Nearly 30 years into Switchfoot's career, the band is still finding new rooms to play.
On Oct. 7, the five-member rock band will walk into one of Nashville's newest: The Truth, a 4,400-capacity venue opening in Wedgewood-Houston just six days earlier. Switchfoot will headline the room with special guest Anberlin as part of its 38-date "Forever Now Tour."
The Nashville show comes during a milestone stretch for Switchfoot. The band recorded much of its latest album outside Music City, made its Grand Ole Opry debut in July and sat down with USA TODAY Acoustic to reflect on nearly three decades of making music together.
For brothers Jon and Tim Foreman, who have been outspoken about their Christian faith, the milestone comes with a fitting question:
After 30 years, what does Switchfoot sound like now?
The answer, at least inside a Nashville studio: remarkably fresh as the five musicians play with an urgency that matches lyrics that feel both personal and broadly relatable. The song "Darkness," for example, grapples with religious doubt and institutional flaws within the church, piercing listeners with lyrics like "The youth pastor from my parish / Pledged to marry the 10th grade girl from down the street... Crucifix collisions / Paradoxical traditions / And theodicy that keeps me up at night."
However, the band has long resisted being labeled strictly as Christian rock. Instead, the veteran rockers aim to create music that people of all backgrounds can relate to.
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'Beautiful Life' debut
"Forever Now," Switchfoot's 14th studio album and first collection of new songs in five years, arrived over the summer.
Produced by longtime collaborator Mike Elizondo and recorded largely at Phantom Studios outside Music City, the 13-song project returns the band to the guitar-driven sound that helped define albums such as "The Beautiful Letdown" and "Hello Hurricane." At the same time, it pushes deeper into one of the most ambitious concepts of the band's career.
The record imagines a person's final day on Earth, asking what truly matters when time runs short.
Lead singer Jon Foreman explained during a recent USA TODAY Acoustic session at Sound Stage Studios that question has become central not only to the album, but to his own life.
"This record asks the question, if today were your last day on the planet, how would you live?" he said. "I feel like in times like these, that's a poignant, worthy question to ask. That's what the album is kind of centered around and that's what I'm trying to do with my life, day in, day out, put everything into the day that I've got right there in front of me."
For bassist Tim Foreman — who is also Jon's brother — the album represented a sense of creative freedom after nearly 30 years together.
"'Forever Now' was a chance for us to really embrace what Switchfoot is," he said. "A lot of times you're exploring new territory and as an artist, that's always important. But this was a chance for us to play the songs and write the songs that maybe only Switchfoot could play."
Switchfoot performed "Meant to Live," the song that helped launch the band into mainstream success more than two decades ago, along with "Beautiful Life" and "Absolution" from the new album.
When asked what it is like to continue performing "Meant to Live" after all these years, Jon Foreman compared the song to an old friendship.
"Music has this ability to flow and become like a relationship," he said. "Through time it can change and some songs get worse where you play it and you think, 'Oh, I don't like that song as much,' or me and my friend, we don't have as much in common. 'Meant to Live' is a song that still means as much, maybe more than it did when I wrote it."
Grand Ole Opry debut
On July 23, the Grammy-winning alternative rock band stepped into the Grand Ole Opry Circle for the first time.
They opened with their signature hit, "Dare You to Move," before Jon Foreman paused to take in the moment.
"I assume y'all are thinking, 'What's that surfer, punk surfer doing with a cowboy hat on?'" he joked after borrowing a hat from a friend. "We've made many records out here. And to be the kid who's couch surfing around Nashville and writing songs, trying to figure out why they're here on the planet and to be playing one of those songs years and years later is a dream come true."
The band followed with "Only Hope," a song Foreman wrote in Nashville that later gained widespread recognition through Mandy Moore's performance in the film "A Walk to Remember." They then welcomed surprise guest Lainey Wilson to the stage for "Beautiful Life."
"Take a moment and just look around the room," Foreman said. "This moment is a gift. This life that we got right here is a gift."
Weeks before the performance, the Jonas Brothers surprised Switchfoot with the news during an appearance on the "Hey Jonas!" podcast. The friendship stretches back decades, with the Jonas Brothers frequently crediting Switchfoot as an early influence.
"As a musician, to see a legacy that's passed down from generation to generation, it feels like the Grand Ole Opry is a gift not just to America, but to the world," Foreman said. "One hundred years and still going strong. Unreal."
Bryan West is a music reporter at The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow him on Instagram, TikTok and X as @BryanWestTV.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Inside the Nashville sessions that shaped Switchfoot's 'Forever Now'
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