Interview with Chad Butler and Jerome Fontamillas of Switchfoot
Conducted Friday January 22nd 2010
@ the Phoenix Concert Theatre

http://www.myspace.com/switchfoot

By Alex Young
Photos by Jaylyn Todd

Alex: For the new album "Hello Hurricane" I noticed that there is a lot of diversity and is very experimental compared a lot of the other stuff you guys have put out before. I noticed there was a lot more keyboards and some stuff on the opening track ("Needle and Haystack Life") where you goofed around with electronic beats and then the actual drums came in.

Chad: Yeah.

Alex: What was the approach like? Was it like greeting a hurricane and embracing that spontaneity and that chaos that comes from just jamming?

Chad: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean the whole experience for us was something totally new and we had more freedom than we've ever had. To back up a little bit to give you some history, about three years ago we left our record label (Columbia Records), basically got off the road, went back San Diego, our hometown, and built a new studio.

Alex: Oh wow.

Chad: And just created a space where we could re-group and sort of…

Alex: Rediscover the band?

Chad: Yeah. You know we had no commercial deadline and had the freedom to do whatever we wanted.

Alex: Which must be really nice!

Chad: Yeah, it was incredible, it was really living the dream, to be in our home town, in our own space and have no body looking over your shoulder. Over the course of about two and a half years we recorded eighty songs, and like you said its all different territory, song territory, new stylistic approaches to songs. There was a lot more extreme representation of that experimentation, but that stuff didn't necessarily make the record. The thing that glued those twelve songs together out of the eighty was finding a heartbeat that moved us on an emotional level between those songs.
Alex: Especially if you're just playing it live together, obviously that's going to have a little bit more continuity and being able to think of it in that context. With those twelve songs that you picked, was it because of the way it came across when you were just playing together? Versus some bands write in the studio and do some songs off the seat of their pants and they don't really hear them until it's coming through those speakers. Was that kind of what made you propel these twelve songs in particular was playing them in a live context?

Jerome: The songs that we're writing, we always look at it like, "How are we going to do it live?" you know? Are these the songs we want to play for the next twenty years? When we were choosing from the eighty and we dwindled it down to the twelve it's like, these are the songs that we really believe in.

Alex: Even though the production is a bang-up job, it sounds really crisp and really fresh, it's a far more organic approach. Like I said before it does sound like a studio album but it doesn't feel like it was written in the studio, it sounds like five guys in a garage. It's kind of refreshing to hear that's where it came from.

(Alex laughs)

Chad: The struggle with every record is to try to capture the live show and put it on plastic. How do you take the energy from a live rock show, that interaction with the crowd, the blood, sweat, and tears from one night and somehow bottle that up?

Alex: Because it's a whole experience unto itself because it's not like every crowd's the same, it's not like you're playing to the same people every night. It's a very, very subjective thing that's going to be interpreted differently; its art, that's what makes it great. It's funny you mentioned kind of pushing it to extremes because I noticed there's a lot of extremes on the album. There's some of the softest songs you guys have ever done and some of the heaviest songs you guys have done too, like "Mess of Me" and that kind of thing. Were you guys listening to different records while you were making the album? Were you kind of tapping into different influences, because I've never really heard that kind of distortion on a Switchfoot record before?

Chad: A lot of Bette Midler.

Alex: Oh really?

(Alex and Jerome laughs)

Chad: Thompson Twins, I don't know.

I

Jerome: It was funny that mentioned "Mess of Me" because when we came in like three years ago to start the album, you know "Mess of Me" was one of the first songs that we recorded. It sounded a lot different, it went through all the changes throughout a couple years, and how you hear it now is totally different than how it was three years ago. The evolution of it is just amazing.

Chad: We've never had that opportunity before, to record a song multiple times in a lot of different styles. Originally that song had a completely, a different chorus, the guitar riff and the main idea, "I want to spend the rest of my life alive", that morphed into the final version of the song. But there's a lot of versions we recorded along the way that sound very different, almost unrecognizable. That's something we'd never taken the time to do, fully flush out ideas, and completely record the song, not just, "Oh here's a guitar demo on my laptop"; just the whole band in the studio going to the wall with the whole idea. So when you're talking about extremes, that was a whole new way to make a record, kind of stressful because you end up with this giant pile of music. Like a very productive season for the band, but overwhelming.

Alex: Well yeah, because when you try to take it on all at once it's almost like moving a mountain.

Chad: Yeah.

Alex: Versus like flushing out songs one at a time, but at the same time that's got to be one of the biggest advantages, you know? Not having Columbia records knocking on your door everyday being like, "What are we going to put on the radio?"

Chad: Yeah, there was definitely a season, sort of a dark period, where we became overwhelmed with all this music. We looked at, you know, eighty complete songs, basically tracking four albums worth of music.

Alex: Like, "How are we going to make this one record?"

Chad: Yeah, "how are we going to boil this down to one statement?" That was really the pivotal point of the record. It really comes back to what Jerome was talking about believing in the songs, "is this a song I believe in and I want to sing in the live show every night and die singing? Is this going to replace songs from the previous six records that we've done?" That's a very difficult thing when you're making a set list for our live show, because with seven records how do you boil it down to…

Alex: Twelve songs or fifteen songs?

Chad: Yeah. It's a challenge.

Alex: Yeah, just to go on the other side of that, you can play them three different ways. You could play them acoustically, or you could just play it with keys or you could play it as heavy as you want because you've demoed it so many different times.

Chad: Yeah.

Alex: Seeing it under all those different lights and contexts, you know. That's one thing that really holds a song together, just hearing a song on strings or just on piano. I thought that was an interesting title for the album, "Hello Hurricane", because you could get the idea of it all.

Chad: Yeah, there's a story behind how that title came to be. Tim (Foreman), our bass player, came up with the idea inspired by an experience we had after Hurricane Katrina. We were able to work with Habitat for Humanity rebuilding some homes down in Louisiana.

Alex: Oh wow. That's amazing.

Chad: It's a wonderful organization, we were able to work alongside the people that are going to live in the home, so you get to know them and know their story.

Alex: Yeah, they're not just strangers and you're not just donating. It's a whole experience.

Chad: Yeah, and the woman we were building a house for and she was working with us, she got to tell us her story. She had actually been evacuated during Hurricane Katrina, lost her home and everything and actually lost her leg in the process. So she ended up with a new leg, learning to walk all over again and her story was basically that she walked out of her house in New Orleans and wanted to walk into this new one. Just that determination, she had every reason to give up, be bitter, but instead she chose to defy the odds, defy the adversity coming at her. Just that approach.

Alex: Learning to live her life again.

Jerome: Facing the storm.

Alex: Absolutely. Even just listening to the album that was one thing I picked up on, like I mentioned the diversity and a lot of the experimentation. I thought it was a very organic album too. It must have been wicked to go back to your hometown (San Diego) and rediscover the band again.

Chad: Yeah, definitely. All of us put a lot of effort into our music and we take the music very seriously, but we don't take ourselves seriously.

Alex: Well that's got to be one advantage to being an artist too, you know what I mean?

(Jerome, Chad and Alex chuckle)

Chad: It keeps things in perspective, the fact we get to play music every day, that's a huge privilege and to be able to have the opportunity to work together with your best friends. Make music that you believe in.

Alex: That other people believe in to.

Chad: Yeah! That's a good point; the communal aspect of our music is something that really motivates us to continue. Talking to people after a show outside on the curb late at night and hear how a song may have affected them. That's a really fulfilling thing, there's movement and change happening because of the heartbeat behind the music, that kind of two-way dialogue is definitely what I get excited about.

Alex: You mentioned you write songs specifically for a live dynamic. When you're holed up in a studio for six months or a year, when you're playing live you actually watch that music become a part of someone else's life.

Chad: Right.

Alex: It's interesting that that's one of the driving forces behind the band. What changed dynamically within the band, I know the line-up didn't change or anything like that, but in the last three years you guys had to make this record what it is? Was it just a different attitude or looking at your songwriting in a different light?

Chad: I think we've all gone through a lot personally, you know? Everybody goes through their own storms if you will. I think that the instability of where we were at and completely letting go of ties to the music industry if you will. And completely starting over independently was a scary process but also really eye opening.

Alex: And inspiring I'm sure.

Chad: Yeah. "What do you want to say with this next record? What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to communicate?" I think those are really good questions for us to approach the record with an intentionality and a passion that maybe we hadn't fought through before.

Alex: And that determination.

Chad: Yeah. The other thing I was going to say about when we were done with the process of recording, we made a decision to play the entire record, to go out and play it start to finish for people. That's something we've never wanted to do before on any of the six previous records. This is the first tour where the day the album came out, we started play it, hand delivering it personally face to face. It fits together in a sequence that almost feels like a theatrical production where it's like "This is Act One and Act Two" or "Side A and Side B". It was really thought through that way in the studio and in the live show it has this connectivity that works, I feel as one complete act.

Alex: Yeah, like a continuity to it where you're not like "Here's the single, here's this songs because it's so catchy", you see it as one piece. It kind of unfolds like chapters in a book versus like, "this is the acoustic song", or, "this is the heavy song".

Jerome: We are playing the album in the order that the album is made, so you're hearing the album in its entirety in order.

Chad: That's a lot of new music, that's twelve songs. Even if you love a band you can't think of standing there for sixty-five minutes and watching music I've never heard before or maybe have only heard for the last two or three weeks.

Alex: At the same time though, I've gone to a couple shows like that and it was exciting at the same time because you don't really know what's going to happen next. You kind of get caught off guard. Sometimes you fall in love with certain songs in a different context. You're not just in your room after a bad day or a great day, whatever day, interpreting the songs through your own experiences and making the song an experience like in a live show.

Jerome: For sure.



Chad: We're really thankful that our audience has the attention span to sit through that because I don't think every band could say that.

Alex: No, definitely not.

Chad: We're really privilege with people who come to our shows because we can actually do that. It was pretty crazy at first because we were like, "We'll try it for a few shows…"

Alex: And just kind of see where it goes.

Chad: Exactly.

(Jerome, Chad and Alex laugh together)

Chad: It may be that we change up the set list pretty quickly! But it's been three months now and we're still playing the entire record almost as our own opening act.

Alex: That must have been a scary experience, too; an eye of the storm kind of thing.

Chad: It was nerve-wracking.

Jerome: It was a little nerve-wracking.

Chad: No one knows the words, no one's seen this. For us to play twelve new songs with the math of the music in some ways, but it's become second nature, you get inside the songs so much after a few weeks of it. It's like "Aw, this is really fun".

Alex: Just creating that experience. I find that's a really interesting approach to creating an album, especially in 2010, because I noticed that a lot of rock bands focus on just putting out singles and just putting out songs. You can get this on your iTunes or download it off the internet or something like that, but more bands or singer-songwriters, still stick to putting out albums. That's what I find gives a lot of bands longevity and stuff like that because the fans can actually sit down and listen to twelve songs at a time. Was that a conscious decision? Like, "We're going to make a solid record the whole way through"?

Chad: I think that's sort of an archaic concept in this day in age, it's so single-driven because our short attention spans can sit through and connect that much music and process it and digest. I can't. I very rarely these days sit down and listen to an entire record; I have a playlist of all my new music and mix it up on a playlist. But that concept of that one journey of music is fresh for us. I haven't really thought about listening to our previous few records in that format, and actually believe that somebody would listen to it in order to think about it as a concept. That is an ambitious thing.

Alex: Absolutely.

Chad: So far it's been amazing.

Alex: Yeah, that sounds great. I noticed that this album was more of a collaborative effort versus somebody just bringing in four or five songs at a time? Was it more of all of you tackling it together or somebody would bring in an idea and then it would kind of build from there?

Jerome: Jon (Foreman), our lead singer, is the principal songwriter. He'll come to the four of us and be like, "Here's my idea, this is the song I was thinking of". Then the four of us will go in there and record or work together the parts and bring it back into the table. It's a total collaborative idea.

Alex: At that point it's more of like everyone brings in their own ideas and it's more like connecting the dots versus like being, "Okay, let's move a mountain from point A to point B and call it a song".

Chad: Yeah.

Alex: And trying to do everything at once, because that can be a heavy load for one person or five people, but especially one person. It's funny you mentioned that because I thought the album had a continuity to it. Thanks a lot for hanging out with us and taking the time to chill.

Jerome: Thanks for coming.

Alex: Well thanks for having me. I can't wait to see the show and I didn't know you guys were playing the whole album ("Hello Hurricane") from front to back, I thought it was going to be mixed, but that's awesome.