LONDON – Switchfoot has come a long way. After their album The Beautiful Letdown went double-platinum in 2004, Switchfoot’s ensuing projects have been getting better and better. The group recently released their latest project Oh! Gravity..
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(Photo: Christian Today)Switchfoot backstage at the Shepherds Bush Empire in London, Tuesday, February 6, 2007.
Despite being critically acclaimed on a worldwide scale, the five-piece Californian rock band remains as humble as ever, long having claimed to be “Christian by faith, not by genre.” Switchfoot frontman Jonathan Foreman likes to emphasize that who you are offstage is what really matters, and that life should be your testimony as a Christian.
The following is an exclusive interview with three of the five Switchfoot members – Jonathan Foreman (lead singer), Jerome Fontamillas (background vocals, keys, guitar), and Drew Shirley (guitar) – offstage at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire during their European tour.
How is the European tour going so far?
Jerome: It’s amazing.
Drew: Great.
Jonathan: It’s something to be thankful for. You can come half-way around the world and you have people singing along. That’s an honor.
Any memorable experiences?
Jonathan: [In Germany], we went to the club next door, and there was a jazz session.
Jerome: In Hamburg.
Jonathan: Yeah. There was a club next door that was…
Drew: … a bit open-minded.
Jonathan: A little bit of mic-nite. So there were all these guys with trumpets.
Jerome: Flute players!
Jonathan: It was a club where we found out that the Beatles used to play in. So [I nudged the guys] and said ‘We gotta play there!’ So we went over there, and it was great. We had the flute player join in on ‘Let Your Love Be Strong’…
Jerome: ‘Faust, Midas, and Myself.’ (Both tracks from Oh! Gravity.)
Jonathan: Yeah, ‘Faust’… It’s stuff like that that keeps it fresh, you know?
It’s great that your music is spreading all around the world. I was in Korea two years ago and your music was playing in a restaurant there.
Jonathan: Cool. I’ve got a lot of Korean friends. Our first record The Legend of Chin was named after a friend who is Korean.
So what’s the next step for lowercase people (the online magazine founded by Switchfoot) ?
Jonathan: It’s kind of one of those dreams that you start off with a lot of passion, and not really have any idea or experience of what you’re getting into. We partnered with Geneva Global and that’s been great because they have a lot of experience. I think it’s a lot more of opening our eyes and looking around and hopefully diving in where people need us and our help. There are a lot of incredible organizations that are helping people around the world, and we don’t want to be stepping on somebody’s toes. That requires a lot of thought. So we’re kind of figuring out what the next place to hit is. You only get so many punches, and you want to make each one count.
Let’s talk about your new album. What’s the main message you want to get across through Oh! Gravity.?
Jonathan: I think it’s not as simplistic as having just one message. I think every song has something to say – maybe in different layers. It’s kind of like a relationship. If I was gonna sum up my relationship with Drew, there probably will be a lot of different aspects and facets that we have. In the same way when we’re working on a record, you’re dealing with so many different layers. So for this, if I were to sum it up, I think it’ll be the idea around gravity, like the title – the idea that everything keeps falling apart when it’s supposed to be together. It seems like we daily defy the law of physics, the law of gravity. Continue >>
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