SWITCHFOOT

Last night, I took a group of friends, family and past clients to see Switchfoot in concert at CCU in Lakewood. 

I’ve seen Switchfoot before, a couple of times, and I love their energy, passion and creativity.  But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve changed the way I assess the effectiveness of people (and rock bands).  I look less at what people do, and more at how people create change and have impact. 

Long ago, I internalized the belief that the effectiveness of your life is based upon the quality of your communication.  And so I study communication.  I study delivery.  I study message.  And when I see a person, group or rock and roll band that has effectively mastered the art of communication, I take note.

Last night’s show was an interesting small-venue hybrid event, part documentary, part autobiography, part rock concert.  On this tour, Switchfoot launches each show with a documentary film chronicling 12 months on the road with the band, including trips to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Bali.

There are numerous personal interviews, concert scenes and unique behind the scenes footage of the band on the road.  The movie ends with an overview of Switchfoot’s annual “Bro Am” surf event, a one day summer beach festival that raises money for children's charities in the band’s hometown of San Diego.

The movie also serves as a platform to promote Switchfoot’s involvement with the Clean Water Project, AIDS orphans in Africa, and charitable foundations around the world.

But it’s also a narrative about purpose and brotherhood, about how a group of men can stay together for 17 years while band members are getting married, having kids, raising families and balancing real life events. 

The only way to stay unified for that long is to have shared vision and a mission that goes beyond rock and roll.  And so Switchfoot has built a message around its music, a message of hope and action and impact and redemption.

Some interesting takeaways from the documentary:

The movie’s first scene shows the band at a heavy metal mega-concert in Australia, where Switchfoot shares the bill with Steel Panther, Slash (from Guns ‘n’ Roses fame), and 20,000 hardcore metal fans… an environment hardly consistent with the band’s traditional white collar fan base.  The band calls this “the most difficult show they’ve ever played”, which is compounded when technical difficulties kill the mic and cause the crowd to turn against them.

The point of playing this show, according to lead signer Jon Foreman: to intentionally seek uncomfortable situations where you can take your message to a new and unfamiliar audience.  For us, that could mean working in a homeless shelter, approaching a difficult peer group at school or working to engage with anyone who sees the world differently.

There is also a heavy surfing theme throughout the movie.  The band admits (being from San Diego) that its true passion is surfing, and there’s footage of the band surfing some of the most famous surf-spots in the world (often with professional surfers who regularly tour with the band, and who sometimes jam onstage with them). 

But surfing is more than an idle pastime.  It’s the shared interest and joint passion that has inspired the band to stay together for nearly two decades.  It has allowed them to build a brotherhood, and it keeps touring interesting, exciting and inspiring after playing over 1,000 shows together.

Switchfoot has always focused on making a difference, and there are portions of the film directed at their work with the Clean Water Project (one in six people on earth do not have a reliable clean water supply), AIDS orphans in Africa and homeless kids in Southern California. 

There are also some poignant scenes of the band with their families, with kids riding bikes and playing instruments and growing up in a busy and increasingly fast-paced world.  Band members talk at length about how simply playing music on the road would not be enough to justify leaving wives and kids for weeks at a time.  There has to be more purpose, more meaning, to giving up such valuable time to interact with fans and strangers in cities hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles from home. 

The movie provides a unique framing for the band’s vision and purpose.  As one of Switchfoot’s signature anthems proclaims, “we were meant to live for so much more”. 

And that’s why I was excited to see Switchfoot in person last night.  We are meant to live for so much more, and whether your platform is music or teaching or volleyball or dance or selling real estate, you can have impact if you are intentional about it.