Yes, it's all over. The first Fiction Family tour has finally ended, and it's bittersweet indeed. Anytime a tour ends, it's always a sad occasion, but the excitement of what's ahead for us is incredible. Swichfoot's new record is on the way!
Here's an end-of-tour blog entry from Jon Foreman, to sort of put some closure on it all:
The end of the best tours are always bittersweet... You are excited to sleep at home, excited to see old friends, and not as excited to leave behind the tunes and the times out on the open highway.
the whole west coast was a blast.
a summery: of cities and food
-Seattle: an amazing day - I had scallop chowder down by the water and burnt my tongue.
-Portland: ate at mothers.
-San Francisco: last show with Aaron, I ate some sweet cuban food downtown with Tyler and Sara.
-San Diego: ate at the venue and got a chance to see some old friends. Keith sat in and played with us on both the California Keith, man. Good dude. Also, Don Heffington sat in with us for the last two show. What a guy! who's he played with you ask? oh, Bob Dylan. That's right. After our set we went up to catch Aaron playing with the Greyboy Allstars. yes. a great night of music.
-LA: ate noodles next to the venue. Benmont Tench sat in on a lot of the tunes. Love that guy.
And so, all good things come to an end. I'm off to latin america. Sean's off to working on WPA. Maybe put another record out in the next five years...
to be continued...
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Here's a pretty awesome interview with Sean Watkins.
In most of the articles I've read about Fiction Family, it says that you met Jon Foreman backstage during a music festival in San Diego. However, a couple writers have said that you met in high school. Do you guys really go that far back?
The high school thing is misinformation. But yeah, we met during a music festival in San Diego. After we met, we talked about collaborating since we live close to each other. We didn't follow up for a while just because we were each so busy, but then we ran into each other at a coffee shop, made some plans and this time we followed through with it.
Getting into the new album a bit, I love the crazy sounds at the end of "Please Don't Call It Love" and there seems to be a bit of it at the end of "We Ride" as well. What did you use for that? It reminded me of that frequency gadget that's on top of the Largo piano.
Yeah, I guess it does kinda sound like that. Well, the end of "Please Don't Call It Love" is just me in my garage with my pump organ and electric guitar with a spring reverb and bass. And then the end of "We Ride" is sort of a box that has filters and echoes—you just twist knobs and it makes it sound dismantled. All those sounds are from the recording, though, so nothing's synthesized. It's just taking sounds from the actual track and twisting them around.
In one of the songs it sounded like you're playing a sitar, and I couldn't figure out if it was an actual sitar or if you were just taking a guitar and doing some crazy stuff to it.
That's on "Throw It Away," and it's actually just a crazy buzz that happened that made it sound like a sitar, but it's not.
You've performed "Not Sure" a number of times at Largo over the last year or two. What made it such a perfect fit for this album rather than one of your solo projects?
It just came around at the right time. I played it for Jon and he really liked it. Usually this kind of thing just ends up being whatever songs you're working on at the time.
You've mentioned in previous interviews that in writing the songs for this album, you'd each start a song, then send it to the other for input. What did Jon's input add to your music, and what do you think you brought to his?
Well, we have a lot in common when it comes to the music we listen to, but there's also a lot that we're individually into that the other's not aware of, and so some ideas came out of that. Somebody else is always going to do something to the song that you wouldn't have ever thought to do. That's the beauty of a collaboration.
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In Charts news, Fiction Family held on in two chart positions on Billboard:
Top Independent Albums
21
Billboard 200
183
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Now, moving on a bit, Molly Jenson is re-releasing one of her albums, and new to it is a song she wrote with Jon called, "Do You Only Love the Ones Who Look Like You?" Studio Subversion, the same publication that did an interview with Fiction Family a month or so ago, interviewed Molly and we have an excerpt here:
SSv: So you have a duet with Jon Foreman on this record.
Molly: Yes, it’s called “Do You Only Love the Ones Who Look Like You?”
SSv: How did this happen?
Molly: Well, I knew Jon and all the Switchfoot guys, and I was just…like my record came out and like at the very beginning of my record when I started working on songs, I would send a couple to Jon just to get his feedback. You know, he always gave great feedback and once the record was done and I was playing shows, I think once he realized I was serious about what I was doing and that I wasn’t just some other girl picking up her guitar and that I was actually serious about it, and once he heard it and we have a lot of mutual friends and so hearing them talk about it and him going to my shows, he just texted me one day. I remember exactly where I was. I was driving and he texted me and he said, ‘Hey, let’s write sometime.’
And I texted him back and I was like, ‘Okay. Whatever.’ I just didn’t really believe him because, you know, it’s Jon Foreman. I’ve been a fan of Switchfoot for a very long time and I’ve known those guys from the very, very beginning and then I worked for them for a bit. And then we became friends, so it was just like, ‘Oh, you’re kind of up higher than I am,’ you know? Like on a pedestal.
SSv: Yeah.
Molly: So then he texted me again or called me or something like a week later and he was like, ‘Seriously. When are we going to write? I really want to write with you.’ And so I said, ‘Okay. Don’t tease me because I’m getting my hopes up. Okay. Let’s get together.’ So we got together and we decided that we’d both come in with ideas of songs. I had started working on a song the night before and then I got to his house and he’s like, ‘Well what do you want to do? Do you want to do one of my songs? Do you want to do one of yours?’ And I said, ‘Well let me play something for you I just started working on.’
So I played it for him and he was like ‘That’s perfect! Let’s work with it.’ So I had started working on “Do You Only Love the Ones Who Look Like You?” and I didn’t know where it was going or anything, but I had some chords and lyrics and we just kind of went on with that and we connected so well.
And I’ve worked with other people, like Greg Laswell. I did my record with Greg Laswell, and I’d worked with a couple of people before him, but not on any of my own stuff. He was just the first person I really connected with. And then I worked with other people after Greg and I just never connected with anybody, and so I was nervous that I wouldn’t connect with Jon, but we totally connected.
And you just know, and when you can write with somebody like that, connect with them while you’re writing, it’s such a great feeling. So we’ve actually written three songs together and it’s awesome, but the first one we wrote together was “Do You Only Love the Ones Who Look Like You?” and we got to put that on the record. So I’m very excited.
To read about Jon's song "March: A Prelude to Spring," on the Spring Ep, and the writing process Molly and Jon took with that, along with some more of the interview and information about Molly Jenson's album, check out the SOURCE
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