From an early age, Connor Flanagan had two loves: sports and music. Now, he’s a full-time professional pop/hip-hop artist building a career as a Catholic in the Christian music industry. His music can be found on Amazon and Google Music. Flanagan also has a growing YouTube channel. Together with Abe Gross, the music director for St. Paul’s Outreach (SPO), the musicians make up the creative music group Dayton Avenue.
Flanagan told “Practicing Catholic” radio show host Patrick Conley during an interview debuting at 9 p.m. July 26 that Dayton Avenue is best described as a house of encouragement for musicians and creatives, “specifically kingdom-minded and kingdom-heart-driven musicians and creatives here in the Twin Cities.”
The group got its name from the St. Paul street, Dayton Avenue, where Flanagan and his wife first lived after getting married. Flanagan started meeting Gross and other musicians and entrepreneurs for coffee once a month to encourage one another. Originally, the name for this group that met once a month was the Dayton Avenue Collective.
“We started hosting these events called culture nights where we would get together with local musicians, we’d open the doors of our houses and just say, ‘Hey, come over for a night of worship, for hospitality, food and drinks and we’re just going to pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on our creativity. It’s crazy how much God has started to bless that. … We move more from our vision for a record label to be like, ‘Wow, God’s really breathing on this culture night. Let’s do that.’ And the common thread through all of this is all three of us have a deep desire in our hearts to influence culture through music, specifically locally and then let it grow from beyond there.”
Dayton Avenue is hosting a music festival on Aug. 4 from 6-10:30 p.m. at a local coffee shop, the 526 Collective. Headlining the festival is Britt Nicole, a Grammy-nominated Christian singer from North Carolina. The festival will also feature Harbor and Home and Connor Flanagan.
“We really want this to be a place where artists can come and interact with the people who love their music and just get to know the artists and hang out with them and it’d be really organic grassroots,” Flanagan said. “We just see so often in the Christian Catholic faith-based world of entrepreneurship and music, that it can get so competitive, and it’s so antithetical to who God is. Comparison, competition, like there’s so much work to be done to bring the kingdom of God here and now to this earth, that we want to create a space, a festival, that’s so focused on celebrating each other and what God’s doing rather than competing for stage time.”
To hear more about the Dayton Avenue’s music festival, tune into “Practicing Catholic,” which repeats at 1 p.m. July 27 and 2 p.m. July 28.
The program also includes a discussion with Catholic Charities of the Twin Cities director of culture and belonging, Mike Rios-Keating, on ways people can minister to others through the corporal works of mercy, and Archbishop Bernard Hebda’s recap of the National Eucharistic Congress.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the program can also be heard after it has aired at archspm.org/faith-and-discipleship/practicing-catholic or choose a streaming platform at Spotify for Podcasters.
