What is your inspiration behind each song you write?
My inspiration for each song is the specific place where I’m at in life. I’ve heard that books come from locations and I think songs are the same way. Songs can be a little bit more ethereal. So maybe it’s a little bit more of an emotional, spiritual place than a physical location. For me, most of my songs come from the problems in my life. When I’m happy I hang out with my friends and go surfing. That’s not when you write a song. You write a song when you’re depressed, angry and bitter and you’re trying to figure out the world.

What can be expected for the next Switchfoot album?
I think we’ve learned a lot the past year. It’s been a time of really finding who we are. I think every record kind of has to reinvent itself. The most dangerous place for a band to be is doing something that they’re good at. I think it’s much better as a band to do something that you could actually fail at. We’ve always tried really hard to push ourselves. I think that the difference with this new record is that in the past we were a little afraid of the success that we had achieved with The Beautiful Letdown. There’s just this weird fear that you feel.

Are you ever afraid to write a song? I mean, maybe at Columbia you were held back a bit?
I mean everyone does the whole big, bad record company thing where they blame the big, bad record company for all of their problems. And I don’t see it that way. I think we had some great years over there. There’s a lot of the things that I think happened over there that were really wrong, that even they would regret, like putting Spyware on our C.D., putting the copy protection, pulling all of our product off right before Christmas. Those are the things that they regret too. But, ultimately, when you’re writing a song…I think the biggest thing that we were afraid of was that we got to a point that we sold more records than any of our heroes. Like back in San Diego, we grew up listening to Rocket from the Crypt, No Knife, Heavy Vegetable, these are people, who big to us was selling 30,000 records. So then you sell almost 3 million records and it’s just a weird thing, like what does a band that sells 3 million records do? You know. I think that was the only time I’ve been afraid as a songwriter. Just kind of, almost afraid of writing something too big. You want to kind of bring it down a little bit. I don’t know. But, I don’t even know that that fear is justified because I’m sure honest music can happen at a big level too.

I’ve seen you several times in concert and you always have so much energy. How do you keep up with each show every night after years of touring?
Gosh I wish I had some secret recipe for staying healthy! Really, for us the motivation is connecting with people. I think for so much of the importance we put on bands on stage, it’s a false reality. The hour we spend on stage is less important than the rest of the day and how we interact with people. To hang out with fans after the show and talk about life is one of the most important parts for me. In our live show there’s a conversation, it’s a two-way dialogue. To have the audience singing it back is amazing, to have people after each show come up and say how much a song means to them, that’s motivating. Our motto has always been “life is short, live it well.” It comes to have a significance. Each day that I wake up and get to play music that I love and get to travel the world with my best friends is great and I don’t take it for granted…each breath is a gift.

Do you have a favorite song you love to play on tour?
Well, right now the new song, “Rebuild,” that’s been released on this tour is fun to play. “Rebuild” was written by Jon Foreman of Switchfoot and Matt from Relient K. The song is inspired by the idea that we’re a generation that has time to kill and put our hands to good use…it’s a song we’ve been playing every night at the show where all the bands come out to the stage and it’s a great part of the evening.

For the Switchfoot set, for me it’s a really exciting thing to be halfway around the world and have someone singing along. There’s a song “Dare You to Move,” that we wrote many years ago and it’s the highlight of the night. No matter where we go the audience is singing along. There’s a unity that exists inside a rock club that rarely exists anywhere else where you have strangers putting their arms around each other singing along. It’s a connection that I rarely see anywhere else. Music is a powerful thing. It brings people together.

What inspires your music?
For me, finding hope in dark places. We've had the opportunity to travel and see a lot of the world in the last few years. I'm still learning so much about the world and myself. Few experiences we've had in dark parts of the world...there was a trip to South Africa a couple years ago. Just seeing the light in the kids’ eyes and joy that they have surrounded by poverty and disease and they’re living in a way that I could only hope to in terms of real joy in the midst of pain. I feel we’re so sheltered here in the Western world. The more I travel the more I realize there’s hope. It has redefined what I view as hope…the experiences like that shape your world view. I’m very much a student still.