Switchfoot straddles sacred and secular music; performing at KingsFest this weekend

Six years ago, Switchfoot's radio presence was ubiquitous.

The band's fourth album, "The Beautiful Letdown," provided the breakthrough for the San Diego-based quintet, and its Top 20 alt-rock hits, "Meant to Live" and "Dare You to Move," moonlighted as favorite targets of music coordinators for such gooey shows as "Dawson's Creek" and "Felicity."

That exposure helped "Beautiful" sell more than 2.5 million copies. Today, "Felicity" and those kids from The Creek are a TV footnote, but Switchfoot is still hanging tough.

The band's new album, "Hello Hurricane," is due in September, and the recording process was so prolific, said Switchfoot bassist Tim Foreman, that four albums' worth of material is almost ready for release.

"With a lot of albums, you know where you're headed and you start jogging to the finish line. But with this one, we didn't know where the finish line was, so we started pursuing different avenues and wound up with 80 or 90 songs," he said recently by phone from the front porch of his San Diego home.

"Hurricane" and its already-titled 2010 companion, "Vice Verses," will be releasedindependently -- a first for the band, which found its commercial success with Columbia Records.

But Switchfoot's relationship with the label deteriorated after the 2005 release of "Nothing Is Sound," when Columbia and parent company Sony Music insisted on releasing the disc embedded with invasive copy-protection software. The band publicly decried the move.

Foreman, who along with his brother Jon (Switchfoot's lead singer/guitarist) lived in Norfolk for a few years in his teens, said he and his bandmates -- Chad Butler (drums), Jerome Fontamillas (keyboard/guitar) and Drew Shirley (guitar) -- have no regrets about leaving Columbia.

"We definitely approached ['Hello Hurricane'] differently than any others in the past. We threw a really wide net and didn't know what we were fishing for," Foreman said. "Maybe subconsciously that freedom carried over, because it's been a great season of inspiration. . . . To me, it sounds like a Switchfoot record, but it's also new territory for us. It feels like we're in a completely new phase as a band. [The record] feels a little more dangerous and less produced. Maybe more honest."

While Switchfoot is evolving musically, one thing hasn't changed: The band continues to straddle the line between sacred and secular music.

In its early days, Switchfoot (its name comes from a surfing term) was marketed primarily to the Christian-music industry.

Then, in 2002, four of its songs were used in the Mandy Moore movie "A Walk to Remember," and mainstream triumphs were impossible to ignore.

Even this summer, the band will play to different audiences. The guys have joined fellow KingsFest acts newsboys, Skillet (a rock band that has also enjoyed mainstream-chart success the past few years) and other Christian-oriented artists at several religion-based festivals.

Then, at the end of July, Switchfoot will embark on a monthlong tour with secular rockers Blue October ("Hate Me," "Into the Ocean").

Is it hard to co-exist in both worlds?

"It's unusual to be a band that does what we do," Foreman said. "We're a band of believers that doesn't feel the need to be pigeonholed and play only for one type of fan. Songs about life relate to all sorts of people. We don't pretend to have everything figured out -- we express hope, doubt, love, things we can all relate to.

"Whether it's a Christian fest or in front of a typical touring crowd, like with Blue October, the goal is honesty. When you wear your heart on your sleeves like we do in our songs, you can take that anywhere."

Contact Melissa Ruggieri at (804) 649-6120 or .