"We have the best jobs in the world because we play music for a living and love doing it, but we didn't get into this to try and sell something. For us, it's about communicating and connecting with people on a different level."
That stance earned the Switchfoot vocalist/guitarist and his bandmates (brother/bassist Tim Foreman,
keyboardist Jerome Fontamillas and drummer Chad Butler) an invitation to attend a Nashville summit for DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade for Africa), the charity organization founded by
U2's main man Bono to promote AIDS awareness and debt relief for developing nations.
"It was incredible," says Foreman, who's worked with Sudanese refugees in the band's hometown of San Diego. "Here's a guy who has all the money, fame and notoriety that anyone could ever want, and he's passionately talking to us about a bunch of poor people in Africa who will never buy his records. Listening to him speak was definitely a life-changing experience."
When the meeting ended, Foreman walked over and handed the
U2 frontman $40. "I told him I owed it to him for sneaking into a
U2 show in London a couple of years ago," he says. "He laughed and told me he did the same thing when he was younger. We spoke for a while and then he gave the money back, saying he felt he had already been compensated. To be honest, I was relieved because it was my last $40 and I needed the money to get home."
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As for his involvement with DATA and its cause, Foreman says, "I talk about it quite a bit in interviews and from the stage, but I'm careful not to be annoying about it. We've never really been a political band. Our songs are more about the politics of the heart than they are about foreign politics. I don't think we can solve the outside problems until we solve the ones within."
On the Columbia/RED Ink debut "Beautiful
Letdown," Foreman opens up with self-revelatory songs about hope, love, faith and the desire to be more than what he's been sold. In spacious settings, the singer connects with subtle emotional power, surveying a landscape of mediocrity in "More Than Fine," digging for painful truths in title track "Beautiful Letdown" and stepping on a distortion pedal to scream about the dissonance of the modern age in "Ammunition." On lead single "Meant To Live," inspired by TS Elliot's "The Hollow Men," he strives to survive in a world where love and hate breathe the same air.
Produced by John Fields (Andrew W.K.) and mixed by Chris Lord-Alge (Goo Goo Dolls,
Michelle Branch), Tom Lord-Alge (blink-182,
The Rolling Stones) and Jack Joseph Puig (John Mayer,
No Doubt), "Beautiful
Letdown" entered the Billboard Top 200 at #85. The album, which The Orange County Register described as "…a rousing rock testament of hope, dreams and inspiration," can attribute its early success to lead single, "Meant To Live," which hit the Top 40 on the Modern Rock Chart (its companion video, directed by Laurent Briet (Radiohead), subsequently went into rotation on MTV2).
"Beautiful
Letdown" came three years after Switchfoot's third independently-released and critically acclaimed album "Learning to Breathe." In between the two discs, the band won the 2001 ASCAP San Diego Music Award for "Best Pop Album" and "Best Pop Artist," won the 2002 ASCAP San Diego Music Award for "Best Adult Alternative and contributed five songs to the gold-certified soundtrack for the
Mandy Moore film ,"A Walk To Remember" (including a duet with Foreman and Moore). "We were at the movie premiere," recalls Foreman, "and David Hasselhoff was sitting behind us bawling his eyes out with his daughter. It was a bit surreal."
More than 40 Switchfoot songs have been used for several nationally televised shows, including "Dawson's Creek" (five songs), "Regis
and Kelly," "Felicity," and many more. "The context in which the songs are used can be pretty funny," says Foreman. "I remember writing a song about spiritual longing and then seeing it played back during a hot tub scene on some show. The songs can wind up very far from the edge of the bed where they were originally written."
Switchfoot's roots can be traced back to the beaches of San Diego in the mid-'90s, when the Foremans and Butler
connected as surfers (Fontamillas joined in September of 2000). Though they competed in national surf championships on weekends and earned product endorsements from equipment companies, the real bond came from a common love of music. They decided to form a band, chose the name Switchfoot (a surfing term), put themselves through months of sweaty garage band workouts, and then hit the road.
After just 20 gigs, they signed with re: Think records and released "Legend of Chin" in 1997. They've averaged 150 shows a year ever since, while selling more than 400,000 copies of their first three albums ("Legend of Chin," "New Way to Be Human" and "Learning to Breathe") by 2004. Shortly after recording "Beautiful
Letdown," Switchfoot signed with Columbia.
In 2017, Switchfoot joined forces
with the fellow rock band Lifehouse, to help raise funds for Hurricane Harvey
victims through their song, "Shine Like Gold".
In September 2022 the band announced
their first Christmas album, "This Is Our Christmas Album". The album was
released on November 4, 2022. In May 2023, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of
their album, The Beautiful Letdown, the band released The Beautiful Letdown (Our
Version) and went on a subsequent tour playing the entire album live.
Switchfoot's musical
influences include U2, The Beatles,
James Taylor,
Bob Dylan, Phil Keaggy,
Dave Matthews
Band, the Brand New Heavies,
Stevie Wonder and
Dave Grohl. "We've
never fit in any of the genre boxes," says Jon Foreman. "I think that diversity
is our strength".
