Switchfoot is a five-piece rock band from San Diego, CA. The band consists of Jon Foreman, Tim Foreman, Chad Butler, Jerome Fontamillas and Drew Shirley. After ten albums, multiple hit singles, millions of records sold, a Grammy Award and 20 years of touring, in late 2017, Switchfoot are certainly leaving their mark in the music world. Switchfoot are about to release their 11th studio album Native Tounge and are more excited than ever.

 

We got to speak to Drew Shirley about his upcoming album and more.

 

TM - What was your writing and recording process for Native Tongue?

DS - The writing and recording process happened in San Diego. We built our studio, it is two leaves with gear everywhere we all meet here and record everything.

TM - What can fans expecte from your new album?

DS - This new album is album number 11 for us and we are more excited about it than ever. We took this last year off the road so via now all rested and have our batteries recharged. It was necessary to take this year off as we were touring for a lot of years. This album is called native tongue and I think it is the best lyrics John has ever written musically. I think we were coming into our own and mean it really know how to work everything. All the gear we had some producers come into guest Produce with us such as One Republic and need to breathe. We went to some of our friends which is really cool and I've never done that people.

 

TM - You could wrote and produced your album of One Republic do you think this affected your writing Style?

DS -  Yeah for sure everyone writes differently and has different styles of working together. Those guys have a lot of emails back and forth with parts they have their studio somewhere else. We have a studio up here so we will email back and forth write notes and have conference calls so that brought in an element where they weren't actually in the studio with us but we just did it all over email.

 

TM - You released your video voices who came up with the idea and concept behind it?

DS -  A friend from here who opened for us a while ago did a lot of video stuff. We decided to use a local friend and he has a lot of the concept as well as my band and we wanted it to be as weird as possible.

TM - Who Designed your Album cover for Native Tongue?

DS -  John saw this weird picture online and gave it to our photographer. There is a lot of media out there our in-house media guy Eric goes on tour with us and does all our videos there's so much content out there these days.

TM - How have fans responded to your new single voices?

DS - Fans have been hooked on it and it is very popular right now and I think fans are excited to see the progression that we have made.

 

 

TM - Can you tell us some more about Bro Am and beach fest?

DS - Bro-Am is our a local charity foundation and every year we do a concert on the beach and a surf contest and all the proceeds go to local charities. It has gotten so big that we had to start a foundation to bring all the money in and we give it to all local kids charities we are so proud of Bro Am it's been growing for 14 years and we have about 18000 people come out to the beach every summer. 

 

TM - Would you ever consider taking it to a different state?

DS -  We have talked about that but its such a San Diego scented thing. I have only ever done it here its so  on the plan it we do it and really make it happen. If we did it somewhere else we would have to let someone else do all the logistics it would be tricky but I would be interested at looking into it.

 

 

TM - You worked with Kayla Sinclair on your new album what was it like working with her?

DS - That song was already written and finished and just had John on it. Then we were working with the OneRepublic guys and they said Kayla would sound really good on that track and we said we don't know her. They said do you mind if we ask her to sing on it and see what it sounds like and when we got it back we were blown away.

 

TM - How did you come to write music for the movie Unbroken?

The guy who was doing the sequel came to us and asked us if we had ever heard of the movie Unbroken. Our drummer said yeah, I watched the first one and read the book. They said we're doing a sequel to the movie can you write a song for us and we said yeah let's try it. I think John wrote three different songs for that movie and let them pick.

TM - If you could have any bands play one of your songs which band would it be which song would it be and would it be in your style or their Style?

DS - Twenty One Pilots do native tongue in their style

TM - Anything else you want to announce to your fans?

DS -  We are going on tour in the US Europe and Japan and I am starting a podcast sometime this year it's going to be called melody leads podcast. I am going to talk to Artists and go deeper to the heart matters, not just gear.

 

CHECK OUT ALL INFORMATION ON SWITCHFOOT NEW ALBUM