So yeah, title gave it away, but I want some dzen popups for awesome, like mpd and the date, etc. I'm not sure how to go about doing anything though. Has anyone here had experience with it - as unixhub is best of the best, of course ;)

Before putting the information on 'dzen popups' (i don't know what they are), you should write simple scripts to retrieve the needed information. Also I would suggest you to get LemonBoy/bar.git from GitHub, very very simple config and use. Me and yrmt use it.

Doesn't awesome already have a bar?

Yeah It has a bar, and has plenty of libs for making pop up widgets. One such lib I used to use when on awesome was called BlingBling. There is a lot you can do with awesome on it's own no need to bring in another bar IMO.

As kopri said, awesome supplies a bar with libs for this purpose, I'd suggest studying your WM first, then coming back with questions.
If you need any further help let me know, awesome was the first WM I ever really "mastered" per say.