try not to blink.
“Your message is too subtle for Bible thumpers, and too honest for the party scene.”
My friend Matt Drake wrote Jon Foreman a letter this week.
It said everything I wish I could say to Jon.
So I hijacked it and “signed” it in the comments section. Now I’m linking to it.
If you’re a Switchfoot fan, this letter runs in your blood; if you’re not, maybe you’ll understand your friends who are a little better.
http://www.fuquestions.com/blogs/dear-jon-a-love-letter-to-switchfoot
ch:
For someone who makes a large part of his living creating and playing music, I don’t listen to a whole lot.
Part never being able to turn off the critical listening region of my brain, part tiring too quickly of chord progressions and lead singer’s tone, part craving silence instead of sound, I’ve never really been able to put my finger on my lack of listening habits. Maybe I’m just too busy making my own music I don’t have time to digest other people’s.
Bottom line: I have to really like what gets played in my car. It’s not competing against a long playlist, it’s competing against quiet.
This past week Switchfoot’s new record came out, Vice Verses. Because I splurged and got the “deluxe package,” it also came with – among other things – a live album of Hello Hurricane.
I’m not sure why Switchfoot has hooked me the way they have. They’re great guys. They put on an amazing show. They love their families, still love Jesus without making him cheap (or being obnoxious). And successfully mix fun and intensity into their music.
And maybe that’s why I’m gelling with Vice Verses so much.
It’s about the dichotomies.
The juxtapositions.
The tensions of life.
The older I get, the more I live out the extremes. Funerals and births. Hellos and goodbyes. Victories and defeats.
And if there were ever a soundtrack to accompany such life-living, I dare say this album is one of them. If nothing more than for the words.
Jon Foreman is a master poet. And he’s managed to capture the soul of such life predicaments in lyrics. Then the band wrapped them in threads of song.
I’m also a big fan of experimenting with tones, especially with bass and guitar, as in this record. Low-fi dirges to shrill grit. The lovely warmth of the clean to the harsh sterility of the digital. It seems even their production choices adhered to the thematic condition.
The deluxe packaging – a ribbon-tethered boxed set including a letter from Jon, manila folders filled with photographs, handwritten lyric pages, a DVD, and a sweet pencil (among other things) – is probably one of the coolest presentations I’ve seen in a long time.
Needless to say I have had Vice Verses and Hello Hurricane Live on in my car back-to-back. (The live disc deserves its own review; it’s that good). Switchfoot has done it with me again. Connected. Sounding familiar enough that I can pick up shreds of influence from bands that we clearly both love, yet foreign enough that I’m marveling at the nuances, at the elements of invention.
My hat’s off to the boys for crafting a rock-n-roll gauntlet in honor of life’s polarities. ch:
After 11 years of following Jon Foreman and the boys of Switchfoot, I finally went to see them live in concert. Last night my good buddy, John Brennan, and I drove down to Roberts Wesleyan College and caught them in the act. And my, what a show. The nifty part was meeting up with Wendy and Danielle, my old co-workers (buddies!) from Joshua Revolution, who now help head up Kingdom Bound. Amongst catching up after a few years of absence, they brought me and John upstairs to meet the band. And what humble guys. (And not nearly as tall a you think they are on stage!).
We got in at 2:00am this morning, just in time for me to grab four hours of shut eye before heading down to Watertown Middle School. By invitation of Principal LaBarr and Assistant Principal Fairchild, both marvelous folk, I performed a new song and then shared for 40 minutes on respecting one another and the affects of bullying. I supposse you know it went well when the principals both give you hugs afterwards. 
Needless to say, God is doing amazing things in the schools here in Jefferson County, NY.
Please keep me in your prayers as I prepare to leave for concerts in Metz, France this Thursday; back next Monday.
CH