Switchfoot is set to perform at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 5 at the Pullo Family Performing Arts Center (The Pullo Center) at Penn State York. Ticket prices are $50 and $37, and are on sale now through The Pullo Center Box Office, ThePulloCenter.com or by calling 717-505-8900. Penn State York students can purchase one ticket at the box office for the special price of $19.
As they enter their 17th year as a band, Switchfoot has achieved a level of success that brothers Jon and Tim Foreman and their high-school friend Chad Butler never anticipated when forming the band in San Diego in 1996. The Southern California natives have sold 5.5 million copies worldwide of their eight studio albums (including their 2003 double-platinum breakthrough “The Beautiful Letdown” and 2009’s Grammy Award-winning “Hello Hurricane”), racked up a string of alternative radio hit singles (“Meant to Live,” “Dare You To Move,” “Mess of Me,” “The Sound (John M. Perkins’ Blues),” “Dark Horses” and “Afterlife”), performed sold-out world tours (visiting five continents in the past year alone), raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to aid homeless kids in their community through their own Bro-Am Foundation, and earned themselves a global fan base devoted to Switchfoot’ s emotionally intelligent and uplifting brand of alternative rock.
When it came time to write the songs that would make up their ninth studio album, the members of Switchfoot were looking for a challenge.
“The point became, ‘What are we going to do to push ourselves,’” Jon Foreman recalled. “Could we take ourselves somewhere we’d never been before, yet achieve a feeling of comfort at the same time? How do we go to a new place that feels like home?”
Switchfoot found the answers on the road and in the waves. A year ago, while touring in support of their 2011 album “Vice Verses,” the long-time surfers set out in search of inspiration by visiting several of their favorite surf breaks around the world.
“The idea was to surf, write songs, play music and see what ideas came,” said Tim Foreman.
The band traveled to Jeffreys Bay and Crayfish Factory in South Africa, Bronte Beach in Australia, Raglan in New Zealand and Uluwatu in Bali, and chronicled their physical and emotional journey, as well as their unshakeable brotherly bond, in “Fading West,” a documentary film that features stunning locales, revealing interviews, jubilant live footage and glimpses of Switchfoot at home and in their studio in San Diego. Like “Rattle and Hum" meets “Endless Summer,” the movie is part travelogue, part surf film and part behind-the-scenes look at the making of the band’s upcoming new album, which will also be titled “Fading West.”
Not surprisingly, the album, which finds Switchfoot returning to the melodic pop sensibility of their early years, was inspired by the sea, which Jon describes as a perfect metaphor for simultaneously experiencing comfort and danger.
“You’re comfortable out there, but it’s the unknown,” said Jon Foreman. “You can paddle out in South Africa and it’s exactly like home and nothing like home all at once. That’s what I’m hoping our record feels like — trying to find peace in dangerous places.”
To learn more about the variety of performances throughout the season at The Pullo Center, visit www.pullocenter.yk.psu.edu.