Frequency.fm

As one can attest from their April 24 take over of 21 digital billboards in NYC’s Times Square, no one is going to accuse Hillsong Worship (nee Hillsong Live) of being understated or subtle – well, at least in terms of promotion. Their latest collection, No Other Name, released this week, coincides with the Hillsong Church celebrating 30 years of ministry. After such a bold statement, the question is whether Hillsong Worship can deliver the goods with this 11-song offering. We set loose contributor Jessica Collins to find out and research the reviews. Read on to enjoy the results of her labor.The ConsensusFrankly, it was difficult to find a dissenting voice. Critics were effectively universal in praising the release, yet they were not effusive in their response. A common thread among comments is an appreciation for the tasteful and inspired interweaving of classic hymns with new songs. Hillsong hasn’t abandoned their tried-and-true big anthem approach, and they continue to execute it well and resist

Late January 2012, Joe was offered the opportunity to interview Nick de Partee of Kutless for The Songwriters Cafe as part of the promotion of their 2012 release, Believer. This week’s Wise Words installment – our 11th – is an excerpt from that conversation. Nick shares why it’s important both to himself and other members of the band to keep Christ at the center of all things. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Leading up to the release of his first book, 10:10: Life to the Fullest, our Episode 20 guest, Daniel Hill, blogged about the conflict that exists for many Christian artists: self-promotion versus Christ-like humility. It caught our attention, and we shared it immediately. This ultimately led to a great conversation about the journey of his book release as well as digging into the themes of 10:10: faith, fear, and fulfillment.hill_1010_wSpine.inddDaniel Hill is the pastor of River City Community Church, a multi-ethnic church in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago. As a pastor’s kid, he was was initially drawn to the business world but migrated ultimately to work in ministry. Our interview with Daniel explores 10:10, his anti-marketing strategy to promoting the book, the innately superficial nature of establishing a platform, and the need for artists to maintain their integrity in both creating and sharing their work. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

One of our favorite interviews – and a bit of an undiscovered gem – is from Episode 11 featuring Don Poythress. In our humble opinion, that conversation should be mandatory listening for all aspiring songwriters. In our 10th installment of Wise Words, we share some insight from Don regarding work ethic and the reward one receives for showing up – even if you don’t feel like it. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We’ve featured Sara Beth Go during the Sanctuary Concert series (more to come, by the way), and we finally sat down to interview her yesterday. While we won’t be airing the full interview for a few weeks, we couldn’t resist grabbing this gem from the conversation and sharing it with you today in our 9th installment of Wise Words. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

You may know Bonnie Gray as the creator and writer behind FaithBarista.com, an interactive website designed to help women heal by telling their stories. Gray is a graduate of UCLA and is a passionate writer who has also been a missionary and high-tech professional in Silicon Valley. Above all, and relevant to her triumph in writing Finding Spiritual Whitespace: Awakening Your Soul to Rest, is Gray’s unique ability to connect women with their own stories in a powerful and healing way.Throughout the book, Gray’s own painful story unfolds. She writes unflinchingly about her childhood marred by parental emotional abuse and divorce, and how she recognized the need as an adult to seek help for Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The core of this powerful book is the manner in which she emerged from her PTSD to face her past and live in the present.The resulting story could stand alone as a parable of forgiveness. But Gray goes much further to give her readers the real and transformative gift of a structured and meditati

One of our most popular episodes, Episode 4, featured an interview with spoken word artist, Phil Long. And when you listen to Wise Words 8, it will quickly become evident why. Phil recognizes how Christian culture influences – and potentially limits – the work we create as artists. His perspective is both refreshing and convicting, and it extends beyond his chosen medium. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We reached into the archives – going all the way back to Episode 1 with Richie Fike – for our weekly dose of wisdom. Richie really set the standard when it comes to speaking to other artists and encouraging them to learn from his journey.He and his wife Dana are currently putting the finishing touches on a new album, More Than Anthems, due August this year, and he’s enjoying the success of “We Believe”, a song co-written with Matt Hooper and Travis Ryan. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We’ve been chatting a lot about this interview with our Episode 19 guest. Jessica Campbell is a critically-acclaimed indie singer/songwriter based in Nashville. Her 2013 release The Anchor & the Sail was not only well-received but songs have been frequency featured in media – including a nod in USA Today for her song “Gone”.Our conversation with Jessica is full of insight and covers a lot of ground. She addresses the apparent gap that exists between different levels of indie artists, the benefit of media song placement, writing with Michael Farren (of Pocket Full of Rocks) and the truly glamourous nature of promoting your music in undiscovered country. Oh, and because Joe can’t help himself, he asks how close TV show Nashville comes to reality.By the way, since this was a somewhat longish episode – about an hour – we wanted to provide you with a few transition times in case you choose to enjoy in more than one sitting: Interview Start (10:05), Segment 2 (17:20), Segment 3 (33:00), Segment 4 (37:30), S

Here at Frequency headquarters, we occasionally like to joke that no artist is allowed to appear on the site or podcast feed without first demonstrating that they have an established relationship with Christa Wells. The fact is, though, that she is a thoughtful and talented individual who has some excellent insight into being an independent artist.In our sixth installment of Wise Words, we feature an exchange with Christa that occurred during our Episode 7 interview where she discusses experiences that inspire her to write and why those experience aren’t required to be happy ones. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We have a super-size installment of Wise Words for you this week. Effectively, this means it’s an eight-minute episode rather than a four-minute episode. We caught up with our friend, Travis Thrasher, an author who spent 13-years working in the publishing industry before moving to writing full-time. In our brief chat, Travis discusses the pros and cons of the current self-publishing trend – especially as compared to working with an established publisher. As a bonus, we get a little time to talk about his new novel, Marvelous, the first in his new series, The Books of Marvella. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On Episode 18, we’re featuring an interview with Jared Haschek, a founding member of Compliments of Gus, perhaps the best Christian rock band you’ve probably never heard of. Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, Compliments of Gus has been a fixture on the down under music scene for 16+ years. In 2013, they released their 10th and perhaps most definitive album, The Black and the White of It. Jared discusses the band’s longevity, the changes in his songwriting approach, and the influence different mainstream artists have on their sound. They also chat about the Christian music scene in Australia, balancing day jobs with their roles in the band, and Melbourne’s record-setting fascination with P!nk. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It’s time for the fourth installment of our Wise Words series of mini-posts. Joe connected with Ross King, our guest on Episode 10. Ross had recently shared via Twitter a post addressing some hard truths associated with the music industry: What People Don’t Want to Believe. We asked him to address one of those truths. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For those of you thought it would never arrive, that it was a mythical creature like a unicorn or a Texas Democrat, we are ridiculously thrilled to present you with the long-awaited Gabriel Allred interview. To bring you up-to-date, we interviewed Gabe on Halloween 2013, just a couple of days before the release of a new CFNI recording (No Ordinary Love) and during the week of their annual worship retreat, Resonate. After a lot of great conversation, it became abundantly clear that I had an editing nightmare on my hands. Gabe laughed at me. So…six months later, we are finally rolling it out.For the record, Mr. Allred is one of our favorite people. He’s thoughtful, intelligent, clever, and fun. And he is unabashedly passionate about worship. Gabe talks with Joe about leaders that inspire him, why Christian creatives are 20 years behind popular culture, and why playing the accordion is not a simple bid to jump into the hipster movement. Oh, and CFNI’s latest album. Honestly, this interview is so chock-f

For our latest full episode of the podcast, we’re pleased to feature guest Claire Díaz-Ortiz. Some of you may already be familiar with Claire as an author, speaker, and technology innovator who has been named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company.Claire has published a number books that address topics such as business, productivity, or technology. But her new book is very personal. She just published Hope Runs: An American Tourist, a Kenyan Boy, a Journey of Redemption, a joint memoir written with her Kenyan foster son, Sammy. Joe and Claire discuss the how the book came into being, why now is the right time to share the story, and what Sammy is up to now. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I (Dan) recently had the opportunity to read Tullian Tchividjian’s latest book One Way Love – Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World. This book was highly anticipated – not only because of his relationship to Billy Graham (Tullian is his grandson), but also the subject matter on “Grace”, which is the very topic of The Gospel Coalition – Atlantic Canada‘s conference this coming August 5-7, 2014 in Charlottetown PEI.I will say it’s easy to be cynical of an author that has a total of 28 endorsements at the front of the book from all walks of life. It seems that there is a lot of convincing to do at the front end to get you to read the book, but all-in-all, the book is well worth the read and will give you an immense sense of hope in your position and relationship with Christ and literally rock your world if you come from a legalistic background.This book is full of quote-worthy statements and definitely will not leave you questioning what Tullian’s point is. This having been said, it is a tad repetitive and

Here is episode 3 of our Wise Words series of mini-posts featuring Gabriel Allred. Your response has been great so we’re going to take you right to this next episode. We have two more episodes before the full interview so stay tuned! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Last week, we introduced our Wise Words series of mini-posts featuring Gabriel Allred, and your response was great. Now that Joe has (finally) completed his edit of the interview with Gabriel, we can confidently report that this will be a five-episode series. So, we won’t bore you with any additional fluff – we’ll just get this published so that you can enjoy. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A few months ago, we had the pleasure of interviewing Gabriel Allred, worship director at Christ for the Nations Institute (Dallas, Texas) about his perspectives on ministry, music and leadership. The conversation covered a breadth of topics, and some content – for the sake of time – had to end up on the cutting room floor. Because we think highly of you, our listeners, we decided to get creative and produce a series of mini-segments we’re calling Wise Words that feature standalone bites of the conversation. Here is our first mini post – we hope you enjoy! We’ll be featuring a new Wise Words post every couple of days leading up until the full episodes is published. Based on Joe’s editing pace, you can expect that to be sometime in early 2015…Stay tuned! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Great to have you with us for Episode 15! There are many cools things happening at Frequency.fm in 2014, and we’re blessed to be able to share another excellent interview with you – the singularly stupendous, social media Jedi, Jim Gray. Set aside a little drive time and learn from the wisdom shared by this industry veteran.Jim Gray and FamilySelf-promotion and marketing are an oft ignored necessity of the artist. After sweating blood and tears to produce an album or write a book, many artists neglect the work required to get their work recognized in a busy marketplace. If you caught our last episode with Ellie Holcomb, you understand how an established platform can be the key difference between stratospheric success and obscurity. Jim has spent years in the trenches working with authors, musicians, and artists in general building platforms so that all the hard work isn’t lost in the noise created by everyone else trying to get noticed. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.