Switchfoot’s Recipe for Long-term Success (Part 1 of 2)

NOTE: This is post #5,500. Yes, five thousand and five hundred. — bk

Brothers Jon and Tim Foreman launched alt-rock band Switchfoot in 1996 with drummer Chad Butler. Though the San Diego-based band got its start in the Christian rock scene, Switchfoot’s accessible musical values transferred well to the larger listening public. The band’s fourth album, 2003’s The Beautiful Letdown was a crossover smash: the record soared to the No. 1 spot on the Christian albums chart, but it also reached No. 16 on the mainstream Billboard 200. Racking up 3 million units in sales, The Beautiful Letdown earned Triple Platinum status in the U.S. Subsequent albums from the band have performed well, with sustained success across the country. Along the way, Switchfoot has earned more than 30 awards including a 2011 Grammy for Hello Hurricane. And unlike some rock acts, Switchfoot’s large-scale success hasn’t resulted in a decline in popularity among its original core fan base: to date the band has won an impressive 12 San Diego Music Awards. And as Chad Butler tells me, the band’s commitment to its hometown manifests itself in other ways.

Having a song on the soundtrack of a film is often a successful way to gain a lot of exposure and score a hit. And that certainly happened with A Walk to Remember in 2002. Tell me how Switchfoot’s music found its way into that film.

Chad Butler: It is an honor for a band to have your music used in a film. It’s another visual artist appreciating a music artist and their work. It happened because we had a friend from high school, a girl named Mia, who worked for the music director for that film. She said, “I’ve got some friends from high school down in San Diego, and I thought maybe you’d want to check out their music.” She had a CD of our music and played it for him. He loved it, and he ended up putting four songs on that soundtrack in the film.

That was a big moment for us. One of my favorite memories: We got to go to the red carpet premiere at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. They said, “You guys have a bunch of music in [the movie]. Walk down the red carpet and say hi to all the people there – publicists, people from the radio stations and TV or whatever.” And we’re walking down, and nobody had heard of us! We’re just this unknown band from San Diego. And I remember they were taking our picture, and we’re waving at the cameras, and they’re like, “Who are you?” We’re like, “We’re a band. We’re called Switchfoot.” Fast forward a year later; those songs ended up helping to get more exposure for the band. And it was a really cool thing.

How did the success of that soundtrack change the band’s trajectory?

It gave us an opportunity to have our songs connect with radio. Back then, alternative radio was a big thing. There were one or two small radio stations here in San Diego that would play our music late at night on the local Sunday show. But after that point, it caught on; more people started showing up to our shows. So we kept touring, and it took a couple years after that to really grow into something nationally.

Was the sound on 2003’s The Beautiful Letdown a document of what the band sounded like live, or was it a studio creation so that you had to say, “If we’re going to take this out in front of people, we need to adjust our musical approach”?

The Beautiful Letdown was our fourth record. So we had the first three albums and about five years of touring under our belt at that point. We started off as a three-piece, and then added our keyboardist/guitarist Jerome Fontamillas. He joined us on the previous album. So by the time we got in the studio for The Beautiful Letdown, we were a four-piece, and we were really able to capture that live sound. That was definitely what we were going after. We had developed on the road at that point, playing hundreds of shows. And we had figured out what we wanted to sound like.

Jon and Tim Foreman are credited with writing the lion’s share of Switchfoot’s songs. Does one or both of them show up in the studio with a song fully fleshed out, or do the songs develop and take on their character during the recording sessions?

It depends. Sometimes, Jon will have an idea – just guitar, vocal, or maybe a voice memo on his phone – and we’ll build off of that. Sometimes we just get in the studio and start jamming on an idea, record it and say, “Oh, that little piece was really good; let’s make something out of that.” Because we’ve been touring so much over the last 20 years, we’ll even record our sound checks, and something will happen spontaneously. When you’re on stage, you live and breathe in that environment as a rock band. So when you’re up there and you have the volume of all the instruments, that’s when the magic happens.

You bring up an interesting point about soundcheck. Sometimes musical ideas grow out of that. Do you ever road-test material in front of an audience before you’ve gone into the studio to cut it?

Absolutely. We’ve got 13 studio albums under our belt, so there are a lot of songs to choose from. And each night is different. When we write a set list, it’s just suggestions. When we go out on stage, the crowd really determines what songs we play. People will show up holding a sign for a particular song off of an obscure older record or whatever. And depending on the night, we’ll get derailed from the set list and play what the crowd is wanting at that point.

It goes both ways. Sometimes we’ll have a new idea, a song we’ve been working on in soundcheck, and we’ll say, “Hey, you guys want to hear something new?” And we’ll throw that in, try it out.

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