The Jon Foreman Q & A

CT: Hi Jon. How are you?

Jon: I am fantastic thank you. I’m standing outside in Edinburgh. There’s beautiful blue skies, which you don’t often get a chance to see up here. It feels good to be alive and I’m thankful to be in the UK.

CT: What’s it like playing to smaller audiences in the UK?

Jon: It’s funny, I don’t really notice how many people there are. For me it’s more about what kind of connection I can get. One thing I love about the crowds over here is they come ready to sing, ready to have a good time and ready for a party. I love that. Sometimes American crowds can be too self-conscious and myself included. We don’t know how to have a good time sometimes. Maybe it’s our Puritan roots? [Laughs]

CT: You’re a deep thinker. Is there a purpose behind Switchfoot or is it just a bit of fun?

Jon: I don’t know if there’s an overarching intentionality behind the career of what we’ve tried to accomplish but hope is a main ingredient and sometimes that’s a search more than a place of arrival.

Songs have always been an outlet to communicate about things that otherwise you can’t talk about. For example the most popular topics in my songs that I tend to gravitate towards are, God, girls, politics and death. Those become themes that pop their heads up whenever I’ve got questions about them.

CT: You won a Grammy in February for your album Hello Hurricane. What was that like?

Jon: Winning a Grammy was an amazing experience. Not to take anything away from it, but what I get to do every night for a living is better than winning a Grammy. There’s no award you can give me that’s better than simply doing what I’m supposed to be doing on stage.

CT: You’ve supported a lot of good causes such as Habitat for Humanity, The ONE Campaign and Not For Sale. Are you the driving force behind these campaigns, or is it a band effort?

Jon: We all have a voice. I have a microphone, but usually that means I’m just speaking on behalf of the rest of the guys. Oftentimes it has very little to do with music, it just means we’re all sharing the same breath here on the planet and thus obligated to each other, and even more so out of my faith.

There’s a purpose and a meaning and a design. This is a fellow creature created in the image of God and I have an obligation. All of creation is tied together. If we’re stewards of this beautiful, broken planet then by definition we have an obligation. For me it has very little to do with being up on stage and more to do with blood being in my veins.

CT: Your songs are very honest. In Vice Verses you sing “Where is God in the genocide?” What’s the answer?

Jon: It’s not some sort of rhetorical question, this is real life that I’m singing about. It’s not like I’m given a play where I know how it all finishes. Those are questions that I muse over alone and with friends. They are the intimate questions that I ask in the songs that potentially I’m still looking for answers.

CT: What inspired your new single Dark Horses?

Jon: Dark Horses was inspired by the homeless kids in my hometown of San Diego. Every year we do an event called the Bro-Am, which raises money for these kids and gives them a day at the beach with a bunch of bands and pro surfers.

It’s all for the kids and over the years we’ve had a chance to get to know some of them. There’s a kid named Sean who a week after graduating from High School while homeless, was off to Haiti to help the less fortunate and I just remember thinking what an incredible young man to keep that hope in his eyes.

It’s so inspiring to me. That’s where this song came from, the idea that they’re not settling. They’re not bowing out or accepting their situation. They’re still fighting.

CT: There’s a song on Vice Verses called “Selling The News”. What’s it about?

Jon: A lot of people don’t get it and think it’s simply another rant against the way the corporation functions, which we’re discussing but it’s not that at all.

It’s trying to unpack the way we define news. What we define as newsworthy in many ways defines us. Because if a little girl who is now free from cancer and ready to live her life is deemed newsworthy, and that replaces Britney Spears or something on the front page, we’re saying this is what’s important to us. This is what we believe in.

When you get back and follow the money trail and realise sensational stories will sell better adverts to the population you realise we are being fed sensational bits that placate the masses but this is not necessarily the news that I would want to be fed. It’s not nourishing, it’s not lasting.

I’ve heard it said that literature is news that stays new, and I think it could be said for the Gospel too. At some point the news defines us as much as we define the news and that’s what the song is all about.

CT: When you played “Where I Belong” at your gig in Birmingham you said you wanted it to be the last song Switchfoot ever plays. Why?

Jon: It feels like a punctuation mark. I think of that song as a song of passing. We over think our records. We think through everything. The first note on the record is also the last note on the record and we wanted to keep it as a circle.

[Final track] “Where I Belong” is meant to counterbalance the first song “Afterlife” - which is all about the present tense and living the moment. “Where I Belong” is acknowledging the growing pains we’re experiencing here on the planet. It is a world at war and that war originates oftentimes within.

Someday when I’m standing at the threshold of a world where that war finally comes to rest and all is made well, that song feels like the last song that you could sing as you’re being brought in.

CT: Do you want people to discover the deeper meanings in your songs?

Jon: I feel like a body of work is like a body of water and I want our work to have depth. It’s not necessary but there are deeper elements. If you want to just hum along to the song on the radio that’s fine too but for me I want something I’m proud of from the top to the bottom.