The Switchfoot Twitter update says it all, but first, here's a gem from earlier:
June 2, 2009:
- At home depot, fiction family just started playing: when she's near. Nice. -tim
^Awesome! Now that's reaching a new demographic. hehe. I kid, I kid.
And now, the latest update:
- Evening glass-off surf session with chad, always good to jump in the ocean. Starting up tour rehearsals next week, new songs to play!!
^Fantastic. I am really looking forward to the tour now, although I did find out today that I will once more be barred from attending the Switchfoot Bro-Am this year. I am bummed, but hope you all have fun! (whoever is going that is)
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Next, we've got a pretty awesome interview with Jon Foreman, from an Italian website.
Jon Foreman
A string stretched towards the infinite
There is a constant tension between contingency and eternity in Jon Foreman’s music. In more than ten years of career as a leader of Switchfoot, Foreman has earned platinum records and Grammy nominations. As a soloist, last year he showed himself through the intimate songwriting of a series of Eps inspired by the cycle of seasons. A path focused on the willing to compare everything with his own questions. In this exclusive interview, every word has a distinct weight: that of experience faced up to its roots.
In Italy both your name and the name of your band are not so popular as they are in the U.S.... If you had to use a single sentence to introduce yourself to someone who doesn’t know anything about your music, what would you say?
Guitar driven music for thinking people.
After ten years with a successful band, what prompted you to challenge yourself with a soloist experience? What does it take to always look for something more and to keep one’s own questions alive?
I’m frightened by the unknown but I’m also drawn in, I want to know what’s on the other side. In some ways, these EP’s came from this drive. But mostly the songs determined their own fate, I was just following the loose threads.
I suppose most of the best questions in my life come from pain. When we experience elements in life that are beyond our experience are often we encounter what’s most important, maybe even The Other. Fear can kill these questions if you’re not careful.
There are plenty of biblical references, often inspired to verses taken from the Psalms, in the lyrics of your Eps. The Dylan-esque songwriting model (the one evident in songs like “Every Grain Of Sand”) seems to have deeply impressed you. Nowadays what makes those words still capable to reach the heart?
I’m not exactly sure what gives words their power. An old song can lose it’s power no matter how true it is. I feel like the role of a songwriter / prophet / lover / friend / human is to seek and tell the truth in ways that are appropriate to his/her unique situation.
In the Judeo-Christian story of creation you have a God who speaks words into being. Whether you’re writing a song or offering encouragement to your girlfriend - you are entering into the creative, relational god-like realm where words have incredible power.
Nowadays faith and art are considered to be almost incompatible with each other: so it happens that specific music categories are created (e.g., the so-called “christian-rock”), as if to imply that believers have nothing to say to men as men, but should at most talk to an audience of people having their same faith. On the contrary, your experience seems to have something different...
All of us among the living have this in common: death is coming. It’s in this tragi-comic state where we seek meaning and hope. These are where my songs come from. This is the common ground. The hoping, the searching, the dreaming, the living, the dying. These are my peers: atheists, christians, agnostics, surfers, students, homeless and millionaires.
It’s unfortunate and all too predictable to believe that the only folks for me to love are the ones that I agree with. This type of thinking fuels racism, fascism, and fear. And you can see this horrible strain of intolerance in both the right and the left. Yet music is one of the only guests who makes it into our minds uninvited. I treasure many songs written by people with different understanding of life. I expect that open minded folks would hear my songs in the same context: simple expressions of truth, beauty, pain, and hope.
Read the rest HERE
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