Switchfoot in San Francisco

Posted by jesse on Jan 24, 2010 • (1)

Two weeks ago Christen and I saw a Switchfoot show downtown San Francisco.

They have been my favourite band for years so I was excited when I heard they would be playing near us. Before the show we were lucky enough to be able to watch the sound check and even spend a little time with the band and get a picture taken. Alright, so the only reason we were allowed to do this is because I’m a member of their fan club – yes, how very high-school of me – regardless, it was amazing.

Photo with Switchfoot

We showed up at the venue at 3pm and waited in line with the rest of the fans. Christen reliably bolted across the street to the nearest Starbucks (for her soy decaf latté) where she ran into the keyboard player Jerome! She said hi while trying not to sound like a crazed fan.

The sound check was interesting – it was cool to be able to hear them try different ways of playing their songs and see them play with a much smaller crowd than usual.

After the sound check we got a chance to spend a few minutes with the band which was kind of surreal since I have been a fan for about 10 years now. It turned out that they are really personable group and we chatted about Starbucks, working for Apple, surfing and Canada (they picked out our accents). Some of them had braved the chilly water and caught some waves earlier that day at Pacifica (20 mins south of San Francisco).

The structure of the show was different from any concert I had seen before – it was broken into 2 sets: first they played their entire new album “Hello Hurricane” from start to finish and the 2nd set featured songs from previous albums. In general, most albums have say 3 or so songs that have “hit-potential” or are “single-worthy” and the rest are clearly a notch below, so playing the whole album straight through usually wouldn’t work. But for Switchfoot’s latest I count at least 8 “single-worthy” tracks and the rest are still really good songs.

It made for a great show even though we left a little deaf. Check the pics below and the movie (only 45 seconds long) from my iPhone (sound quality is poor).