You may or may not know (and it’s honestly OK either way) that I am part of something known as the Habañero Collective.

What is the Habañero Collective, you might ask? Well, that’s still open for discussion. It began as the “Habañero Hour,” a podcast I did with one of my best friends, Mark, in which we explored, questioned and challenged the idea of “Christian music” in all its forms.

When my family and I moved back to AZ in 2008, the Habañero Hour evolved from just being a podcast to actually hosting concerts. I don’t know what it’s like where you live. And I don’t know if you love music like we do. But where we live, the “West Valley” of Phoenix (which is itself being redefined by Surprise, Vistancia, etc.), there is no quality live music. There just aren’t any cool clubs. At the risk of sounding like a hipster complainer (too late for that, though, right?!), we are literally surrounded by malls, strip-malls and wanna-be malls. Everything is the same. We have to drive to the other side of town (I know, “American Problems,” right?) to see quality live music.

My first reaction to such an obvious injustice is to blog about it. But that’s not quite enough, is it? So my friend Mark started us on the journey of hosting concerts in our homes. This grew up into a very fun, very challenging, very rewarding season of hosting concerts in homes in the West Valley. We’ve met some great people and had some life-long remembered musical moments. But as we began to host more concerts and connect with people, we began to feel that we had said everything we needed to say with the podcast. So we changed our name/identity/branding to “Habañero Collective.”

We created a Tumblr page (which curiously has become our largest “online footprint” so far) to act as an online “paper-weight,” holding our place online, until we figured out what do to next. But, at the same time, we started developing relationships with amazing songwriters and we realized that we wanted this to be something more. Something that grew through the sidewalk cracks of suburban culture. Like a weed that’s strangely interesting enough that you don’t pull it.

As we’ve found ourselves in this transitional phase, Mark took the lead in updating our look, and I am so thankful he did. We have a new logo, which means, watch for limited release Habañero Collective merchandise soon.

I’m not kidding.

Buy our stuff (please).

Oh, and by the way, what do you think of our new branding? We’d love your feedback.

In the meantime:

• Check out our Tumblr page where we pass the time with explorations in image projection.
• Visit Habañero Shows, which focuses exclusively on our concerts.
• Visit us on the Facebooks.
• Twitter with us.

It should come as no surprise to you that I love music. Like the hippish music nerds in High Fidelity, I love music. I love discovering new music. And I love making mixes. I love living with certain bands and styles for certain seasons of life. It’s amazing how listening to old mixes can conjure up the fog of lives lived; coloring your memories with their hues.

Making a mix is not something to be taken lightly. I realize that there are some who just throw some of their favorite songs in a goulash mess of a playlist and call that a mix. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about gathering together a collection of songs that somehow tell a single story, not even just lyrically, with their colors and tones. When it works well, you create an hour or so of a captured feeling, an idle idea or the fragment of a half-remembered dream. You listen over and over again to the flow of the songs. You consider the transitions. You measure the silence. In order to pass it all along to someone else. So they can share in the experience of being ensconced in music. Don’t be fooled, there are a lot of rules.

That’s enough waxing poetic about the beauty of making mixes. A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to visit a couple of my best friends in the whole world in San Francisco. While there, my friend Eric asked me to make him a mix. Which I did. And, even though it was made specifically with one great friend in mind, I’d like to offer it up for your aural examination as well.

Please download, give it a listen and give it some time and please, return and let me know what you think in the comments. Here’s the playlist:

1. Dry The Rain by the Beta Band
2. America’s Son by Air Review
3. Song For Zula by Phosphorescent
4. Manchester (live) by Kishi Bashi
5. No Silver by Chris Bathgate
6. Speak Plainly, Diana by Joe Pug
7. Hold On by Alabama Shakes
8. Push Your Button by the Kernal
9. Ho Hey by the Lumineers
10. Teach Me To Know by the Lone Bellow
11. Don’t Just Sit There by Lucius
12. No Peace, Los Angeles by Mike Doughty
13. Brazos by Matthew E. White

I’d love to hear your thoughts

• Download You’ve Got One Hour Of My Time (You’d Better Make It Good) from Mediafire.
• Download You’ve Got One Hour Of My Time (You’d Better Make It Good) from Zippyshare.
• Download You’ve Got One Hour Of My Time (You’d Better Make It Good) from Rapidshare.

My friend Trevor Davis was recently on the television series The Voice. He made it to the “Battle Rounds” (something I did not know even existed until someone I knew was on the show. I have never seen an episode of this show or American Idol. until now. But I digress. And, for you doubters, no, he’s not like my best friend or anything (notice the appearance of like and read that sentence with that voice in mind). But he has played a concert in my living room and babysat my kids. And I don’t let just anyone watch my children.

Here’s Trevor’s thoughts on the experience:

• Visit Trevor’s official website.

Hope you can make it to our Habañero Collective House Show tonight!

So, the other day I began what is sure to be a very long series of posts about some of the amazing people God has placed in my life. Let’s go ahead and visit another installment in that series, OK?

I met (THE) Shawn Skinner in April of 2008. My wife, Kristi and I flew from TX where I was pastoring, back to suburban Phoenix to have a vision-casting meeting for what would eventually become Church of the Cross. Shawn and I hit it off on many different levels and it wasn’t long before he began leading worship for our church family. And over the years, I have watched as God has gifted Shawn with his own musical voice.

Shawn recently played at Crescent Ballroom, one of my favorite Phoenix venues. I love seeing artists grow into themselves and this night was a prime example of just such a moment. And I’m not just saying that because Shawn is a good friend. If you’ll pardon my indulgence, I’d like to post three videos as proof of my claim that Shawn Skinner is certainly finding his musical voice.

Shawn opened up with a new song called “12 O’Clock Shuffle.” The parts that sound like he’s copying Tom Waits are actually supposed to be sung through this cool flask-o-phone (an actual flask that Shawn has turned into a microphone) that Shawn didn’t bring this night. So, he’s not just paying tribute to Waits, though that might not be a bad thing; he’s approximating the sound of the mic he didn’t bring. Anyway, watch right at around the 1:30 mark when Shawn offers an abrupt transition and a random crowd-goer shows his enthusiasm. You can see Shawn gain some confidence in that moment. And it never left him:

Next up is “You Better Not Miss,” a true story that Shawn turns into a haunting vignette:

Last up is a Shawn Skinner classic, “Charlie and William.” I love when the sound man adds some reverb to the refrain about three-quarters of the way through:

Watch for great things because I have no doubt Shawn can and will deliver.

Though I didn’t call my previous post about my friend Gary Bagby/Foreknown, “I Have Insanely Talented Friends (Part 01),” I should have. Gary will be releasing his debut full-length album on Humble Beast in the near future. Gary was recently approached by a local church to record a spoken word piece contrasting Muhammad Ali with Jesus. Check it out.

I hope you can make it out to the Crescent Ballroom this Saturday night to support my friend Shawn Skinner as he opens up for The Cold Desert and others.

• More information here.