This is what I’m Hear for: Switchfoot’s ‘Hello Hurricane’ tour

By Alex Useman

On a rainy Tuesday night, on the 12^th, the crowd slowly formed the line that would soon cause the Showbox at the Market to oversell tickets to the night’s performance. Switchfoot’s new album tour ‘Hello Hurricane’ was ready to kick off.

As Switchfoot’s openers, Paper Tongues did a fantastic job. They had an odd but intriguing sound that comprised of rock mixed with electronica and rap. The band was also very active on stage. Lead singer Aswan North was constantly getting the crowd to wave their hands back and forth and moving to the music. Not only was North doing this but the rest of the band was constantly grooving to the beat and getting the crowd involved.

During the set, North was talking with the crowd about how the last time they had the opportunity to play in Seattle, tragedy struck the band when North’s mother passed away and they had to leave the previous tour. But they were immensely happy that they had the chance to play with Switchfoot and to be in Seattle finally. He also dedicated a portion of one of the songs to his mother. They played their big songs “4 the People,” “Trinity,” and a couple others along with their most popular song, which they ended their set with, “Ride to California.”

The start of Switchfoot’s set was ‘Needle and Haystack Life’ with an extended opening. The band came onto the stage and begun playing their instruments with the exception of their singer, Jon Foreman, as the song nears the vocal intro, the bassist, Tim Foreman points to the back of the crowd where he was standing on a banister and begun to sing. As the song went, he made his way through the crowd and onto the stage.

The band proceeded to play the entire new album from start to finish. During that time, they brought forward their drummer, Chad Butler, and had him play one of the songs in the spotlight instead of ‘in the shadows.’ As well, they brought forward their keyboardist/guitarist, Jerome Fontamillas, and he played accordion for that song.

Once ‘Red Eyes,’ the last track of their new album, had finished, they flipped the metaphorical vinyl for the night—meaning they were going to start playing older music from their other six albums.

They played some of their biggest hits including ‘Awakening,’ ‘Oh! Gravity,’ ‘Gone,’ and they also took requests which ended up with them playing part of ‘Chem 6A’ and ‘Only Hope.’ After that they played ‘Dare you to Move’ and ended with ‘Meant to Live.’

Once finished, they lined up, bowed, and left the stage.