Question and Answer with Switchfoot’s Jon Foreman
Utah Statesman: What do you miss most while on tour?
Jon Foreman: I miss home quite a bit. Right now, we’re kind of at the breaking point as a band. We’ve been on the road for a long time. Basically, the record has been out two years and we’ve been on the road the whole time. It’s the best job in the world, but at the same time I’ve been home two hours in the last month. And that adds up, it’s like a plant being without roots. You don’t really have a chance to dig down, so that’s the part that I miss the most.
US: What band would you love to tour with?
Foreman: I would love to tour, I mean, I’ve got my heroes for sure, Wilco, probably U2 and the Foo Fighters would be a dream line up.
US: Do you have any backstage rituals
Foreman: This past tour has been really hard on the sleep aspect, I got four hours last night and two hours the night before. That kind of adds up, so a lot of times I’ll do pushups or jumping jacks, just to try to wake up before the show. You try and warm up your voice but I’m not really that adamant about that. I kind of have one of those like vacuum cleaner voices – you just kind of turn it on and it runs, which is a benefit when you do so many shows. We usually try to get together and we’ll say a quick prayer before we go out and just kind of focus on what we’re there for because you spend so much of your day en route and the idea of it, this is the hour of the day that you’ve geared up for the past 23 hours and so you want to make the most of it. Pour your heart and soul out there.
US: Using only three adjectives, describe your live show?
Foreman: I’d say sweaty, rock and passion.
US: Do you think that musicians should get political?
Foreman: For me, I think politics is a little bit like oil and water. A lot of times, what we write about is mostly about the politics of the heart and issues like a war that goes on inside and the type of thing that’s a little bit more transcendent then bipartisanship. I think that moment you align yourself too closely with any one person then all of your songs become less than what they are. We’ve been big supporters of DATA [Debt, AIDS, Trade for Africa]. We’ve also had our songs used for the Rock the Vote campaign. But both of those in my opinion are about politics of the heart. I guess, to answer your question about whether musicians should be political – it’s kind of a mixed bag. We definitely, without being overly idealistic, want to see the world change. I’m a big believer that every day you’re alive, you change the world. And that’s no different for someone playing rock and roll.
US: What’s your favorite song on the album “The Beautiful Letdown?”
Foreman: They’re all kind of my babies. I’m kind of like a proud father. I would probably go with, something a little bit mellower, maybe even Beautiful Letdown. I haven’t heard the CD in a long time, but it’s a really great one to play live. It’s got a lot of passion and it kind of reminds me to set my sights on things bigger than what this world has to offer.
US: Your songs are meant to have the listener question things, are the songs written with a specific question in mind?
Foreman: I think we probably take more of a Socratic dialogue than a lot of bands and I think, partially because I don’t understand things myself. I heard that dreams are the subconscious mind trying to work on a problem and maybe that’s what my songs are. They’re just kind of like oyster chewing on a grain of sand, and hopefully it comes out something beautiful.
-meagrock@cc.usu.edu