Switchfoot: In the Eye of the Hurricane

With hugely successful hit singles like Dare You to Move and millions of records sold, alt-rock band Switchfoot has cemented its place within the music industry. I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Drew Shirley, one of the guitar players from the San Diego band, to discuss the band’s seventh studio album, Hello Hurricane. We talked about everything from Switchfoot’s legendary live shows to Narnia and even Dancing with the Stars...

YT: Switchfoot is known for its energetic live shows. Describe to me what it’s like for you being onstage with the band.
DS: It’s crazy... I mean it’s like a whirlwind. Anything could happen at a Switchfoot show! We never know when [lead singer] Jon’s just gonna jump into the crowd or pull up a fan to play guitar or drums on a song during the show, so we have to be really flexible to change on the fly.

One of the things that is powerful is just feeling the unity of the song as it’s happening to the people, because we are moved by these songs as well and I think that comes across to an audience. We want to be fully invested in every song that we’re playing live. These are things that we talk about backstage as a band before the show, like, “What are we gonna think about tonight while we’re playing? What’s the flow? What do we wanna portray?” Those type of things are going through our minds as we’re playing.

YT: You released your latest album Hello Hurricane in November 2009 and I’ve heard that you already have enough material recorded for your next album?
DS: Yeah, we actually recorded 80 songs for Hello Hurricane, so Vice Verses is the next album to come out of the songs that we didn’t release on Hello Hurricane.

YT: What about the rest of the 80 songs?
DS: We’d like to see them all go out at some point; we were thinking in about a year. But it depends on Hello Hurricane and how it plays out. Albums are kinda like kids; you’ve got a collection of them and they go out there, sometimes they get into trouble, sometimes they get a good job, and you never really know the path the album can take. So we’re really focused on Hello Hurricane right now.

YT: You got to record the song “This Is Home” for the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian soundtrack. How did you get that opportunity?
DS: Well, Jon met with some guys to write and they ended up being a couple of guys who were involved in the soundtrack, and they just said, “Hey, do you wanna submit a song?” And we said, “Sure!” so we did. Later they called us and said the director listened to it and everyone else listened to it and loved it – and they wanted to put it on the album!

YT: You recorded a music video for that song. How was recording that one different from the others?
DS: Well, it was a big-budget thing. I mean, any time you’re working for Disney, it’s a big budget. They’ve got seemingly unlimited resources at their disposal. We actually closed down a block of LA to record it, and we closed down a subway for three hours for us to film, which was kinda fun. And also, to see us woven in with the movie footage was almost a bit nostalgic ‘cause it’s a movie that we’ve all read as a book when we were kids. I’m just glad it wasn’t in some sort of summer chick flick (laughs).

YT: One last question... where do you see yourself in 10 years?
DS: Hopefully I’m gonna be doing what I’m doing now, just being better at it. And I love producing so I’d love to be producing some other bands. And I also love being on TV and doing different acting type things so I would love to be on Dancing with the Stars!