Thanks to the radio hits "Dare You to Move" and "Meant to Live," the album went double platinum and hit number one on Billboard's Christian Albums chart. Switchfoot 's fifth album, Nothing Is Sound , appeared in and almost immediately went gold. A sixth album, Oh! Gravity , appeared in That year saw Foreman branch out a bit as he formed an acoustic duo called Fiction Family with Nickel Creek member Sean Watkins as a side project.
Since some of his new songs didn't fit well within the Switchfoot formula, Foreman also began working on solo material, releasing a series of four linked EPs of six songs each called Fall , Winter , Spring , and Summer in The first two were then packaged together for a release entitled Fall and Winter that same year, and saw Fiction Family issuing an eponymous full-length album.
In early , Foreman announced the impending arrival of an ambitious new project titled The Wonderlands. Consisting of four EPs culminating in 24 tracks one for each hour of the day , the first installment, Sunlight , arrived in May , followed by Shadows July , Darkness September , and Dawn October.
Later that year, he celebrated the achievement with an equally aspiring performance that saw him play 25 shows in 24 hours, which was later released as a feature documentary titled 25 in Looking to wrench some much-needed light from the overwhelming darkness of the prior year, Foreman released the emotional full-length studio effort Departures in early Rooted in the past and the present, the inward-looking set, which Foreman calls "a soundtrack for the uncertain questions," featured guest appearances by Grammy Award-winning Americana artist Madison Cunningham and CCM star Lauren Daigle.
And most of my friends were atheists as a kid. I was one of the only Christians I knew. I love it. It feels like a missed opportunity. I love music from all disciplines and beliefs. My favorite people are the people who are open-minded enough to listen.
I think the other thing is whenever you start to sell things… when faith is sold, it loses its meaning. As honored as I am to be affiliated with the name of Christ. Andy: I saw you guys play when I was a kid, and I remembered hearing you say your songs were inspired by God, Girls, and Politics.
Jon: No no laughs , that music is a safe place. When I was a kid I had a stuttering problem, and I realized when I would sing that it went away, and songs were this place where I could sing about sex, God, politics, whatever. And I felt fine about it. I felt I could finally enunciate things that would have been hard to say otherwise. Andy: Ok so this is a bit of an unturned stone I feel like.
God and politics are apparent in a lot of Switchfoot songs. Is it intentional to write songs to be somewhat ambiguous or open-ended? What is the feminine influence on a lot of your songs? All my favorite songwriters are the ones that open story loops and ask questions, and the listener is deemed their own responsible free agent. I think to give the listener responsibility rather than take it away is the job of the songwriter.
Make of it what you want. Jon: Yeah, and I think the other thing I try not to do is victimize myself. I find that most of my favorite songs are contradictions. You are alive, and dying. You know things, and the more you know, the less you know. For me, songs are the way to pull the frayed edges of reality, and open it up to a bigger expansive understanding of what the world might be.
Andy: Switchfoot took a brief hiatus a few years ago. What prompted it, and what prompted it to end so quickly? Andy: Was there uncertainty? Were you really not thinking of making another record? And I started sneaking back into the studio, just for fun.
It felt like a strange occupation to not make music — to intentionally try to not make music when you really want to. Andy: Is there — and I think about this all the time. Jon: I like so many things. I think we all have a million things we want to get into. I was really trying to celebrate what was in front of me.
Think of what you can do with what there is. It was a dark season, but there were moments of beauty. So I definitely have a lot more to live before I can write a book. Good luck. Andy: Dude, I think about that all the time. I love telling stories through song.
You can tell great stories so eloquently. But when you think of the actual logistics of authoring a full-length book. The amount of detail you need. Jon: Right? I love books. At what point did you start to think Tony was the guy? Any one of us in the band could have produced the record, or we have friends who are really good. And we had basically an album ready to go.
And most of our last few records have been that. But when the lockdown hit, it felt like everything was changing. What are we gonna make? What are we gonna say? We were looking for someone who brought a danger to alternative music that feels fresh and current. A lot of the things I hear, they feel really tired. But very few producers are really bringing that, that I hear.
It felt dangerous in a way that was fresh, rather than tired. I think his real gift, that he brought to our camp, was his understanding of chords. Just being surrounded by it. Jon: Exactly! It really was a treat to work with someone who truly loves music, 40 years into working with it. Not because I hate LA, but because I know myself. I know that I would not be the same person if I lived in LA.
Andy: So it sounds like you guys shoulder a lot of the production yourselves in your own studio? Jon: Yeah, so on this record, we spent weeks and weeks doing pre-production. Which is kind of a lost art in a day and age where the demo sounds great. We wanted to start from scratch with every song where we really learn it well. Orchestrate it and everything. Which inversion of the chord. Everything was all really well mapped out, and then we went into the studio and second or third take on every song we nailed it.
So many times you hear a demo and then the final is like a new vocal and one added synth in the last chorus or something. Andy: How do you guys push yourselves to stay artistically relevant? Is it conscious? When I was in college I was writing for my dorm room friends. It was our first single, and it was about the chemistry class I was in. Any attempt to go back is failed from the start. You know? Jon: Yes. I guess the only one I know is Rimbaud.
I think the biggest creative differences we had were I am more of a platonic, transcendent, universal lyricist. The splinter that you have in this one moment rather than the discomfort you have with the universe. I think that was the biggest rub that we had. And then his background and ours, we probably spent half the time making music, and half the time arguing about philosophical, religious, and political elements.
But that was the year. This is back in high school. So I think that you could either say that we have been dedicated, obsessed, or maybe our development has been arrested, however you want to put it, but I definitely think that [question] has been a big part of our story.
I would most apply regret to production choices. I might disagree with you, but I feel like that in itself is its own pursuit that is valid. So you look back on bell-bottoms or whatever, and you think, Oh my gosh, why was I wearing that?
This is one that I actually remember arguing about with our producer [John Fields] as we were making it, so maybe he would feel differently. And I wish we got to represent the truth of [it]. That presumes, correctly, that songs can change. They all change subtly. I think that Christianity loses its meaning when it applies to something that can be bought or sold. So in the same way, what I love about rock and roll is that it is this forum for everyone. A lot of people see the world in black and white [and] put things in boxes.
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