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Everybody wants a story; this is ours. It's not about putting on a show or trying to sell something. Being Switchfoot is all about putting a different foot forward, risking to change or be changed. Switchfoot is a rock and roll family of sorts. Tim, Chad, Jerome and I have seen pretty much everything over the past six years. We've done the "thirteen-hour drive" tours in the van, we've slept on the streets in London, we've gotten kicked out of the club in Hawaii, we've met our heroes and archenemies. We've been at this ever since Tim graduated from High School: the best years of our lives playing the songs that we believe in. This is the beginning of our story.
From the start we wanted to be genuine ?the same people on and off stage. However, wearing your heart on your sleeve in front of an audience is a huge risk ?strings break, the power goes out, fingers and memories malfunction. I used to hate playing live music for this reason. I felt like I could express what I wanted to say better on my four-track than I could on stage. When Tim, Chad, Jerome and I joined forces I finally felt like we were saying something new as a live band, something that needed to be said. I began to love the floating moments when anything can happen next. Somewhere back there the risk of playing live became a fuel to burn and our honesty became our strength.
Our roots dig deep into San Diego. We grew up surfing every day and competing on the weekends. In fact, the name Switchfoot comes from a surfing term. We're proud of our local music scene and thankful to be a part of it. We've got our local heroes, (Mark Trombino, O, Rob Crow, John Reese) but we all come to the table with different musical backgrounds. In many ways our strength is in our diversity. Tim might wish that he were Paul McCartney but Chad would probably lean toward Stevie Wonder. I think I might go for Miles Davis but that's another story. The point is that our albums have always been hard to pin down. We've never tried for a specific sound or genre. The "Switchfoot Sound" if there is such a thing has been simply an attempt to put every song on tape with the unique production that every individual song needs. The song is king not the album.
Switchfoot songs come from a place near the center of who I am. These songs are my way of exploring the world, and at times challenging the way things are. I've always had trouble writing the caffeinated chorus that pretends to be something that I'm not. We've never fit in any of the genre boxes, so we did our own thing, not in an attempt to be different but simply trying to be ourselves. I try to be honest in my songs and in my life as I try to wrestle with the tension of "how it is and how it should be." I want the listener to wrestle with the tension for herself because freedom and truth and love are worth fighting for. Moreover, life is worth living.
The Beautiful Letdown is about real life: the good, the bad, and the ugly. It's an honest attempt to reflect on the great and terrible aspects of being human, the tension of existence. A lot of people run away from this tension because the problems in our world are too hard to face. But the tension of being human is where we live and think and breathe. In fact, the very lowest moments in our lives are when we stand toe to toe with the truth about ourselves and our world. The way I see it, hope means nothing at all if hope doesn't reach to the core of our need. The Beautiful Letdown is where meaning and hope invade our greatest and worst moments. The Beautiful Letdown is where we live, who we are, and where the future begins.
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