Switchfoot in Toronto (Ontario), London (Ontario), and Buffalo (New York)

Part 1 (Toronto, Ontario)

Where oh! where should I begin? And not only where, but how exactly do I express and convey what could possibly have been one of the coolest experiences of my life? Let me start off by saying that Switchfoot is my favourite band, I own all of their CDs, and have managed to hunt down all their singles floating around the internet.

With that aside, it was with sheer excitement that I purchased tickets with my friends to see Switchfoot perform at the Kool Haus in Toronto on February 28^th, 2007. I’m not going to waste time reviewing the concert (you can find concert reviews all over the place), I’m going to share with you something else. Something wonderful. Something that could only be described as: Oh! Switchfoot.

My friend Brian and I are big media fans. I work full-time at a video production company, and it only makes sense that I want to be able to capture as much of this great night as possible. With that in mind, we brought two digital cameras, as well as a full miniDV camcorder that we managed to sneak into the venue. On the way in, we see a stage hand hanging up posters around the venue, and she has tons of them, so I ask her for some, and we get three. The concert begins, I am on ‘picture duty’ (as well as our friend Andria) and my friend Brian is on ‘camera duty’. We go nuts.

Brian films the whole time, always keeping the camera low so no one spots us. Half-way through the show, during Ammunition, the crowd got rowdy and Brian had to hold the camera up higher to keep filming. This attracted attention, and Brian got attacked by a security guard who first took his tape away, then brought his camcorder over to coat-check and told Brian he could retrieve it after the show.

So the concert ends, people leave. Brian and I split up. He goes to coat-check to retrieve his things, I hang around the stage to see what I can get. I managed to get an itinerary of the day (pretty boring), but then I walked up to the stage and asked a stage hand if I could have a pick. So he went and grabbed a pick laying on the ground where Jon stands, and gave it to me. I was pretty happy.

Brian and I find each other outside. Brian explains to me that while retrieving his camera, they actually gave him his tape back! Hoorah!

So we proceeded to hang out around the venue by the tour busses in hopes of seeing the band. We were standing outside in the cold along with 30 or so other people, and even after awhile there was no sign of the band. With time to kill, I ran to our van and grabbed my acoustic guitar, then Brian and I proceeded to play and sing Stars outside in the cold. Finally, Jon came out. He was swarmed by people, so we gave him some space and kept playing. He noticed, said it sounded good, then we passed him the guitar and he signed it for me. He wrote his name, and also drew the Switchfoot Bolt on it. We waited around some more, and then Tim came out. I was standing right by the door, so he signed it, we made room for other people, and with all the attention turned to Tim, I went over to Jon and started chatting. He ended up taking my guitar, and I just so happened to have the pick that he used from that night’s concert, so I loaned him his own pick, and he began to play ‘Twenty-Four’. Afterwards, he told me he liked my guitar, then played ‘Betrayal’ for us. After that, he was cold and tired. He tells us they filmed the music video for ‘Awakening’ that day in Toronto, so goes to relax on to the bus. Then Drew, Chad and Jerome all came out and they all signed the guitar.

We went home happy.

Part 2 (London, Ontario)

After such a successful first night, how could the next night be any better? We arrived in London at Cowboy’s Ranch, and had the same setup for capture: me (and my friend Cassy) on picture duty, and Brian filming again. As the band walked out on stage, Jon and Tim noticed us immediately, and gave a “hi!” kind of look. Unfortunately, this night, filming not so successful. Cowboy’s Ranch is a lot smaller than the Kool Haus, and security spotted us immediately, and started flashing our camera with flashlights. Brian was like “Crap.” but I said “No man, let me handle this.”

I leave the crowd and go over to the side where the security guard is standing. He doesn’t seem happy. I tell him “We were in Toronto last night at the Kool Haus. One of the security guards took our tape away, and it made the band really unhappy. We’re going to film this concert.”

He was not intimidated. He said “No way.” I said “The band doesn’t mind that we’re filming.” And he responded “I just do what I’m told. Come with me.”

At this point he takes me backstage, and suddenly I find myself back in the hallways behind the stage! He finds the tour manager, and explains the situation. The tour manager doesn’t care, no filming, and asks us to bring me our tape. We return to the concert area, and I should for Brian (NOTE: if you listen to the live bootleg of London, Meant To Live, at exactly 3:25 you can hear me shout “BRIAN!” from the right speaker). I tell him “Listen, I am not selling this concert or anything bad. I just want to film it so I can remember this night. I’m a huge fan.” The guy says “Hold on.”

At this point, I have completely missed song 1 and 2 (‘This Is Your Life’ and ‘Meant To Live’). As Meant to Live ended, the guy I’ve been dealing with grabs a guitar, and walks onto stage and swaps guitars with Jon. I look closely, and notice that he whispers something in Jon’s ear, who looks over at me and nods.

The guy comes back, and says “Alright! You can film!” Could that be any cooler? He asked Jon during the middle of the concert, and he gave us permission. We filmed the whole show.

After the show, as they were walking off the stage, Jon noticed us and said “Hey, come hang out by the tour busses.” So of course we did.

This night Brian brought his guitar, got the whole band to sign it, and Jon played ‘Love Isn’t Made’ for us. It was a good night.

Part 3 (Buffalo, New York)

Two weeks pass. We go home, Brian edits all the footage, and makes a nice custom DVD with a menu and chapters. Now, something as cool as that, we would definitely want the band to see all of our hard work, right? Of course! So we have to see them again.

This time Brian, Cassy (again), and Paige come with me to the Town Ballroom, in Buffalo, New York. We have a plan. We show up at 3 pm, way too early for the show. The busses are there, and you can see people setting up. We see Jerome walking down the street, and say hi. He remembers us, and we tell him we would like to attend the sound check. He says he’ll see what we can do. We wait around, and eventually one of the crew let us inside through the back, through backstage, and we enter the venue at about 4:30, and see guitars everywhere, all the lights on, and the band on stage playing. Again, Jon and Tim notice us and smile/nod, and they play a few songs (Easier Than Love, Lonely Nation, and Crazy In Love to name a few). They argue about the chords on Crazy In Love, and Jon insists he plays an A while Chad and Tim say it’s a B. They eventually figure it out.

Coming down from sound check, Jon walks over to us and starts chatting. We notice that he seems to have a tattoo! He says that it was a stick-on that he wore for filming Awakening that is slowly starting to fade/peel. He described it as an earth with some symbols around it. “The kind of thing you’d see at a tattoo place and say ‘I want that one.’”

He’s really happy we made it again, and we chat for a bit more. He leaves, and Tim comes over. He chats with us for a bit, signs Cassy’s iPod, and walks away. As we’re leaving, we talk to the tour manager. We say “We’re the guys from Toronto and London, we’d like to film tonight’s show.”

He said “Absolutely not. Toronto and London was enough. No filming at all tonight.” But hey, we don’t want to be greedy, so we say that’s fine.

Next , Drew finds us. We start chatting, and I told him that we brought back my guitar and we’d like to get him to play it after tonight’s show. His response:

“Yeah man, I can do some shredding! We’ll totally rip it up hardcore. I’ll get like this big electric drill with guitar picks on the end, and I’ll just be like vvvvvvv-” and he starts making random drilling noises and miming defacing my guitar with pics. Oh Drew. (During this, Chad walked up, saw that Drew was being nuts, and smiled and walked away).

We have to leave, cause they’re getting ready for the show. So we leave. An hour later, we see the show. Following that, we go hang out by the busses, again waiting for the band. It’s raining, so I don’t get my guitar out, but all the guys came out and chatted for a bit.

So we’re talking to Jon, and we’re like “So what are you guys up to now?” Jon says that there’s a band called ‘The Appleseed Cast’ that Copeland mentioned was really good, so Jon, Tim and Drew wanted to go see them. We said we’d hang out with them, if that was cool, but the only problem is, the tour busses can’t exactly drive around town, this concert is like 9 blocks away, and it’s raining. That’s when Jon looks at us and says “Hey, do you guys wanna give us a ride?”

So the most unbelievable thing in the world happened. Switchfoot wanted to hang out with us, and needed a ride across town. So Cassy (the owner of the vehicle, and driver) did her best to contain herself and not pee all over her car while Tim and Drew got in the backseat, and Jon sat in the front. As Jon ate chicken wings and started going through her CD collection, Cassy managed to keep her cool and drive the boys across town. They arrived at the bar, and Cassy then needed to leave the band and turn around and come get us. Obviously concerned about leaving the band and potentially losing them, Jon reassured her, and then unclipped from his belt his 'Switchfoot All-Access Pass' with his Photo ID on it, and gave it to her, saying that it would get her back into the bar later. She quickly came to pick up Brian, Paige and I, and we rushed back to the bar.

So we drive the band around town, find the place, go in, and check out The Appleseed Cast (who is very good by the way). We stand and sit around for awhile, and after the show Jon introduces himself to the band, and the band invites them back stage. They hang out for awhile, and by now it’s 1am. Finally ready to call it a night, we drive the band back to the tour busses, and head home.

We went to a concert to see Switchfoot, then we went with Switchfoot to see a concert.

Oh! Switchfoot.