Switchfoot

When I was assigned to Sacramento California-based rock band Switchfoot, I was a little daunted by the task.

Like most people, I still only “know” what music and musicians I listen to and I’d never really gotten into , so I had to do a great deal of research to get ready for the interview, including listening to their new album, ‘Oh! Gravity’, which includes some very radio-friendly, catchy pop-rock music.

But their music is a little bit deeper than most pop-rock acts out there; the songs are usually structured around philosophical themes and messages, done with a subtlety that most pop acts don’t master, when they turn their talents towards releasing a message-driven song or album.

Because of this, and their previous and ongoing associations with Christian radio and music festivals, Switchfoot are often categorized (or unfairly dismissed) as a Christian Rock act.  Despite the fact that neither God nor Jesus are ever mentioned in their music, this musical Mark of Cain is often attached to them.

When I went to meet with Switchfoot on March Third at Le National where they were playing that night, I wanted to get their take on this issue, among other things.

When I got to Le National, Chad Butler and Jon Foreman of Switchfoot were doing several interviews that day; they’d just finished one interview when they were ushered over to me for introductions, and not long after we’d completed the interview, they were ushered off to another.

CONFRONT: I was reading your MySpace page and I notice something interesting: You guys actually have your fans vote on the playlist that you do (in concert)?

CHAD: That’s right,

CONFRONT: Does that change every night or every show?  How does that work?

CHAD: Yeah, every night.  We’re always trying to find ways to sort of break down that barrier between the stage, the band and the audience.  This was a good way to involve people and one of the integral parts of the night, you know, to pick which songs they want to hear.

CONFRONT: I understand that you guys actually had to re-learn some old songs that you hadn’t done in a while.

JON: Yeah;

CHAD: Being a band for ten years a lot of these songs I wrote when I was eighteen, so it takes a little?”it takes you back in time; it’s like a time machine.  I think, for us, we mix it up not only for the crowd but for ourselves; to keep it fresh.

CONFRONT: Do you ever end up, like, re-reading a song that you wrote five or ten years ago and going “Oh, man!”

CHAD: I think stylistically it’s a bit like a haircut, where you look back and you think “Man!”

CONFRONT: Well, as long as there’s no mullets in the pack.

CHAD: Yeah, right!  You know you’ve got things that you wouldn’t do now but at the time you thought they were genius and really cool.

JON: Yeah.

CONFRONT: That makes sense.  So, the interactivity with the fans is very important; I get that impression.  You did a lot more for this CD; for the recording of ‘Oh, Gravity!’ you had a webcam in the studio; you released two different singles, “Daylight to Break” and “Dirty Second Hands” to the fans beforehand…so how?”two questions about that: how did that make the recording the album different from other recordings that you’ve done and how did that affect the recording of the CD?

JON: This time around we weren’t setting out to make a whole record.  At first we just went in because we had a chance to work with one of our heroes, producer Steve Lillywhite.  We went in to do just a song or two; maybe we’d put out an EP or something.  And, it was just very loose, and just for the sake of capturing the creativity at the time.  And those songs we put out early on were just in between records; we were really excited about the way they came out and wanted to get them out quickly.  We ended up in the studio with Steve and Tim Palmer and we ended up having such a good time that we kept recording for a few months and ended up with a full-length.

CHAD: I think as far as the webcam is concerned it was kind of a window in for people but it was also a window out for us, to kind of, avoid the pitfalls that’s common to the studio process of just being lost in your own dark, little cave, forgetting about the fact that you’re going to be playing these songs in front of people in a few months and wanting to keep the communication going.

CONFRONT: And I suppose it also means that you’re more conscious in the studio of your public image too, and so you want to bring that good behaviour into the private time as well?

CHAD: You know there’s a lot of lucky times when no one was picking their nose or that type of thing…basically it was kind of Russian Roulette because every eight seconds, every ten seconds the photo was delivered to the website.  We thought about what would it be like if somebody runs through the studio naked; you might not see it or you might!

JON: Luckily we had no streakers in the studio.

CONFRONT: Yeah, those are a common problem.  I understand they have pest-strips now to get read of streakers.

JON(laughing): Do they?

CONFRONT: The second question that I had was what made you decide to do that?  To make the recording of that CD so public?

CHAD: Just what we were talking about; that idea that we grew up with, growing up in the music scene in San Diego.  It’s very much a camaraderie between local bands.  You’d go to a show and watch four or five of your friends’ bands play and then its your turn and you get up onstage and it’s just sort of this revolving musical community.  And you know I guess we’ve always viewed music that way; that there is no barrier between the audience and the band; the idea that the people who listen to the music are musical co-conspirators with us that they’re part of the process.  You know, fifty per cent of it is done on our end but the other half is on their end, you know.

CONFRONT: That’s pretty cool and that’s another interesting thing that I find more and more these days is that rock bands?”it’s not like it was in the 80s or even the early 90s?”you’re not looking, nobody’s looking to be put up on a pedestal, even the fans don’t want to put them up on a pedestal where it’s like everybody is more or less friends with their fans or they get along on a more equal footing with them.  How do you guys feel about that?  Is that true in your case, most of the time?

CHAD: That’s the scene we grew up in, you know? Our friends sneaking us into their shows and us doing the same.  You know, it’s a respect that I think is very healthy.

CONFRONT: That’s good to know.  I just find it personally interesting because I see this all the time when I’m talking to bands they all say the same thing where they like the friendship with the audience or as you put it the musical co-conspirators.  You’ve mentioned that it gave you a chance to work with one of your heroes, the producer on this CD why is he one of your heroes?  What is it that you liked about working with him?

CHAD: Steve Lillywhite has made many of our favourite records and the other producer, Tim Palmer that we worked with as well.

CONFRONT: Which records?

CHAD: Ah, gosh, everybody from David Bowie and the Rolling Stones

JON: U2.  It’s one of those things, especially with Palmer; he’s one of the Unsung Producers, where he’s never made a bad record.  I think that’s a good producer.  Sometimes a producer lucks out and gets a band in their prime, and that becomes his signature record.  Maybe he did a great job and maybe he didn’t but to be a producer for 20 years and to not make a bad record…that’s amazing.

CHAD: Yeah.

CONFRONT: Well, also on the subject of, basically, heroes and heroics, if you will, you guys are involved with a lot of different charities including DATA, which is Debt, Aids Trade in Africa, the One Campaign, the Invisible Children documentary; I understand you guys are involved in that.  What made these organizations important to you and what made you get involved?

CHAD: We’ve had a chance to travel quite a bit and see parts of the world where it’s a very dark situation and meet kids that are growing up without parents in places like South Africa where they’ve grown up surrounded by the devastation of AIDS and poverty and a lot of the organizations you mentioned are doing their best to tell the stories and create awareness for people and especially kids that are going through situations like that.  I think when you are aware of what’s going on in places like that you want to tell that story and get involved as much as you can.

JON: I think music is really great of kind of being a conduit for knowledge in a way that journalism can’t.  Journalism is great for numbers but statistics don’t really belong in a song so for us I feel that it’s about telling a story; that’s what we do.  So when we hear a good story, one that needs to be told I think it’s almost an obvious follow-up to begin telling it ourselves.  A lot of the people you mentioned are friends or acquaintances of ours so that we really believe in what they’re doing.  So it’s the least we can do to kind of bring them up onto the stage that we’re on and share their story.

CONFRONT:  Cool.  I’ve saved what figure is going to be the hardest one, the hardest question for last.  That’s about the whole Christian Rock thing.  I’ll just read what I’ve got here because I am seeing it based on the research I’ve done on you guys and based on what I’ve listened to of your music I’m really seeing it as not really a fair label in my opinion anyway but, like you guys established yourself over the last decade, you’ve been trying to show that you’re a universal rock act that Christianity’s not a genre for you, and you still get stuck with this label, like Andrew Beaujoin when he said last year in Spin Magazine that, quote “Their lyrics often have two meanings; one for a Christian audience and one meaning for the rest of us…they try to relate to two different groups of people at once.”  It’s almost as if nobody wants to let you be seen as anything else.  Why do you think that is and why do you think its so hard for you guys to break out of that mould when it’s something you did a while back when you stopped doing the tours with the Christian Rock music scene and then you kind of reconciled to that and you go back and forth between the two venues but why do you keep getting stuck with the Christian Rock label?

CHAD: I think, you know, even just the sentiment that there’s two types of people in the world, Christians and everyone else is like, pretty bigoted thought but you know, you’re going to encounter that type of thing; it’s not that uncommon.  I think the fortunate thing is that we live in a day and age that most people can find beauty and truth from someone who might not have the same beliefs or the same skin colour…the idea that those types of thoughts and ignorance still exists, you just roll with it.  You can’t let that stop what you’re doing.  Most of my friends don’t have the beliefs that I do and yet I still really believe in their music and they believe in my music so it becomes a matter that you’re going to encounter bigotry everywhere.  It’s the kind of thing that you can’t let it stop what you’re doing.

CONFRONT: But why though do you think that it’s been so tough, that this label, you know, you can’t shake it?

CHAD: Well we’re not trying to shake it I mean I think…the thing is like, umm…

CONFRONT: Well, who was it?”one of you guys has said that it’s your religion not your genre of music.

JON: The genre element can be…you just have to approach it like it is: it’s a label that’s designed to sell product.  So when you approach it like that, I’m honoured to be affiliated with a man who lived and died for the hungry and the homeless and the broken.  I think that’s an honour.

CONFRONT: Well I mean, it’s nothing to be ashamed of and certainly nothing to be kept in the closet.  But it’s like, it just seems that you just get stamped with it from some of the press I’ve read.

JON: You know, I mean, everyone’s going to get stamped something.  We’ve been called Surf Rock, we’ve been called, you know, whatever.  I think again all of those are just ways to put things in a box and package them and sell them.  It’s just a part of the Machine.  But the people that actually listen deeper, I think the people that?”we’ve always said that we make music for thinking people and that to me is Jewish, Agnostic, Christian, Buddhist, you know…and I feel that like all my friends would fall under that category whatever their faith.

CHAD: You can’t let one or two people that have their opinion on, you know…closemindedness is gonna exist everywhere.  You’re gonna encounter it.

CONFRONT: Well I’m getting the “wrap up” signal from the label rep ‘cause you guys are still on a clock of your own and you have a schedule of your own.

CHAD: Thanks for your time.

As I’ve found quite often on interviews that I’ve done for CONFRONT MAGAZINE, I wanted to keep talking with Chad and Jon, just because they were providing such astute insight into their world and their music.  But there’s no rest for the wicked and we both had other promises to keep that afternoon.

Next time Switchfoot are in town, though, I hope to sit down with them again.

Official Website: http://www.switchfoot.com/

MySpace Page: http://www.myspace.com/switchfoot