Switchfoot front man to perform at Liberty

Jon Foreman will visit the LaHaye Event Space Saturday, Feb. 28 at 8 p.m.

“Life is short. Live it well.”

Jon Foreman lives his life by these words.

A man of many talents, Foreman is the front man of the rock band Switchfoot, and the other half of the folk outfit Fiction Family. He has also released five solo EPs, titled: “Fall,” “Winter,” “Spring,” “Summer” and “Limbs and Branches.”

The seasonal EPs were released out of an overflow of creativity, according to Foreman.

“The irony behind my solo project is (that) it’s not really inspired by any differences that I have with Tim and Chad (of Switchfoot),” Foreman said. “It’s just kind of a surplus of songs. I have these songs that just don’t fit the Switchfoot record, and I believe in them, I just don’t know what to do with them. … The first solo project kind of felt like a confession. If Switchfoot is a megaphone, the first solo project is kind of a whisper in a back room somewhere.”

According to the Southern California native, inspiration for his music can come from anywhere, at unexpected times and in unexpected places.

“For me, music is always tied to a place or an idea,” Foreman said. “For me, a lot of times it’s where I wrote the song or the feeling I had when I wrote it. …What if I wrote songs that were directly tied to the feelings of the seasons?”

Through the music and lyrics on his seasonal EPs, Foreman narrates the human story, one of broken beginnings and hopeful endings.

“Fall is … almost like the beginning of the human race,” Foreman said. “You have this fall, you have decay, you have death, you have, maybe, a fall from grace. Then you have a dark, cold season of regret and frostbite. We call it winter. And then you have this rebirth, and the temperatures start to warm up, and things start to grow again. And then you have growth and summer and warm temperatures and things are thriving. … I try to have songs that either spiritually or metaphorically, or even just the musical elements, would tie into winter, for example.”

For Foreman, music has always been a place of refuge, a shelter from the storms of questions and doubt that he said he wrestles with frequently in his passionate pursuit of Christ. It is a safe place to ask and to wonder, a place deeply connected to his faith.

“A lot of people have this idea that faith can be anything other than integrated with what you do,” Foreman said. “And I’m of the opinion that what you do is an embodiment of what you believe. If you do things that you don’t believe in, then maybe it’s your true, actual beliefs about the world coming through.

And maybe that lack of faith is something to be addressed, but for me, I wrestle with faith and doubt all the time. And I find that music is a perfect place to have that wrestling match, where you can actually have it out with faith and doubt, and why does pain exist? … How does that affect the way that I live and treat people around me? I think that’s what faith is. It’s living out those beliefs, trying to figure it out and wrestling with those things.”

“(A)sk big questions, because a God who’s not able to answer big questions isn’t big enough,” Foreman said. “I’m of the opinion that when it comes to deity, he should be able to take a punch. That honesty has to be required of any sort of faith.”

Currently, Foreman is working on his next solo project, “The Wonderlands,” a series of four, six-track EPs titled “Light,” “Shadows,” “Darkness” and “Dawn.” He hopes to release the first EP April 24 of this year.

“Music for me has kind of been a space, somewhere I can run to and figure things out,” Foreman said. “I feel like when I’m writing a song that it’s like (I) get to co-sign God’s blank check. You get to create a world of melody and lyric and texture and tone.

“And so with this project, I thought, ‘What if I could create an entire place?” Foreman said. “Twenty-four hours, 24 songs that would match up with those hours, what would that look like? I think the idea would be attempting to express what it means to be human throughout the day, to create a place to question why pain and beauty exist on the same playing field.”

Eagerly anticipating his first release in the series, Foreman shared his thoughts about having 24 concerts in 24 hours, or a 24-hour-long concert, in celebration of “The Wonderlands” project.

“I like the idea of ending with dawn,” Foreman said. “Maybe for the 24-hour concert, you end right there at the beach in my hometown, and have some pancakes and then go surfing. That’s my dream.”

According to Foreman, most of the songs for the project were written on the road while he toured with his other bands, written in backstage dressing rooms or hotels on his days off work. Foreman said he employed some of his musical heroes and friends — such as Jeff Coffin of Dave Matthews Band, Cubbie Fink of Foster the People and Ryan O’Neal of Sleeping at Last —as sparring partners on the journey.

Foreman, who described his music as “a really, really sweet punch in the gut,” said his songs are a mode of transportation — a means of moving from darkness to light.

“Ultimately, I view the songs as vehicles,” Foreman said. “We’re all on a journey, and these songs are often my mode of transportation to get from a dark place to somewhere more hopeful.”

Foreman will be bringing his songs to the LaHaye Event Space this Saturday, Feb. 28, along with special guest, Garrett Green. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and the show will start at 8 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online by visiting liberty.edu/campusrec/studentactivities or before the show in the lobby of the LaHaye Event Space in Green Hall.

“I’m hoping for a dialogue,” Foreman said. “With an acoustic guitar and a cello, you can actually have a conversation, a dialogue rather than just getting your point across all night. My goal would be to have a dialogue, to make the evening something that we start one place and end somewhere else, and we do it together.”

GRAF is a feature reporter.