Switchfoot surfs toward surprising success

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      Besides being a catchy-sounding band name, switchfoot is also a surfing term that means to shift your feet on the board and take a new stance. So it’s no big surprise to learn that the members of melodic-rock quintet Switchfoot grew up riding the waves of Southern California. “It was one of the three pursuits of our life,” notes vocalist-guitarist Jon Foreman, on the line from his home in San Diego. “We were doing surf contests, playing music, and going to college. So the schooling died off, but the surfing and music are still prevalent.”

      Foreman and his mates may look like your typical shaggy-haired surfer dudes, but the message in their music goes far beyond the beach. The title track of the band’s new album, Oh! Gravity, takes a propulsive potshot at warmongers in the backrooms of the Pentagon, while “American Dream” questions the rabid pursuit of material gain. “This ain’t my American dream,” spouts Foreman, “when success is equated with excess, when we’re fighting for the Beamer, the Lexus.”

      “There are things you have to kind of beat around the bush with in conversation,” says Foreman, Switchfoot’s main songwriter, “but in music you can come right out and say it, and it’s actually what people wanna hear.”

      Foreman’s group has been reaching vast numbers of receptive ears since its third CD, Learning to Breathe, a 2000 indie release that moved half a million copies. “We grew up listening to a bunch of bands that sold 30,000 records,” says the blond rocker, “so to be selling hundreds of thousands of records, you don’t really know what to do, other than be thankful.”

      When he needs inspiration for making music, Foreman only has to look in his own back yard. “San Diego is a great music town,” he stresses. “Some of the heroes that we grew up listenin’ to still reside here, whether it’s ?Boilermaker, Rob Crow. He’s been in a bunch of different things—Pinback, Heavy Vegetable, Thingy, Optiganally Yours. We have bands that have broken out, like the Blink-182s, but a lot of the finer moments in San Diego musical history are coming from bands that no one’s ever heard of.”

      Switchfoot plays the Croatian Cultural Centre on Monday (February 19).

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