Writing a single album can be a daunting task, but for Switchfoot’s Jon Foreman, it wasn’t enough of a challenge. The Wonderlands is a series of four EPs, each themed around different times of the day. Sunlight, Shadows, Darkness, and Dawn make up the The Wonderlands. It’s a deeply personal series of albums, creating a sort-of confessional encompassing the contrast between light and dark, and the way that tension creates a sense of wonder and beauty.
October 23, Foreman will play a series of 25 concerts in 24 hours that focus heavily on these new works. Paste checked in with him about the albums so far, the influences behind the project, and his plans for these upcoming shows.
Paste:The Wonderlands is a huge project, working with 24 producers throughout the process. How did you go about finding producers and selecting who you wanted to work with on these albums?
Jon Foreman: So a lot of these guys are friends of mine, and I felt like they would have something to offer. Andrew Wessen from Grouplove, Charlie Peacock, Jeff Coffin from Dave Matthews Band, Darren King from Mutemath, Ryan O’Neal from Sleeping at Last. I pulled from people I felt like were the people who could get me to the places I wanted to go. For one of the songs I sent [Darren] a link to a YouTube video of me, performing the song live on a Casio keyboard at an after-show somewhere, and said, “Hey, here’s the song, can you produce it? You don’t have to keep any of what you’ve heard but this is the bare bones of it.” So the challenge was taking the idiosyncrasies of all the different tracks they were giving me and trying to keep the unique element of that song, while keeping it a cohesive body of work as a project.
Paste: Was it challenging to work with so many producers?
Foreman:I was never in the room with them while they were producing the tracks, because the whole time this project was being made I was on tour. It was an entirely musical conversation where I would send notes back on what my thoughts were and they would send notes back to me. The biggest portion of our conversation was speaking with music back and forth. So that was the biggest way I was challenged, was by the nature of the project, using notes rather than words to communicate.
Paste: You’ve said that the four albums correspond to different moods throughout the day. Do you have a favorite time of the day, one that you were looking forward to exploring?
Foreman:My favorite times of day are sunrise and sunset, so Darkness and Dawn. That moment where, I think photographers call them the “golden hours,” those are the times for me where the whole world takes on a different look, and the light and darkness are held in tension. For me that’s what this project is about, is that tension. For that one moment—maybe half an hour, maybe five minutes—I feel like the darkness and the light are shaking hands, and there’s a balance.
Paste: Would you say your faith played a significant role in the writing of these albums?
Foreman: Well, my belief is that faith plays a role in everything we say and do—the way I treat the cash register clerk, the way I drive. If we say faith doesn’t have anything to do with any portion of our lives, I think we’re just lying to ourselves. The way I see it is agnostic, Jewish, atheist, Christian—the way we treat each other, that’s our religion. So in these songs there’s a lot of outspoken dialogue about belief and doubt, and the way those two intersect. I love the idea, with this project, of using light and darkness as a metaphor for tension. Not just of light and dark, but of life and death, and fear and love, and faith and doubt, and so a lot of these songs deal with those things.
Paste: Is there a reason you chose to pursue this as a solo venture?
Foreman:A lot of this stuff feels really confessional in nature, and it’s a whole lot easier to confess where you’re the only one in the room, so this particular project felt like it needed to be one voice singing it. It’s pretty personal stuff, so it feels like it should be mine.