Be Your Name” named Worship Song of the Year at the 2005 GMA (Gospel Music Association) Music Awards, but it was recorded by gospel legends Michael W Smith, Newsboys, and Rebecca St James. The impact of the song has brought thousands to worship and to experience the powerful presence of God, and has been sung all around the world. So who is the original, creative force behind this song? Sitting casually in a chair in down-to-earth attire last week was Matt Redman, the humble British worship leader and the man behind one of praise and worship’s most famous songs. […read more]

Goodbye Old-Fashioned Revival Hour. Hello ’safe for the whole family.’ Meet the company that’s transforming Christian radio. Forty years ago, Ardmore, Tennessee’s Christian radio station would have been typical. Purchased by a neighborhood pastor, it aired church services during blocks of time the congregation could afford and Southern gospel music the rest of the week. As Christian Radio author Bob Lochte recalls, the few advertisements it garnered were from area businesses like the local Goodyear Tires outlet.

Locally owned and operated, such stations provided a modest service to their communities. But rarely, if ever, did they draw in large numbers of people or make a significant profit. Most struggled simply to remain on-air. […read more]

Each weekend thousands of schools, stores, and theaters are temporarily transformed into worship centers. Though they lack brick and mortar of their own, these portable churches have a sound spiritual foundation. A significant portion of any portable church’s budget must go toward audio systems for the main service, children’s service, and youth groups.

Unlike a permanent system, portable equipment must withstand the rigors of load-in and load-out, and be capable of operating in less than ideal acoustic environments. To help you select just the right system for your environment, we’ve assembled suggestions for small, medium, and large rooms with an eye toward reliability and simplicity of operation. […read more]

Switchfoot recently revealed the feature story of their upcoming new album Oh! Gravity.

“We’ve always used music as a vehicle to explore our own questions and frustrations,” says Switchfoot singer/songwriter/guitarist Jon Foreman of the band’s new album.

Oh! Gravity. is Switchfoot’s sixth studio album, their third for Columbia Records. After 2003’s double-platinum selling, The Beautiful Letdown, and another gold selling album, Nothing Is Sound, Foreman sums it all up by saying, “I’m in therapy and I write songs. It’s all an attempt to try to come to terms with reality.” […read more]

Congregational singing gathers strength in numbers and unlocks a deeper dimension of our souls, lifting our entire selves to God. Music is one key to the “heart dimension” of worship, whether we are gathered in a stadium, large church, hundred-seat sanctuary, or home Bible study. Singing has the power to help us freely express our feeling for God.

That’s why an important part of our task as worship leaders is to involve the entire congregation in the ministry of music. Although the chancel choir, the soloists, and the instrumentalists are all vital contributors to the music of worship, our most important choir is made up of the men and women with untrained voices who sit in the pews. […read more]

After 15 years, 12 albums and a load of frequent flier miles, Audio Adrenaline has decided to call it a day, due to frontman Mark Stuart’s persistent vocal troubles. (Stuart is singing some songs on the band’s current farewell tour, but his voice isn’t holding up very well.) Long known as a favorite of the youth group set with sing-a-long anthems like “Big House” and “Get Down,” the band earned rave reviews from its fans for a rockin’ live show and industry acclaim with four Dove Awards and two Grammies. But far more important to the band than these accolades was its tight-knit friendships. Bass player Will McGinniss discusses those friendships in this Q&A (none of the other band members were available for comment), along with what’s next for the group and how the band survived a rough introduction to the industry (”PDA” anyone?). […read more]

It was the summer of 2003, and I was midway through one of the most enthralling albums I’d heard in a long time. One I couldn’t wait to share with readers, filled with beautiful melodies, varied musical styles, some of the most expressive singing around, and artful lyricism that often touched on the spiritual. It seemed like a shoe-in for our Best Albums of the Year list. And that’s when the f-bomb dropped. […read more]

Thirteen artists came together in early 2006 to form the Square Peg Alliance, a group of singer/songwriters who “really like each other.” Finding the traditional mold of the music business was not always suitable, these 13 artists found a home in each other and decided to exist as the Square Peg Alliance for support and encouragement. The “Square Pegs” are Derek Webb, Andrew Peterson (pictured left), Jill Phillips, Sandra McCracken, Andy Gullahorn, Andrew Osenga, Randall Goodgame, Katy Bowser, Jeremy Casella, Matthew Perryman Jones, Eric Peters, Chris Mason and Billy Cerveny. Peterson, Phillips and Osenga came together to explain the group’s purpose, shatter any misconceptions about why they exist, and reflect on lessons learned along the way. […read more]

It’s a well-known piece of advice: If you don’t want to argue, then don’t bring up the topics of politics and religion. Steer the conversation into more neutral ground by sticking to less inflammatory subjects. Like family. Or pets. Or movies. Or music.

Unless, of course, the music you listen to is already tightly entwined with politics and religion, as is the case within much of contemporary Christian music—an industry rife with an uncomfortable tension that comes from blending art, faith, and commerce. It’s a tension forged from fiery opinions and impassioned worldviews, and it’s made church music something that divides just as much as it unifies. […read more]

Mute Math sued its record company for marketing them as a “Christian band.” Producer/author Mark Joseph says that’s just one symptom of a broken industry… and he’s got some ideas how to fix it. In 1995, CCM magazine allowed three of us—Kerry Livgren of the band Kansas, the classical music scholar Patrick Kavanaugh, and me—to challenge the very existence of the genre in an article titled, “Can ‘Christian’ Music Exist?”

That led to other pieces for Regeneration Quarterly and Billboard that compared CCM to the old Negro Baseball League, arguing that just as the NBL had a vested interest in keeping its players from breaking the color barrier, so CCM’s leaders, for financial reasons, were often standing in the way of their artists being heard by the wider “secular” culture. [ …read more]

Putting this particular album aside for just a moment, is anyone else sick of the whole “let’s-re-release-a-popular-CD” trend? Sure, it’s understandable from the record label’s point of view—”Hmm, what can we do to tide listeners over until a group makes its next album?” But the whole concept is getting a little old, especially when there just isn’t that much quality bonus material to justify a second release in the first place. Why not instead reserve such re-release for special occasions—classic albums—making sure to add plenty of B-sides, videos, and special packaging to justify it? Why punish fans by offering a “new and improved” version of the album they already bought to support the artist in the first place? Just a thought. […read more]

Another formulaic punk album? Not so fast. Since their 2001 debut, Last Tuesday has worked hard to stand out from the rote pack of sound-alike. Become What You Believe, the Pennsylvania band’s fifth recording, is no different. For starters, they know better than to rehash the same predictable riffs over and over. Not as crisp as 2005’s Resolve, the album was intentionally made to sound more raw and reminiscent of Last Tuesday’s live show. […read more]

How strange that Salvador is seemingly beloved by most everyone into Christian music, yet they don’t really have the success or accolades to show for it. That respect comes from concertgoers who can attest that this is one of the best live bands around. But with only three top five hits in seven years, they’ve had little radio success, and are best known for their cover of the Los Lonely Boys hit “Heaven.” A shame, since 2004’s So Natural was dynamite, revealing a band that finally hit its stride.

Not that Salvador really strays from their winning formula for their sixth studio effort. They simply do it better than before. Perhaps that’s due to the production, handled for the first time by vocalist/guitarist Nic Gonzales and keyboardist Chris Bevins. Bassist Josh Gonzales (Nic’s cousin) noted a newfound level of comfort and trust during the recording that hadn’t been present since the first album, and it shows. So Natural refocused the band on the elements that make them so good—now they build upon it with Dismiss the Mystery. […read more]

We’re all aware of the evil that lurks within; the apostle Paul called himself a “prisoner of sin.” But most of us are pretty good at hiding that stuff and putting on a smile—especially at church. Dan Haseltine, frontman for the Grammy-winning band Jars of Clay, played that game for a long time too. But when he met some guys who were committed to being totally honest with each other, he decided he was sick of hiding the monster within—a good monster, but a monster nonetheless. Thus the title of the band’s new album, Good Monsters, releasing next week—and thus the premise for this conversation with the always thoughtful and articulate Haseltine, who speaks his mind on his own internal monsters, on his doubts, on the rise of honesty in Christian music, and on the things that make him say, “Oh, my God.” […read more]

He fronts one of Christian music’s hottest buzz bands. He writes with Michael W. Smith. And he’s just 17. Meet Leeland Mooring and his 21-year-old keyboardist brother Jack.

How did the band get together?

Jack: It started with Leeland as an individual artist. He got signed to a writer’s deal when he was 15, and over the course of a couple of years, the band began to form. We’re made up of family and friends, meeting through church and playing at our youth group every week. As we began to practice and work on ideas that Leeland brought to the table, we eventually recognized, “Hey … we’re a band!” Then we tried to find a name, and eventually borrowed Leeland’s first name because we thought it sounded cool. […read more]

Lauryn Hill once said that every ghetto she’d ever been to made her long for her heavenly home. Victor “Liquid” Oquendo would probably concur. Growing up in the streets of Philadelphia, his upbringing had all the makings of a life destined for the statistics books—especially when his father left and his mother became addicted to drugs. But on those same mean streets, Oquendo found God and music—and both were instrumental in his exodus from the hood and into becoming a producer and recording artist. Oquendo reminisces warmly about his hometown in his stunning debut, Tales from the Badlands (Gotee), a conceptual opus filled with real-life stories from the City of Brotherly Love. In this candid conversation, Oquendo traces his musical roots, relates the struggles of his youth, and demystifies the oft-glamorized realities of the ghetto. […read more]