Labels: album reviews., mp3 of the week

You guys seem to be always recording, always pushing toward the next release.  Anything you can tell us about the next band album yet?

The reason why I love music is because it has this intangible spark, this once-in-a-lifetime urgency that breathes down the neck of my soul and makes me cry or laugh or throw something. So you dive into music and begin to learn how things work, the mechanics, the rules. And suddenly it becomes math instead of magic. 

I feel like the most dangerous place for us to be as a band is to be comfortable. The rule for this record is that if you’ve done it in the past you can’t do it again. We want the music to move us. I heard somebody say -- “If you ain’t crying, why you playin’ it?” I like that…
 
We recorded 14 songs with Charlie Peacock [producer of Switchfoot's initial trio of indie albums] this summer. Our first approach was to take a song and play it for an hour or two and then listen back to what we achieved and move forward from there. It's completely new for us -- we've never "jammed" before.

A columnist in the New York Times wrote recently about the fragmentation of music, how it’s all genre-driven now and there are no more universal acts like the Beatles or Led Zeppelin or U2 that everyone listens to.  To me that argument both rang true and paralleled your lyric in “Lonely Nation.”  The more choices we have, the more we’re able to customize the world we come in contact with, the lonelier we get, because we’re no longer sharing experiences in a communal way.  How do you react to that idea?

If I understand the comment correctly, I feel like the columnist got it wrong in some ways. With the death of radio and the birth of the iPod, nothing is genre driven -- what’s the difference between rock, or alternative or indie? James Taylor is in the rock section at iTunes. Most big “indie” bands are on a major. And alternative is even more confusing. Everyone listens to everything; it’s all Jack.fm.

I do feel like the universal experience is dying, however. There are too many options to have an Elvis come on the scene. I suppose hip-hop is the closest thing to universal. And yet community is a huge part of the human experience. Even in cyberspace we’re searching to belong somewhere, looking for community. But often things are moving too fast. Even in music, too many choices can lead to mediocrity. Every good record was made by the restrictions placed around the music, i.e. time, budget, ability, ambition.

Aside from life expectancy, who’s to say that our modern human existence is fundamentally better now than it was two thousand years past. War, famine, disease, greed, murder… machines do many things but they cannot save us from ourselves. And I haven’t found one that cures loneliness. We have created a modern day serfdom of sorts: we slave away, chaining ourselves to our devices and giving the first fruits to the global corporations.

Labels: articles., interviews., pictures., videos.

Labels: videos., what people say.

and I'm glad people are digging the tunes. I've heard from a lot of folks who found out about the songs from their friend. That is, in fact, the dream of mine for these tunes. In my opinion it's the only way this type of music should be passed along: from friend to friend- it means a lot to me that you folks are digging it, and thanks for passing it on!

Labels: downloads, videos.

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.