“It created quite the jungle gym for Foreman to meander around in during the show.”

Lisa here with a few updates for you guys! Let’s get started with some Bro-Am news:

With Bro-Am right around the corner, a lot of you must be trying to organize your trips, lodging and transportation to the different events. Well, Switchfoot and Ride Joy have partnered up to give you an opportunity to share rides to and from the event with others.
Click HERE for more info.


Speaking of Bro-Am, if you’re going for the week’s events, and are attending their show at the SD Fair and you’d like to help out with merch, please see the previous update that I posted. Click HERE for more details.




NEW SHOW ALERT!

Switchfoot will be playing at the 106.5 The End’s Weenie Roast in Charlotte, NC! They’re still in the middle of announcing the lineup, but here are the deets so far:
What: 106.5 The End’s Weenie Roast 2012
Where: Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, Charlotte, NC
When: September 16, 2012
Tickets: TBA




South African fans! Looks like the Capetown venue has changed. Here’s a statement from the Switchfoot South Africa Tour Facebook Page:

VENUE CHANGE FOR CAPE TOWN:

Switchfoot will now be performing at The Grand Arena, GrandWest for the Cape Town leg of their Tour.

Existing ticket holders: Once tickets go live for this venue (approx. 48hrs.) Please visit your nearest Computicket outlet to exchange your ticket.

Patrons wanting to purchase for this show, bookings will become available shortly (approx. 48hrs) on Computicket.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

We finally got the Philly show setlist, courtesy of Jessica:

Philly show setlist:
(this might not be the perfect order…I tried my best!)

Afterlife
Stars
Sabotage
This is your Life
The War Inside
Mess of Me
Dark Horses
Hello Hurricane
Your Love is a Song
Meant to Live
and there was one more cover but i cannot for the life of me remember what it was!

As always, they were awesome. Jon had lots of room to run around and climb things. There were lots of awesome signs floating around which was super cool. It was strange to be at a FREE Switchfoot show, but they were completely fantastic as always and were definitely their energetic selves. That’s about all I got for you. It was pretty awesome. I’ll send you guys a picture of jon standing on top of a giant speaker. Since i am small, it was hard for me to take pictures of the guys this time around but once Jon got up there I got a perfect shot!
Thanks for sharing, Jess!

Here are a few more recaps of the Living Social event last week in D.C. We Love DC posted a review and short interview with Drew and Chad that they held following the show:

We Love Music: Switchfoot at 918 F Street

If I had the ability to create an award for the “Best Hidden Treasure Venue in D.C. to See Live Music” then it’d have to go to Living Social‘s 918 F Street. It combines the intimacy of a speakeasy with crystal clear acoustics to make way for one of the most creative spaces for live music in town. An intimate crowd of 200 fans opted-in to a Living Social deal featuring an exclusive Switchfoot acoustic performance from the Grammy Award winning band on Friday June 1 complete with a post-concert meet and greet option for a higher ticket price to a limited amount of fans.

Frontman Jon Foreman and his fellow bandmates made it a point throughout the night to emphasize the fact that the evening’s performance special. It was apparently a throwback to their earlier days back when Foreman, his brother/bassist Tim, and drummer Chad Butler were a three-piece band playing fraternity parties. While the show wasn’t quite a frat party, it did have a laid back feel. It might’ve been the fact that Switchfoot calls San Diego, Ca. home. It also could’ve been a direct result of the room’s floor plan. I’ll venture to guess it’s somewhere in between the two.

The double-level space had enough of a ledge to support five band members, their gear, a sound system, and sound engineers. That ledge was surrounded in a U shape by a railing space for patrons to stand. In the empty space inside the railing is open air with a view from the basement bar up to the stage ledge. It created quite the jungle gym for Foreman to meander around in during the show. Fans loved it. He looked like he loved it too. It essentially enabled an all-night-long fan love fest.

Fans were treated to shenanigans and witty banter. Some even joined in on the bits. A fan tossed Foreman his own cowboy hat across the open air space above the basement bar. Foreman then proceeded it wear it for a full song performance before giving it back. There was also a question and answer style break between songs that the band answered on the spot. All questions were gathered before showtime by Living Social and then issued directly to Switchfoot for on-stage bantering purposes. It was a nice touch and a hell of a lot easier than having fans raise their hands mid-show and trying to yell over a crowd of people.

Switchfoot seemed pretty content to show their fans the love right back. The band, whose three original members have been together formally in some capacity since 1996, has seen a stint of career longevity that others have not. The key to the group’s ability to create, rinse, and repeat is their songwriting. The process may start with Foreman but Switchfoot weighs in pretty much every step of the way.

Guitar player Drew Shirley, who joined Switchfoot during the making of their fifth album “Nothing is Sound” in 2005, and Butler joined We Love DC after the show to talk songwriting and their experience on stage at 918 F Street. Here’s what they had to say.

Rachel: What does it mean to you to play a show like this in an intimate venue? It was mentioned on stage multiple times that the night was “something special.” What does it mean to you to play a place like 918 F Street?

Chad Butler: We love playing the big shows with the lights and huge guitar amps cranked up to eleven but there’s something great about an intimate venue where you can interact with the audience. And that’s what it’s all about, that kind of two-way dialogue that you’re having, because that’s what we’re really after each night.

Sometimes in a big situation you get it when the crowd starts singing back louder than the band but that’s a rare situation. And tonight, this was really unique. This was stripped down, totally acoustic, didn’t even really follow a set list. It was people calling out songs, and you know what, the great thing about being in DC is that people love music and they genuinely care about what’s going on here [tonight]. So it’s not, you know, half disinterested people in the back. Everybody was engaged.

Drew Shirley: One of the greatest things in the world is when someone takes a song of yours and makes it their own. This was filled with a room of people that was doing that [tonight] in a way that we don’t usually get to see as a band. We’re not usually that close to where people are talking, shouting out, we’re responding and just answering questions talking to them.

So a lot of things happened tonight that were CRAZY and one-of-a-kind and very unique and things that we’ll remember as memories forever.

C: When our keyboard player (Jerome Fontamillas, who joined the band for their fourth album “The Beautiful Letdown” in 2003) got a dare to play drums and jumped up and actually did it, I was impressed cuz that doesn’t happen. I don’t know if it would’ve been the reverse role if I had gotten over and played keyboards. It was a good moment.

R: You guys have been around for awhile now. How would you speak to the longevity of the band?

C: We’ve had incredible support from people that connect with the songs and we find that the most personal songs have become the most universal. We try to make honest music. We try to talk about things that matter to us and sing songs that we want to sing night after night. For us, I think, music has always been a vehicle to explore the world and you know when someone relates to a song halfway around the world and feels like they can get something out of it, it might be different than what we understand the song to mean, but that’s the beauty of music is it’s pulling this really diverse crowd of people together to sing the same song.

R: When you guys are all songwriting together, what do you think makes the band such a cohesive unit? Your biggest strength as a band besides the live show, to me, has always been songwriting. How does Switchfoot work together to achieve something like that, a machine that continues to churn the material out?

D: It can be grueling or can be quick. A lot of times Jon will write a song on acoustic guitar and, first of all, that can come quick or be ages and ages where it’s changing and then finally ended upon, but he likens it to archeology where you’re digging and you’re not exactly sure what’s down there if you hit something and sometimes you have to dig a lot to get it out and you realize there it was all along.

We all kind of throw in our ideas and may the best idea stand. We just kind of all chip in on every kind of idea and it’s really sort of a mysterious process because sometimes it happens really fast and sometimes it happens slow and I wish I could figure out exactly how but that’s the beauty of it. You don’t know. Some songs will stick around for three records and then finally make it on the fourth, you know?

C: We want to play songs that we all believe in and we connect with on an emotional level and a spiritual level. If it moves us hopefully it will move other people.

Source: We Love D.C




The Washingtonian also posted a review of the Living Social show:

Switchfoot Rocks Out at LivingSocial’s Event Space
The Christian-ish band performed an intimate concert for superfans Friday.
By Erin Keane

Friday night found LivingSocial’s new venue at 918 F Street bumping with the sounds of Christian rock band Switchfoot. Fans could purchase tickets to the intimate concert on the website of the popular purveyor of experiences, where a VIP pass to meet the band and receive a signed copy of their latest album, Vice Verses, went for $75.

Jerome Fontamillas, the keyboardist for the band that came to fame in the early aughts with hits such as “Meant to Live” and “Dare You to Move,” remarked that the performance was one of their more intimate, allowing Switchfoot to truly connect with their fans.

The vibe at the show was similar to standing in the first three rows of any concert, rubbing shoulders with the die-hards feeding off one another’s energy. Fans ranging in age from teenage to fifties sang along to “Hello Hurricane” and “Learning to Breathe” at the top of their lungs and ate up the “Storytellers”-esque banter between songs.

The band members seemed to be having just as good a time. Frontman Jon Foreman carefully balanced on the beams of a cutout mezzanine to interact with concert-goers in the bar below, and Fontamillas traded spaces with drummer Chad Butler to cover “Lucky Man” by another early-aughts favorite, the Verve.

The scene at the meet-and-greet after the show was equally energetic, proving that the band’s multifaceted image—rockers, surfers, Christians—pays off by providing broad appeal.

“One song may not mean anything to a fan, but there is another song that means a lot to them,” Fontamillas said. “Our music is for everyone; we don’t try to put up any walls.”

Source: The Washingtonian




We also have some photos from the event for you guys, sent in by Tracy:

Credit: Tracy

Credit: Tracy

Credit: Tracy

Credit: Tracy

Credit: Tracy

Click HERE for Tracy’s full set!

Related show

• Artist: Switchfoot
• Date: Sunday, September 16th 2012
• City: Switchfoot in Charlotte, NC
• Venue: Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre Charlotte – 106.5 The End of Summer Weenie Roast
• Address: 707 Pavilion Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28262
• Venue phone: 704-549-5555
• Country: United States
• Notes: Weenie Roast 2012
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