MUSIC QUOTES
“We really wanted go into this album [New Way to Be Human] making sure that there was hope throughout. That is certainly something that is lacking in our generation. To have hope on a deeper level is not only absent from music, but from the pop culture in general.”
(The goals for Switchfoot when first got together) “Our goals were pretty simple: to play songs that we believed in and enjoy the music along the way.”
“I’m actually hoping to use music as a vehicle to look for answers. None of the questions I’m asking are rhetorical. Like, for example, in the song ‘Vice Verses’ I’m asking, ‘Where’s God in earthquake and where’s God in the genocide?’ Those are real questions – the questions we ask in our songs are just as important as the answers we give.”
(On winning a Grammy) “It was fun! It was a blast. It reminded me that there is no greater reward than simply playing music for people that want to hear it. It might be hard to understand, but just doing what I do night after night, every night… to be able to sing songs with people that want to sing along with you and care passionately about these lyrics… that’s the reward for me. The Grammy is just icing on the cake.”
(On hiding single of Hello Hurricane) “That was just me trying to figure out a way to use technology for good rather than evil. I’ve always dreamed of ways to kind of make music more of a communal experience where we can all share it together. That felt like a good way to do it, where you get the single and you burn a copy of it yourself and go hide it somewhere else, and then somebody else finds that one. It was amazing because it started popping up all over the globe. Being able to send it to people via Twitter in all of these remote places all over the globe [was great]. People were [sending] it from Italy to South America to Australia and Japan to China, on trains and tops of mountains, the Eiffel Tower, and really creative places. It’s amazing to see music travel around the world that way.”
(Inspirations on the theme of Vice Verses) “For us collectively, we’ve been through a lot in the past six records, especially the last couple with Sony. [Around the times that] Nothing Is Sound and Oh! Gravity [came out] were terms of turmoil because the music industry was in a very tumultuous state. All of our friends at the label were getting fired on a weekly basis. It was just a really tough place to make music at that time, so we just cut ties and got off the label.
[We] built our own studio down in San Diego and decided, ‘Let’s figure it all out from scratch and fall back in love with rock and roll.’ And so we recorded 80+ songs in our studio, and that was the beginning of Hello Hurricane. There are tons of personal [aspects] for this kind of record, but we try to keep the personal stuff personal and the public stuff public. The public stuff is a little bit more driven by what we’ve been through together as a band. After Hello Hurricane, there was this record where we kind of found ourselves. I don’t think we could have made Vice Verses without making Hello Hurricane after having been through all of that together. Hello Hurricane kind of brought us through the storm. It comes from a place of strength, a place of knowing who we are, and not being afraid to say what we think.”
“Sometimes, the music says it better than the words do; the melody brings the tension and release into a dance rather than a struggle. This isn’t to say that music stops the pain. Rather, music contextualizes the pain within the larger human experience and thus brings a certain timeless meaning and depth to the temporary despair and hopelessness I feel.”
(On Dark Horses) “Yes, that’s right. I heard August 2nd is the day that is going to drop. That’s the rumor, and world on the street and that actually ties into Bro-Am and the Huffington post. I wrote a piece a while back on the Huffington Post about Dark Horses and underdogs, and I started thinking about it. And for me, the two underdogs are the people who didn’t chose their situation, but are rising above it and for me, that song the “Dark Horses” is all about the homeless kids back in San Diego – specifically the ones who are being helped out by StandUp For Kids. It’s always nice when you have a song you are passionate about singing night after night – that has a deeper meaning than simply another verse and another chorus.”
(Music vs. surfing) “You know the whole music thing is a cover up for my professional surfing career, which has not taken off like I thought it would. And until it shapes up I am just going to keep playing rock ‘n roll.”
“I think pretty much life in general is an amazing, fertile ground to start planning songs. Everything around us is pretty incredible.”
Fan: “Turn the mandolin up!”
Jon: “Turn the mandolin up? I like you already! I think that’s the first time mandolin has ever been used in a sentence before like that. That’s the first time that’s ever been used in a Switchfoot show. The ‘man’ dolin if you know what I’m saying.”
“There’s a time to be silent – to build up a reason to sing again.”
“I’m not good at writing ‘Christian songs’, as some folks might want to put them. They don’t come natural to me.”
“I stop writing when I don’t feel like I’ve got a place for them to go, when it feels like they are all kind of stacking on top of each other, I just stop. I think you are just kind of polluting yourself at that point. It’s like the obvious solution. Even when you’re a kid and you’re super lazy and you don’t want to clean your room, you know at some point, without your mom telling you, you’ve got to get in there and clean it. I think that your mind is like that to with whatever you are working on. You have to find a way to kind of unpack it and put it in it’s right place.”
“My songs are sometimes the most honest picture of where I’m at. Because I’m pretty much happy-go-lucky, easy-going guy. I love life, I love living, I love learning, and there’s always something that keeps me excited about it. But sometimes the songs are a way to vent the darker elements. That’s the problem. The most honest part of me is released for sale.”
“I think when your intentions are to become a big band, or make your face or your band famous, then there can be a point where you think ‘wait – why are we doing this?’ Because that’s a pretty ridiculous conquest to begin with. I think for us in the band, we were always big fans of the songs. Like even as a songwriter, for me, I feel like I kind of stand beside the songs and look at them from an outside perspective and think, ‘Man, this song really means a lot to me, I want other people to hear it.’ And so that was always the goal – to get the songs out there and I think that the question that we had to ask ourselves was ‘At what cost?’ Trying to figure out – balance. Cause there’s gotta be the give and take of, yes, certainly, we want everyone to hear these songs but we also wanna stay sane along the way.”
(On writing songs) “Usually there is this feeling, this sentimate that has to come out and sometimes it’s more articulated and sometimes it’s more nebulous. When it’s more articulated I think the lyrics comes first and when its something that you don’t even know yourself, it will come out in a melody first.”
“I think it’s amazing when you play somewhere for the first time and someone tells you that your song has meant something to them. You hear a bunch of people singing your song and you’ve never actually been to their country. That’s incredible.”
(On Dirty Second Hands) “It’s probably the strangest song we’ve ever made as a band and I’m really proud of it. It’s just a very unsettling song. I like playing that because of it.”
(On Oh! Gravity.) “[This album] actually came out pretty quick because we didn’t know we were recording it. We were just in the studio just having fun, working on something that we might put out as an EP or something like that, and then like 7 or 8 songs in we were kind of looking at the material and we thought ‘Wow this is really good. This is a record. This isn’t an EP.’ So it was kind of an album by accident.”
“A song for me is a chance to explore some sort of question that I have, it’s not a rhetorical question, it’s a question that I’m kind of struggling with I guess.”
“Awakening for me is that moment when you realize you’ve been asleep for a long time. You’ve been just waking up and going to work but you realize that you’re not really alive. Awakening is about waking up and actually living abundant life rather than just going through the motions.”
“I think I’m coming to the place, especially with the more recent stuff, where I’m just digging. All I do is dig. I equate it with archeology. An archaeologist just digs and on a good day comes across something that you didn’t actually create but something that was around long before you were. Maybe one day you discover this lost city. Those are the best songs. [The ones] that don’t have your fingerprints on them anywhere but are fingerprints of the Divine rather than your own little markings. So those are the good songs, and the bad ones are a little bit more confined to my own reality.
I think the other similarity you could draw would be with oysters and pearls. You have a piece of sand that gets in the oysters shell, and over time the oyster just keeps putting more and more material into the sand until it becomes a pearl. But the beauty was created by an irritant, and that’s what I feel like songs are. They’re just an attempt to come to terms with pain.”
(On duplicating the success of The Beautiful Letdown) “On the one hand, you never set out to achieve it, but on the other hand, you’re not trying for failure either. I think for us, our goals have always been a little bit more inline with things that can be measured outside of numerical success. So I think certainly in the back of your head, that record has helped put food on the table and certainly helped get all the rest of the songs we’ve written a bigger platform. I think to try and go back and duplicate that feels like I don’t know. Like I said before, you can’t go to the same well twice. You have to come to new places.”
(On the new record) “It’s good. Tim and I have just been writing. You know, it’s one of those things where you get to a point where you kind of want to shock yourself again. The reason why you started playing music in the first place is because it’s shocking, and it felt like you were somehow defying gravity or something like that. So you kind of want to find that place again. You can’t go to the same well. That’s all dry; you got to find a new place.”
It’s strange to write a song and have somebody else take it and put it to use for something else, but at the same time I feel like that’s kind of the beauty of art. We can take these things and use them as a feel for something other than maybe what their intended use was.”
(On where he gets the inspiration for his song writing) “Primarily it comes from friction in my own life, looking at the world around you and seeing things that don’t make sense. That’s usually where songs start for me, trying to make sense of the world. So a lot of the questions that we ask in our songs really aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re honest questions that you’re just asking yourself. Like so many of the songs, when you’re singing them night after night, [then] to have someone singing it back to you, is really indicting.”
A lot of our songs are just coming from very personal situations. And that’s the beauty of it. You can find a song anywhere. People say ‘How do you write on the road?’ and it’s like you can write where ever you are and that’s the beauty of it.”
(On writing songs) “I tend to think of it like a pearl, is basically an irritant inside the shell. It’s a piece of sand or something. And the way that the animal responds is by putting a substance around it that makes it smooth, and that’s the way a pearl is formed, and I feel like that’s the way a song is formed. for us. The irritant creates something beautiful. So it will start there, then we’ll call come together and put our own little spin on it and that’s the way the songs come out.”
“As the guy who writes the songs, I feel like these songs were given to us, that they’re not ours in a lot of ways. They’re gifts that we get to sing every night. It feels like it’s a real gift to be able to do it with everyone one. I don’t feel like it’s our thing at all. I feel like we are just a part of what’s already happening. That’s when it’s the best, when it doesn’t have our finger prints on it.”
“We just wanted to play music that was amazing. We just wanted to play music that represented the truths that we saw with God, with politics, with girls. These are issues that you can’t talk about with strangers. If I were to talk to you guys about a lot of things as perfect strangers, it’d be very uncomfortable. But in a song I can tell you things that no one else knows and you expect it. You want that.”
“Yeah, I mean I always am writing songs. It’s my favorite thing to do. It’s like a chipmunk! You kinda store them all up and eat them later!”
“This is sort of a sing-along song. A song you can sing around a campfire. If for some reason you smell something burning, it’s your imagination; at least I hope it is.”
“Somewhere back there the risk of playing live became a fuel to burn and our honesty became our strength.”
“Change is a risk, especially in our society, it’s a risk to put yourself right on the edge. But that’s what it takes. There are so many things that I want to see change in myself and on this planet. That’s what these song are about. The Beautiful Letdown is the idea that, sometimes, it takes the painful things in life to change us. When our world falls apart, and we have no more faces left to wear. That’s where these songs start.”
“This is a good old fashioned happy song about murder.”
(On the Legend of Chin) “These are the songs of a nineteen year old kid who has nothing to prove and nothing to lose.”
“There are different flavors of ice-cream and certain folks like certain flavors! A lot of times I’m really surprised by the critics. I don’t read them anymore because essentially it tells me what flavor of ice-cream they like more than it tells me anything about the product that we’ve made.”
“There’s nothing that anyone can tell me about our music that would be enough to gratify the reason why I made it. Like when you write a song and you play it, you want to hear time stand still or something ridiculous. So for me again, it has to be a purpose other than what people think.”
“I think ‘wonder’ is probably an element that would aptly describe our journey. It’s been something that we’ve never intended and from the beginning it’s always been about attempting to do right by the music with the responsibility that we’ve been given.”
“It can kill the art, worrying about how a record’s going to do. For us, success is making music that is gratifying to you. The break-even point for the record that my band made back in high school was selling 300 copies. To us, that was success.”
“A lot of these songs come from arguments – just the idea that when you are happy and everything is fine you don’t really feel like writing a song, you feel like hanging out with your friends or going for a surf. But when things go wrong it seems like, for me, that is a chance to right a song and explore where I am at.”
“The Setting Sun is about the argument on the inside.”
“If you’re going to make a record you’d better have something to say.”
(About NIS) “I think it’s the next step in the same journey. I see the same tree maybe, branching off in a different direction.”
“We didn’t think we’d be playing music this long. It was always like ‘we’ll finish college at UCSD then see what happens after that’. But it was the type of thing where music has become our life. It’s amazing, it’s an honor.”
“I have a hard time expressing feelings and the way I feel about the world sometimes. So the song becomes an outlet for me to talk about things that otherwise might be difficult. A lot of times it’s kind of like a diary or a journal. The significant days, like your birthday or new years for example, are days that you kind of dig deeper and you begin to question why you are here and another year has gone by and have you really made a difference in the world… those types of thoughts.”
“That’s always the goal… to be stepping forward with each record.”
“You just write where you are at. You write the song that is on your mind and then you get your collection of tunes then afterwards you listen to them and go ‘Wow! That one might actually fit on the radio’, but you CAN’T write for the radio.”
“With music you can go underneath language and communicate on a much deeper level. It’s like this underground river that allows you to communicate deeper once you get out a guitar.”
(Talking about how 40 of their songs have made it to TV and movies) “That’s what they tell us. I don’t get out much… I don’t watch much TV. So it’s the type of thing where your buddy calls up and he says, ‘Yeah I heard your song on Felicity!’ and you are like, ‘Bro! Bro! What were you doing watching Felicity?!’”
“A lot of these songs will be songs that I expect no one to relate to that I wrote at 3 o’clock in the morning trying to figure out my life. Couple of weeks later when I have the guts to play ‘em for Tim, or Chad, or Jerome it will be the type of thing where it’s-even though it’s intensely personal, it’s something that is universal. ”
“I think of myself as a farmer who waters, plants, and writes songs every day. None of the songs are my own, they just pop up and grow. And then I get to talk about them. Since they aren’t really mine to take credit for, I just say, ‘Aren’t they great? Look at them! A great crop this year!’”
“We’ve always tried to stay out of boxes. It’s almost like the zoo, where you want to take something out of its natural element, put it in a cage and label it. It takes the fangs out and pulls the claws off.”
(About Beautiful Letdown) “It’s not a dark album, but it talks about dark things that have happened to me.”
“A lot of things that we’re talking about in our songs are pretty much for everybody. Again, it’s trying to be outside of the box. It’s not trying to write the song that’ll make the whole world sing, but it’s an attempt to write a song that makes my own heart sing. Something that’s beautiful and true. And if that’s done well, then that’s gonna resonate with someone else. ”
“We’ve never defined ourselves by how many records we sold. It’s doing our job passionately that concerns us the most.”
“We’re more about the politics of the heart, the politics of the inside. Of course, everyone wants peace. But I think a lot of times, we overlook the fact that external peace can never happen until internal peace happens. And I think this album is more of searching after internal peace than it is searching for external peace.”
(Talking about Beautiful Letdown) “If this (CD) could be an alarm clock for the soul, that would be great. I know for me, many records have been that, (U2′s) ‘The Joshua Tree’ for example, something that strikes a chord much deeper than within your ears.”
“The attention isn’t a marker of who we are. Making music that’s honest is the most important thing. None of this other stuff matters.”
“It’s not because we play rock’n'roll that we have a responsibility. It’s just because you’re alive. Somebody is looking up to you and watching what you’re doing and what you’re singing about. Even if it’s 5 kids that came to a show, and no one else cares but those 5 kids, you better sing your heart out.”
“We’ve always tried to make it clear that our music is for everyone, and there are spiritual elements if you are looking for them, since passion has to come from somewhere. Our songs are coming from a very private, honest place. It doesn’t surprise me that people find spiritual meaning in our songs, because the meaning is there, but they’re not songs to fit within a box. They’re songs for humanity. They center on passion.”
(On the song 24) “I wrote this song near the end of my 24th year on this planet. Wherever we run, wherever the sun finds us when he rises, we remain stuck with ourselves. That can be overwhelming. Sometimes I feel like my soul is polluted with politicians, each with a different point of view. With all 24 of them in disagreement, each voice is yelling to be heard. And so I am divided against myself. I feel that I am a hypocrite until I am one, when all of the yelling inside of me dies down. I’ve heard that the truth will set you free. That’s what I’m living for: freedom of spirit. I find unity and peace in none of the diversions that this world offers. But I’ve seen glimpses of truth and that’s where I want to run.”
“I think I feel like more of a farmer, harvesting his crop for the album. Or maybe I’m an anthropologist digging up artifacts from my present tense. I feel like the songs are something outside of myself, as though I’m digging up these pieces of myself. Or maybe like I’m discovering new paintings as they are born not even as if I’m painting them myself. That’s probably much more sentimental than I usually get about writing songs but these songs do feel like my children.”
“‘The Beautiful Letdown’ is about real life: the good, the bad, and the ugly, It’s an honest attempt to reflect on the great and terrible aspects of being human, the tension of existence. A lot of people run away from this tension because the problems in our world are too hard to face. But the tension of being human is where we live and think and breathe. In fact, the very lowest moments in our lives are when we stand toe to toe with the truth about ourselves and our world.”
(On Meant to Live) “I look at our planet and I see a horrible, beautiful world… where love and hate breathe the same air. This is where we wake up everyday; this is where we live. Maybe the kid in the song is me, hoping that I’m bent for more than arguments and failed attempts to fly. Something deep inside of me yearns for the beautiful, the true. I want more than what I’ve been sold; I want to live life.”
“No, I don’t write songs for the people that are in the cool club or the self-righteous club. This music is for the recovering failures who know they need a savior”
“Music holds her cards close to her chest.”
“In this industry, cheap popularity and sales can often cover for validity, and yet when they’re seen as what they are it’s a lot less gratifying, so for us in spite of great or bad record sales, the goal has been to put one chord in front of the other.”
“I feel that’s where our songs start, they start with a broken heart looking for truth and beauty.”
“Basically the idea is we’ve always attempted to make music for thinking people, and those exist all over. Apparently at times within churches as well! So certainly we play for them as well. But I think to be affiliated with the name of Christ is certainly an honor and that’s not something to downplay at all. But at the same time, any sort of label that’s designed for commercial use tends to lessen the artistic intention that you have going into the music.”
“These songs have been given to us and we’re attempting to put them in the right place. It just so happens that the right place for these songs is for everyone, you know? It’s never been a really well thought out thing. The whole thing started with a lot of songs that I wrote when I was 18/19. The goal was just to see who wants to hear these songs. Let’s travel around the world and play! Then the next 10 years rolled by and you’ve got six records and you’ve been traveling the world for most of your adult life. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other and trying to do right, for your faith and for yourself and for the music.”
“I think there’s definitely a spiritual element to the songs and the best songs are the ones that don’t have my fingerprints on them. I’ve recently been equating songwriting with archaeology, where you’re just digging. Every day you wake up and you dig. Some days you discover the city that’s buried beneath the ground and it’s beautiful, amazing base and the castle wall and skeletons of this and that. And then other days you just get dirt. I think for me, I have a very objective perspective on these songs. Where I can look and them and say, wow that’s amazing how that happened! I don’t feel like I’m wrapped up in it. I feel like they’re outside of me. I feel like almost the goal for the concert is to crawl inside the song and roll around in it. Rather than to try and be bigger than life it’s actually to be smaller and allow the song to speak bigger. I don’t know; it’s hard to explain. But the idea is that I need to decrease to be able to sing these songs. I’ve always taken the approach with music that the person listening is a co-conspirator in the process. So I’ve got a great deal of respect for the people that listen to our music and take things from these songs that have been given to us. Because I feel like we take from them as well.
An example of a song that has a bit of me in it but doesn’t really have my fingerprints on it is ‘Faust, Midas And Myself’. That was one of those songs that 10 minutes later it was written. It’s not a song that I would sit down and write but it wrote itself. It’s like, with the archaeology theme; you’re just digging and you dig this thing up. I hear what you’re saying about copping out and letting all songs mean everything but there’s a certain sense that from a songwriting perspective, you want the other person to have to meet you halfway and think a little bit. Actually dive in and think: Maybe it’s a metaphor? Maybe there could be this? When I was a kid I’d write a song and play it and my mom would say, ‘What is that about?’ And I would always say, ‘Well what do you think?’ And then, ‘Sure I’ve got my meaning and I’ll tell you that afterwards.’”
“When you write a song you’re not attempting to write a song, you’re attempting to explode the Atomic Bomb. You’re attempting to make people float and cry and explode and disappear. You don’t write a song to write a song, you want to change the world. And yet every song comes out and it’s just a song. And I guess that’s what keeps you coming back.”
“If you rob the song of its metaphor and tear the fangs and the claws off it and put it in the zoo and explain it: ‘That’s a lion. That’s what it is!’ it tears the very essence of what the song is supposed to be when it’s out in the wild – unexplained. I feel like the mystery that surrounds us is something that is many times lost by the modern mind. The idea that, we want to explain it. We want to put it in our back pocket. Fold it up and bring it out and show it to friends on our command. It’s something that we do to our detriment with our faith as well. I don’t believe in a God that I can put in my back pocket. So in the same way I don’t want songs that I can just use on demand. For me music is something that goes much deeper than that.”
“I think it’s more of a Socratic dialogue really, where you are attempting to ask questions. I mean for me, it’s not this play-acting where I’m asking questions that are leading, that I know the answer to. I’m REALLY asking questions that I don’t know the answers to. That’s what inspires a song for me more often than not – the question rather than the answer. So if there’s complaints of, I guess a nebulous song, maybe it’s because these are nebulous areas of my own life? Issues that are unresolved. I think for me those are the strongest songs on any record.”
“Writing a song, that’s half of it. The listener’s got the burden to make sense of it.”
“I think ‘Nothing Is Sound’ is a lot better record than ‘The Beautiful Letdown’. To use a different metaphor, as a comedian, if you think the joke is funny you tell it. It doesn’t mean that everyone is going to laugh, you know? It’s not good to explain the joke. It’s good to just move on. I think a lot of people didn’t understand ‘Nothing Is Sound’.”
“I think as a musician there are two things that you are accomplishing when you write a song. The first is within yourself where you’re fighting your own demons. You’re accomplishing something that’s within you. You’re trying to create. You’re following in the footsteps of the Creator essentially for purposes between you and Him and within. That’s the first purpose of the creation. Then the second would be the idea that you’re actually communicating with others, because you’re not playing the songs in the bedroom. You’re actually recording them and distributing them around the world. That second goal is something that’s a little bit more nebulous however because it’s something that you don’t have complete control over. You can make the best CD of your life but people might not understand it. So it’s one of those things where at some point you have to just let it fly and if people understand it then that’s great. But if they don’t then you can’t put that on yourself. I try to keep those two elements of creation separate.”
“I usually I find that a quieter place can be conducive for finishing a song, maybe not starting a song. Inspiration can strike anywhere.”
“To write a song, you have to have two voices actively inside your head. One voice is the dreamer, the imaginative guy who thinks everything is worth writing a song about, everything is note-worthy and everything is a chorus. And it’s almost a critic on the other side who says, ‘Actually that’s not worth writing a song.’ Both of these voices speaking actively into the song create something that still has the dream alive in it and it’s grounded to Earth. It’s not just floating away.”
“By the end of the night, I hope to make the difference between the stage and the crowd dissipate. I want to make us one body singing one song, everything breathing it in together. Suddenly the differences between us become less and the similarities become greater.”
“There is one thing about the live show that’s unique, something we’ve never talked about. I feel like for this particular record, there’s an intentionality behind these songs that has a hope that might have been a little harder to find than the last few records. Maybe hope is something you don’t have yet, maybe hope is something you’re struggling to attain. I’m really thankful that that’s present in this record.”
BAND QUOTES
(On the books he’s read, and the inspirations he’s had that shape the band it is now) “Oh, man. Victor Frinkle a holocaust survivor wrote Man’s Search For Meaning. Another book that directly tied into that song we had out on Hello Hurricane, The Sound was written by John M Perkins a civil rights leader here in the states and it was uh, just his memoirs. It’s amazing for me that I can now call him a friend. He has some amazing books out, that are definitely more challenging.”
“The humor hero of our band would probably be Drew Shirley.”
(On Drew) “He talks like a wrestler!”
“We’ve been really good friends with Jamie (To Write Love On Her Arms) and were actually there the night he got his first shirts printed. So we’ve known him for a long time and really support what he’s been doing. We’ve been talking about it for a long time, and it finally made sense for both of us to go out on the road together. It’s kind of a dream come true.”
“Friends, this is Chad Butler. He plays the drums. Any man who hits things for a living is a happy man.”
(On what he loves the most about Switchfoot) “Tim, Chad, Jerome, Drew, and our family on the road.”
(On Switchfoot) “We’re like brothers of different mothers. We’re best buds.”
“[Drew] is my publicist which is cool.”
“[Drew] is the hip-hop-opotamus. [Chad] is the rhym-noceros.”
“My brother is going to say something.”
(On Chad) “True brilliance and he sits behind the drums and doesn’t say anything all day.”
“Chad’s probably the wisest one among us.”
“Remember I’m the one that smells like onions, not Jerome.”
(Introducing the band at a concert) “Jerome Fontamillas over here can play many instruments. But do not confuse him with Prince. He cannot shoot purple lasers out of his guitar.”
“And this is my brother, Tim. Tim, do you have anything smart and sassy you want to say to the people?”
“And on the drums, tonight and tonight only, ladies and gentleman, Mr. Rogers!”
“You ready for this one, Timo?”
“I LOVE YOU CHAD BUTLER!”
“It’s about change, about being Switchfoot.”
(On the name of the band) “It was going to be ‘Switchfoot 182′ if ‘Switchfoot’ was taken.”
(On being brothers with Tim) “Jon: We’re getting a divorce. We’re not going to be brothers any more. Actually, Drew and I are going to be brothers from now on.”
Drew: “Cool… I’m getting adopted!”
Jon: “So it’s pretty cool.”
Tim: “I… I didn’t hear about this!”
Jon: “Well I… I didn’t want to tell you… it’s hard.” *slaps Tim’s knee* “No it’s good! You know we’re good friends and we’ve been through a lot together. We have our ups and downs…” *pauses* “It sounds like a marriage again.”
“We are the type of band that we do everything ourselves. We kind of grew up around bands that did everything themselves. So that was kind of the only thing we knew. I think we are very hard working and passionate.”
“I feel like every band needs to come up slowly, play all the small clubs, get their fair share of flat tires. We didn’t even know what we were doing back in the day. Our first record came out a few days after Tim graduated from high school.”
“It seems like most of my favorite bands are the ones that I hear about from friends: They tell me, ‘Oh, you gotta check out this band.’ And I guess that’s what we want to be, the type of band that your friends tell you about, not that somebody shoves down your throat. So that’s the goal — to just keep working at it, and spread slowly.”
“My name is Jon Foreman; I play the guitar and sing and write songs and shop for groceries.”
“Drew and I share a lot of things: guitars, toothbrushes. Well, not toothbrushes. Maybe toothpaste…”
“I fulfill the singing/guitar/broken strings part of the band. I’m the missing passport guy… Yeah, that’s my main role, really.”
“No, we are not punk!”
Interviewer: “How do you guys stay grounded?”
Jon: “Well, thank you for saying that we’re grounded! I guess a big part of it is the fact that we grew up together. We have always been close, and hopefully when we’re 85, we’ll still be having barbecues and hanging out, and talking about the time we did that thing on LAUNCH or whatever. But we started as three guys who loved music; we loved to surf and hang out together, and we’d just talk about music and talk about what’s going on. And then when we joined up, it was kind of a natural progression. That closeness kind of keeps us from going off the rocker too far, because you’re tight enough to slap somebody in the face and say, ‘What are you doing?’ And we all need that sometimes — me, too. Especially me!”
“Seven years ago we decided that the world didn’t need any more rock bands: we wanted to change the world. We are the same men attempting to sing that same song, still longing for a home that I will never find in this life. Be patient or otherwise: I know of only one who can lead me on.”
“[Tim] jumped over my freaking head. We have it on video for you skeptics out there. And yes, he pulled it: Two broken legs later!”
“I am directly connected to Switchfoot. In fact Tim (the bass player), is my brother.”
“I think we’ve always been probably, almost to a fault, a little too outspoken about things. If anything that’s what we’ve gotten flak for.”
“It feels like the best time to be in Switchfoot because we’ve got all the freedom in the world.”
(On parting with Columbia) “Yeah, I mean neither party has any hard feelings. I think for us, the reason why we signed with Columbia was because of the people that were there. So it’s very understandable when all those people are gone, you don’t hold any real bad feelings or good feelings towards a company name. I think that’s part of the problem with the corporate entity as a whole is that there’s no true responsibility.
I think for us as a band, we just see it as there’s a time and a season for everything, and right now it was the right season for us to begin doing things on our own again with the solo EPs and with the SeanJon thing. You know, touring is even affected by what label you’re on. We had disagreements about the way things should be run, so we parted on amicable terms and it was a mutual thing. I think it’s the best thing that could have happened for us; to be able to kind of turn over a new leaf.
A couple years ago, I don’t think it would have been the right move for us at all, but to be in a place where we are now, we don’t have to play that game anymore. We’re able to think like, ‘Let’s do a tour in the South Pacific. Let’s do a tour in Europe. Let’s do a tour in the States.’ It becomes very simple. We want to put out a record. That’s great. OK, put it out. There’s no over-thinking. There’s not 500 cooks in the kitchen, you know? I feel like we are at a place now where we understand more than ever what we want to do with our music, and it feels like the right place to be.”
BRO-AM/SPARE SOME CHANGE/HOMELESS YOUTHS QUOTES
(StandUp, how Bro-Am originated) “The Bro-Am has been going on for seven years. Every year we raise money for homeless kids with different organizations. The last few years we’ve done it with StandUp For Kids. StandUp is amazing. I’ve known the lady that runs the Oceanside chapter for a while. The kids are so inspiring when you see what they’ve been through and how confident [they are] in their refusal to succumb to the troubles that they’ve been through. Their determination… all of these things are so inspiring for me. We want to let them know that their struggle is not in vein and that they’re not alone.
The Bro-Am started because when we were living back in Irvine, we were thinking, ‘Music is starting to get us out of a lot of trouble. These communities really gave to us, and it would be amazing to be able to give back. Let’s do a surf contest and a concert right on the beach to benefit these kids.’ It’s been going ever since. It’s absolutely my favorite day of the year.
We’re trying to bring it out on the road as best we can on this tour. We’re collecting backpacks for homeless kids in all the towns that we visit. So bring a backpack! It’s going to go to a very deserving individual.”
(About the homeless kids and youths) “Misconceptions that I often find is the idea that ‘oh, it’s their fault, they’re choosing this life-style’ – and that is something that is dead wrong. There’s so many ways you can do to help without ever leaving the country.”
(Chatting about the 7th annual Bro-Am) “Bro-Am was last week, but it doesn’t feel like it. You gear up for it all year and it’s an amazing feeling to be on the other side and this year I think we rose close to 130k for StandUp For Kids. For me those kids are amazing, they are fighting for it, and if there is anything we can do to help them out in their struggle, is a good thing.”
“Every year, the thing I’m most proud of is the Bro-Am. It’s this silly little surf contest that we hold every year that raises money for kids in San Diego. It brings my hometown together. I think we do a lot of things for other people around the world that I’m a big believer of. A lot of times as Americans we’re drawn to go to Africa, to go the Philippines, and that’s certainly a big part of something that’s needed. We’ve been given a lot, so let’s give back to the rest of the world. But I think when you see it in your own backyard, it’s that much more important.”
(Talking about Bro-Am) “I just want to let you know. This isn’t about us; it’s about you guys. It’s about doing things as a community. Thanks for helping us make it happen.”