{"id":47510,"date":"2007-12-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/features\/switchfoots-jon-foreman-the-daily-vault-interview\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T07:31:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T07:31:34","slug":"switchfoots-jon-foreman-the-daily-vault-interview","status":"publish","type":"feature","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/features\/switchfoots-jon-foreman-the-daily-vault-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Switchfoot’s Jon Foreman: The Daily Vault Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"
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San Diegans Jonathan Foreman, his brother Tim and their friend Chad Butler started Switchfoot<\/a> while Tim was still in high school and the other two were at UCSD.\u00a0 Their original format was the classic power trio with Jon on guitar and lead vocals, Tim on bass and background vocals, and Butler behind the drum kit.\u00a0 Older brother Jon was — and is — both a major\u00a0Led Zeppelin fan and an avid\u00a0surfer; Switchfoot is a surfing term.<\/i><\/p>\n

The band issued three albums as a trio:<\/i> The Legend Of Chin (1997),<\/i> New Way To Be Human (1999) and<\/i> Learning To Breathe (2000), steadily building a following\u00a0before signing with <\/city><\/place>Columbia in 2002.\u00a0 During the same period, the group added longtime friend Jerome Fontamillas on keyboards and guitar, issuing 2003\u2019s<\/i> The Beautiful Letdown<\/a> as a quartet and scoring hit singles \u201cDare You To Move\u201d and \u201cMeant To Live.\u201d\u00a0 Over the course of the next two years, they added a fifth member, guitarist Drew Shirley, and delivered\u00a02005\u2019s<\/i> Nothing Is Sound<\/a>, which featured the rather Zeppelinesque single \u201cStars.\u201d\u00a0 At Christmas 2006 they were back with the diverse <\/i>Oh! Gravity<\/a>, which stretched their sound in new directions.\u00a0\u00a0In 2007\u00a0the band toured behind<\/i> Oh! Gravity early in the year, then left <\/city><\/place>Columbia, started work on a new independent disc, and assembled a fall\u00a0tour with co-headliners Relient K that\u00a0benefitted Habitat For Humanity<\/a>.<\/i> <\/p>\n

In the midst of all this activity, Jon Foreman found time to record the first two of a series of four seasonally-themed, Internet-only solo EPs.\u00a0 <\/i>Fall came out November 27 and is available\u00a0via iTunes and Foreman’s Web site<\/a><\/i>. <\/i>We caught up with Jon Foreman via e-mail recently, just days before he boarded a plane\u00a0to catch his boyhood idols\u2019 December 10 reunion concert in London.<\/i>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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Daily Vault: Please tell us about the Appetite For Construction Tour tour and how it came about.<\/b><\/p>\n

Jon Foreman:<\/b>\u00a0The idea came about one day when we were playing in Austin, Texas. We were hanging out by a river talking about how we could do the touring thing differently. We were looking back at three years of doing the Bro Am [an annual charity event Switchfoot sponsors in San Diego] and we were thinking about how amazing it would be to dive into other communities as well.
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We wanted to find a low-overhead organization that folks could get directly involved in on a local level. Habitat for Humanity was a perfect fit. Two things are needed for the job site: funding and personnel.\u00a0 This tour helped accomplish both — thousands of kids signed up to get involved and the tour and the song we wrote for the tour raised more than $100,000 for Habitat. It was such a dream to see it all come together!
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I gather you\u2019ve been friends with the guys in <\/b>Relient K<\/b><\/a> for awhile.\u00a0 How would you describe them and their music to your own fans?
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We\u2019ve been friends with the RK boys for a while\u2026 They were the local opener on a tour we were on back in the day, so it\u2019s been great to see them evolve as a band and to be cheering them on. Matt is almost like a little brother to me and I have a ton of respect for him and his tunes. His music is extremely deceptive — happy-clappy pop-punk songs that have as much depth as you want to dive into. Witty, honest, darkly personal songs in a candy coated shell.
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Back to Switchfoot.\u00a0 You guys fought your way through the indie world for years, signed the major-label deal that every independent band *used to be* shooting for, put out three albums with <\/city><\/place>Columbia, and now you\u2019ve turned around and gone back to the indie route.\u00a0 Tell\u00a0us about how that all came to pass.\u00a0
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It\u2019s all about trust. We started this thing as a family — my brother, my friend and myself writing songs we believed in and playing \u2018em.
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We found some folks that we really trusted over at <\/city><\/place>Columbia and had an amazing time. But then the turnover at Sony got to be ridiculous — a new “family” every other week. There were decisions made by our label that didn\u2019t reflect our intentions. \u00a0
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So we decided to move on. No hard feelings, just wanting to protect the music we believe in. <\/p>\n

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Switchfoot: (l to r) Tim Foreman, Drew Shirley,
Jon Foreman, Chad Butler, Jerome Fontamillas<\/i><\/div>\n

The path you\u2019ve traveled — which is getting more and more well-traveled — begs the question: are big labels obsolete?<\/b>\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure, I can only speak from my perspective: there\u2019s got to be a deeper motivation than the bottom line for me to feel fulfilled by what I do. And that motivation is hard to find at the big labels nowadays\u2026<\/p>\n

A lot of artists see file sharing as a mixed blessing<\/a> — great for initial exposure, but terrible over the long haul if you\u2019re trying to make a living playing music.\u00a0 What\u2019s your take on file sharing and especially its effects on independent artists?<\/b><\/p>\n

Hmmm…\u00a0We’ve always made a living by playing live music. We just played the biggest tour we’ve ever had with no new record around.\u00a0Weird…<\/p>\n

File sharing is our reality. It\u2019s like asking whether or not you feel clouds are good or bad: they\u2019re both good and bad I suppose but wishing them away ain\u2019t gonna help! I really love vinyl but I doubt we\u2019ll ever move back. The question for me has always which songs will change my world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Switchfoot has been through a lot of changes over the years, building a mainstream audience, adding two members and expanding the scope of your sound.\u00a0 Looking back on it now, how do you see the evolution of the band having affected the music and you personally?<\/b><\/p>\n

I feel like most of these changes have been attempts to arrive at an ever-changing destination. A lot of times, (like now for example!) we start a record hoping to go in one direction and finish the project with a completely different objective. That\u2019s why live music can be so fulfilling — because the goal and the attempt happen simultaneously.
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I\u2019m thankful for the songs, though. I feel like they have been gifts, it\u2019s a gift to be able to sing a song you believe in night after night. To get a chance to give birth to something that you really care about. That has been the constant within the changes.
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You guys seem to be always recording, always pushing toward the next release.\u00a0 Anything you can tell us about the next band album yet?<\/b><\/p>\n

The reason why I love music is because it has this intangible spark, this once-in-a-lifetime urgency that breathes down the neck of my soul and makes me cry or laugh or throw something. So you dive into music and begin to learn how things work, the mechanics, the rules. And suddenly it becomes math instead of magic.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I feel like the most dangerous place for us to be as a band is to be comfortable. The rule for this record is that if you\u2019ve done it in the past you can\u2019t do it again. We want the music to move us. I heard somebody say — \u201cIf you ain\u2019t crying, why you playin\u2019 it?\u201d I like that\u2026
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We recorded 14 songs with Charlie Peacock [producer of Switchfoot’s initial trio of\u00a0indie albums] this summer. Our first approach was to take a song and play it for an hour or two and then listen back to what we achieved and move forward from there. It’s completely new for us — we’ve never “jammed” before. \u00a0
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There is a searching quality to your songs; they ask the questions at the core of every human\u2019s experience: why am I here?\u00a0 Does my life have a purpose?\u00a0 What does it mean to be a good person in this world?\u00a0 In your music, you guys approach spirituality in an open-ended way, making it mostly about asking the questions rather than preaching a particular set of answers.\u00a0 Was that a conscious choice, or more of a natural outcome of how you approach your own life?<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never possessed the ability to write good songs where I am not emotionally involved. The questions that I\u2019m asking are not rhetorical. The songs are my vehicles to try and understand the world. Often I find that I can be far more honest in a song than in real life. I\u2019m working on trying to figure that out\u2026<\/p>\n

\"switchfoot_letdown_160\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\"switchfoot_nothing_150\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \"switchfoot_oh_150\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

A lot of your lyrics focus on spiritual issues, and you\u2019re also frontman for a rock band.\u00a0 One thing spiritual leaders and rock stars have always had in common is a tendency to attract some pretty intense followers, people who have a really deep-seated need to believe in someone.\u00a0 How would you describe your experiences with so-called \u201csuperfans\u201d?<\/b><\/p>\n

For the most part, I feel incredibly honored when I think about the folks that listen to our songs. Most of them are amazing people that inspire me\u2026 When someone tells me that one of our tunes helped encourage them to join the peace corps I\u2019m blown away. And that type of thing happens all the time. People who treat us strangely simply don\u2019t understand our tunes\u2026 Seldom do I run into folks that love the music that don\u2019t understand who we are.
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A columnist in the New York Times<\/i> wrote recently about the fragmentation of music<\/a>, how it\u2019s all genre-driven now and there are no more universal acts like the Beatles or Led Zeppelin or U2 that everyone listens to.\u00a0 To me that argument both rang true and paralleled your lyric in \u201cLonely Nation<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 The more choices we have, the more we\u2019re able to customize the world we come in contact with, the lonelier we get, because we\u2019re no longer sharing experiences in a communal way.\u00a0 How do you react to that idea?<\/b><\/p>\n

If I understand the comment correctly, I feel like the columnist got it wrong in some ways. With the death of radio and the birth of the iPod, nothing is genre driven — what\u2019s the difference between rock, or alternative or indie? James Taylor is in the rock section at iTunes. Most big \u201cindie\u201d bands are on a major. And alternative is even more confusing. Everyone listens to everything; it\u2019s all Jack.fm.<\/p>\n

I do feel like the universal experience is dying, however. There are too many options to have an Elvis come on the scene. I suppose hip-hop is the closest thing to universal. And yet community is a huge part of the human experience. Even in cyberspace we\u2019re searching to belong somewhere, looking for community. But often things are moving too fast. Even in music, too many choices can lead to mediocrity. Every good record was made by the restrictions placed around the music, i.e. time, budget, ability, ambition. <\/p>\n

Aside from life expectancy, who\u2019s to say that our modern human existence is fundamentally better now than it was two thousand years past. War, famine, disease, greed, murder\u2026 machines do many things but they cannot save us from ourselves. And I haven\u2019t found one that cures loneliness. We have created a modern day serfdom of sorts: we slave away, chaining ourselves to our devices and giving the first fruits to the global\u00a0corporations.\u00a0
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Many people see a gulf in American society today between the faithful and the secular.\u00a0 People on both sides of that continuum seem to have become more rigid in their views of each other.\u00a0 I\u2019ve read about ardent Christians grousing because you guys don\u2019t just write worship songs, and also about ardent secularists being put off by the spiritual messages your lyrics contain.\u00a0 And then there are people like me \u2013 a spiritually seeking agnostic who\u2019s somewhere in the broad middle, and who finds your music resonates deeply with me precisely because it\u2019s spiritual but not dogmatic.\u00a0 What do you make of that?<\/b><\/p>\n

I think people throw rocks at the things they don\u2019t understand. We\u2019ve always attempted to make music for thinking people. Some of these folks are Christian, or Jewish, or Taoist, or determinist, or dentists, or plumbers\u2026 It\u2019s absurdly close-minded to think that we should all only listen to and fraternize with folks who think like we do. That\u2019s the way fascism grows! I love people that I disagree with. I listen to them. They listen to me. Sometimes we never see eye to eye, but we still hang out, we still care for each other.\u00a0\u00a0If you don’t love people you\u00a0disagree\u00a0with, you won’t have many friends!\u00a0<\/p>\n

I feel like music is one of the few areas in our rigid world where tolerance is still found. To box it up into something more organized would be many a journalist\u2019s dream and many a\u00a0music lover’s nightmare!
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You\u2019re planning to release four solo EPs of six songs each over the next 12 months.\u00a0 How did that idea develop?<\/b><\/p>\n

I had these personal songs that didn\u2019t belong on a Switchfoot record and yet they kept coming to me. I just kept recording them at home every night never thinking that they would ever see the light of day. <\/p>\n

Everything felt very natural, very honest — I paid for everything myself, and recorded most of it on my own. For most of the project I had no idea that people outside my family and friends would actually ever hear these songs, maybe that\u2019s why they\u2019re so personal. I am so excited to get these tunes out, it\u2019s a dream come true in many ways.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The EP format felt like the right way to go: no real fanfare, just a\u00a0continuous\u00a0yearly flow of 24 honest songs created for the moment. Every song gets the attention it deserves and there are no singles.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fall<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Jon Foreman<\/b>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

I\u2019ve listened to Fall <\/i>and my initial take is that the songs are both quieter and more personal and specific to you than the average Switchfoot song.\u00a0 They\u2019re almost like hymns you might sing to yourself.\u00a0 How do you see these songs?<\/b><\/p>\n

These songs reflect the hours and they were made and the purpose they had. I wrote and recorded these songs late at night at my house after the world was sleeping. For the most part they were written as a personal consolation for pain.
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In my first listen I caught some strings and horns and other fresh textures in the music.\u00a0 Do you have some guest players with you on some of the EP tracks?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes. After I got the basic tracking done I flew to <\/city><\/place>Nashville and had some friends and friends of friends lay some things down. I wanted textures that took the songs away from the \u201csinger-songwriter demo\u201d feel and yet I was careful that the soul of the song remained intact.
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Let’s see… Jeff Coffin of Flecktones fame was amazing\u2026 Charlie Peacock played and helped with direction overall. Keith Tutt was the secret weapon on the cello. Tim [Foreman] and Jerome [Fontamillas] from the Foot helped me in a few spots too\u2026 Stacy DuPree from Eisley sang on Winter<\/i>\u2026
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Anything else you\u2019d like to tell folks about future plans for the EPs?<\/b><\/p>\n

Winter<\/i> beat Fall<\/i> for me\u2026 which is unfortunate because fall is my favorite season. I haven\u2019t started on spring or summer and I really have very little direction at this point. I want the mood to change for those disks to represent the seasons but I still want the honesty… I’m trying to employ the production and the song selection to get there.
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Finally, a three-part random bonus question: Any secret musical vices?\u00a0 What\u2019s your favorite \u201880s metal band?\u00a0 What was the first album you ever bought?<\/b><\/p>\n

Vices, hmmm… I’m not sure what you mean, a vice as a weakness of musical character? Well, I need a good crowd to play a good show. I wish I were a bit less caring, like Dylan or something… but my experience onstage is often far too influenced by what type of crowd we have. I play from their perspective.<\/p>\n

I guess I don’t really have a favorite \u201880s metal band. I was too into Zeppelin and surfing in junior high… the leather pants and the makeup scared me off. But I loved the lighter stuff, “Pour Some Sugar On Me” was the best thing I had ever heard…<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s Chuck Klosterman who has some good stuff to say about\u00a0guilty\u00a0pleasures.\u00a0\u00a0Something like: a\u00a0guilty pleasure is something that you like that you think you shouldn\u2019t like. But who\u2019s to say you shouldn\u2019t like it? Who\u2019s to say that someone else\u2019s opinion should mean more to you than yours? In the end, why should you be embarrassed about something that brings you joy?!<\/p>\n

I can’t remember what record I bought first, but the first tape I got was a birthday gift from my elementary school friend: Whitesnake…\u00a0“I’m going down the only road I’ve ever known!” Yes indeed!<\/p>\n

[Many thanks to Jon Foreman and Jamie Sisley of Red Light Managament for making this happen.]<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

San Diegans Jonathan Foreman, his brother Tim and their friend Chad Butler started Switchfoot while Tim was still in high school and the other two were at UCSD.\u00a0 Their original format was the classic power trio with Jon on guitar and lead vocals, Tim on bass and background vocals, and Butler behind the drum kit.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":50875,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"tags":[],"feature_type":[11241],"class_list":["post-47510","feature","type-feature","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","feature_type-interview"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/feature\/47510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/feature"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/feature"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/feature\/47510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47510"},{"taxonomy":"feature_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/feature_type?post=47510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}