CHAD BUTLER QUOTES

Quotes by Chad Butler taken from interviews, concerts, conversations, DVD's, & podcasts. We are constantly adding more quotes to these pages. Check back often!

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Funny Quotes [proceed]
God/Christianity/Faith Quotes [proceed]
Deep/Inspirational Quotes [proceed]
Music Quotes [proceed]
Band Quotes [proceed]
Fans/Concerts/Tour Quotes [proceed]
Drumming/Surfing Quotes [proceed]
Love/Family Quotes [proceed]
Miscellaneous Quotes [proceed]



FUNNY QUOTES

"They laugh at me because I can only count to four."

"We're musicians so we play sports, but we're very bad at it."

"If we can't be pro-surfers, then we'll be professional musicians who wish they were pro-surfers."

"We're all little oysters."

(On a Walk To Remember) "It's not a chick flick!"

"I keep thinking I’ve had the best day of my life, and then I beat it. Dangit!"

"Just getting ready to... fo-rock."

"The less I say, the smarter they think I am."

"Man, when you've had 6 albums, you have to remember so much more. It was easier when we had three."

"The goat was on fire, but I didn't light it."

"What does it take to get a Switchfoot Sudoku in a magazine?"

"Well, I was going to beat box, but it didn't feel appropriate."

"My name is Chad! There can only be one Chad in this town!"

"We are personally responsible for the drought in California. It all ended up in our video."
GOD/CHRISTIANITY/FAITH QUOTES


"There is a big difference between blind faith and honest faith. I was raised in the church. I have had to wrestle with what it is I believe outside of my friends and family. An honest faith is one that wrestles with doubts and hard questions. As I was growing up, I was afraid to question what I had been taught. I feared the outcome if I were to really question the beliefs I had inherited. What I found was in the moments I expressed my doubts and searched out the truth, I actually drew closer to the faith. I realized it was deeper than religion."

"Jon and I have talked before about how impossible it is to share the truth of God's grace in a three-minute pop song."

"Without sacred, you can not have secular.”
DEEP/INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES


"When I was a kid, my dad taught me about caring for other people. He encouraged me to go to Tijuana, [Mexico], to work with orphanages. It made me realize how important it is to be aware of your place in the world and to not have tunnel vision. I struggle with living in the most affluent country in the world, where it's difficult to not have blinders on to the needs of people around you. If there's something I'm passionate about, it's trying to keep my eyes open and to encourage other people to do the same: look around you and see what's going on outside your immediate sphere of influence. Being in a band, we have traveled and seen a lot of hurting people in dark situations. Even in my own community, there are people next door who are in dire need of love."

"One of the most important aspects of having a voice in our generation is to share the great need that exists around us. We want to share the beauty in dark places. People live their entires lives in South Africa, India, or even parts of the U.S. and are dealing with struggles that I will never face, yet they have an artistic, musical, creative life within the confines of what they're given."

"May the best of the past be the worst of the future."

(At a Youth Leader talk back session) "I get jealous when I hang out with friends at home who are involved in Youth Ministry year-round in one community. Because when we started traveling, it would sort of frustrate me how we would meet these amazing kids and have a five minute conversation that was just a tease of what's going on in that kid's life. For you guys, to get to day in, day out, work with these kids long term, build relationships with them and love them. That's huge. That's so much bigger than a three minute pop song."

"Life is too short to delay reality."

"My natural high is waking up in the morning and realizing that this could be the best day of my life."

"I want to make the most of every day."


MUSIC QUOTES

"When I got U2's CD, 'The Josuah Tree', I felt like someone was putting into words the feelings I couldn't express. That album got me through my junior high and high school years, and made me feel like there was someone who understood the struggles of being human - the doubts and wrestingling with faith. Now, being in a band, the element of music motivates me. Getting to hear from a kid halfway around the world who says he's getting something meaningful out of these songs is really fulfilling."

(On Dirty Second Hands) "It's a tricky time signature so it's one of those ones where you can't count it, you just have to feel it."

"Hold on to quieter things, the space between the notes"

(On the songs) "We've always been collaborating in terms of arrangement, but usually the heart of the lyrics comes from Jon."

"It's great to see the songs become famous, but fame was never the goal of the band. I grew up listening to certain songs that inspired me and got me through hard times, and it is a really fulfilling thing to meet people around the world who would say that about our music. The live show is a two-way conversation; we throw it out there and to hear the crowd singing it right back even louder is pretty amazing."

"We have a rule as a band that “the song is king” – sometimes simple percussion is all it needs, and other times it needs full rock drums."

"I think as a band we consciously try to create parts that support the vocal, being careful to work with the lyric and melody and not overplay or distract from it."

"I’ll often record sound check with a video camera set up behind me so I can remember those performances of a song in its early stages, before the routine and regularity of more formal rehearsal sets in and the initial creative energy is lost."

"Music is a communication."

(Talking about how many Beautiful Letdown albums sold) "Well, I know my mom bought a couple, so...."

(Talking about Nothing Is Sound) "For us, it was a little different because we were on tour supporting The Beautiful Letdown for SO long, two years straight on the road. We learned early on in our career that we would have to continue to make music year round. You can't wait for deadlines, and now you have an album due, and the record company is towing you into the courts. So we just brought everything with us on tour and we basically set up our instruments backstage in whatever dirty backstage dressing room we were in and made music. And with the technology today, you can pretty much do that anywhere. And in every city there is a little background noise of trucks going by in different songs and people that we met singing in the background. It was great. We actually had a chance to record in South Africa, and we had some kids in a choir there sing. We recorded them and also in Germany... met some people and just taught them a song and said 'Hey can you sing on this?' so it was great. It just has a little bit of that travel or the journey of the last couple years embedded in the music."

"The heart and soul of these songs [on NIS] were born on the road."

"The audience were really co-producers on this album [NIS], picking what songs made the cut."

"We talk about the meaning of lyrics for hours on the road, and each song means different things to each of us."

"'Happy Is A Yuppie Word' comes from a Bob Dylan quote. He told a reporter that had asked him about his success and his career, if he was happy, and Bob replied – wait I guess you can't call him Bob – DYLAN replied 'Happy is a yuppie word, I'm blessed.' And that sort of started a conversation, a discussion, that turned into a song that became the catalyst for the record."
BAND QUOTES

"Drew is a very good guitar hero player, almost as good as he is on real guitar."

(Chad on the band) "It's kinda like a marriage."

(To Jerome) "Are you listening? We love you buddy."

(On Switchfoot) "Everyone grew up in kind of musical families. We kind of met each other through playing in different bands and through the surfing community in San Diego. We grew up participating in surfing contests and seeing each other on the weekends. We were playing in different bands in San Diego, and those bands kind of broke up and we decided to join forces. We started out playing songs in Jon's bedroom in his parents' house, and now we have just released our first major label record on Columbia."

"Yeah, we are still living in San Diego where we grew up. We call it home, and it's a great music scene. It's really an amazing place. We are really grateful for the support from the people in San Diego who have been listening to us for...gosh...ten years or so...even beyond when we were in other bands, just growing up in that scene."

“Besides being the only band name that wasn't already taken, 'Switchfoot' is meaningful as it takes a bit of home with us on the road."

"We [Switchfoot] are definitely coffee-drinking, book-reading, conversationalists at heart."

"Labels have never... I've never felt like they've affected the sound of the band on one level or another. But I will say that there is a freedom being off of a label, having our independence; it feels really good. To be able to put out anytime we want is really exciting."

(On what it is like touring with Switchfoot) "Love it. Well, like I said, it's like a family. I'd never be in another band. I think that if I weren't in Switchfoot, I wouldn't be touring at all. It sounds hard to imagine not being with this group of guys. We have such a great time on and off stage. Our families are all really close, too. Even when we aren't on the road, we are all hangin' out back home."


FANS/CONCERTS/TOUR QUOTES
"Oh yeah, we did years in mini van. Or two mini vans. We thought we were big time; we just graduated. A lot of good memories. One time in Europe, we didn't have enough money for a hotel room, so we had to sleep on the floor of a train station because we had to pay our way over France because we heard the waves were good there."

"As far as what motivates us to play, it's about passion and not about numbers. We thought we were successful playing for 20 people in a coffee house back in college. Getting bigger doesn't change our outlook at all. It is exciting to know a lot more people are able to listen to our music now."

"I have been given so much. Every morning I wake up, I thank God that I get to play music. The more I travel the more I realize that there is incredible hope in some of the most unlikely places."

"Probably the most fulfilling thing for me is after the show, we always go out and talk to people. That's a really valuable part of the night, to get to interact and find out what people are listening to, and often times have a conversation about the music that we played and experienced tonight."

(Talking about Switchfoot's trip to South Africa and lowercase people) "Over the last couple of years, we got involved with Bono's organization, 'Data', in turn with the ONE Campaign. Sort of as a way to educate ourselves, we made the stop in Cape Town to be shown around by some of the locals there and to see what is going on and the contrast between villages of AID's orphans living right along side really well off working class people. It's an interesting thing that we feel like we want to tell the story of the people that we meet in these kind of places. It's one of the things in traveling the world you find these stories, these personal people, you know them by name and to get to share that what we've done is started this website called lowercasepeople.com. It's just a way for us to shine the spotlight on musicians in other parts of the world and communities that are experiencing social injustice, and also to create a forum for discussion in literature, music, and issues of social justice."


DRUMMING/SURFING QUOTES

"I got my first drum kit in junior high, but I have been playing, gosh, since before I can even remember. Me and my buddies would come home after school and jam in my garage. Typical garage band."

"I think it was my mom who first taught me to hold down the 2 and 4 as soon as I could count that high. I got my first drum set when I was 13, set up in my parent's garage, and proceeded to drive the neighbors crazy while playing with headphones to the Police and Stevie Wonder."

"Growing up, I always wanted to play drums in a band. I never thought of playing music as a legitimate career, just something I'd always do for fun. I guess that makes me the unlikely professional, and a grateful one at that. The surfing job is a funny story... I thought I had the best job in the world “working” at the beach everyday, teaching a surfing class for the university and playing music at night. The band got really busy so I eventually quit the teaching job, married one of my students, and the rest is history."

"Yeah, our high school had a surf team, even a surf PE class. I know that sound ridiculous. Yeah, getting school credit for surfing waves!"

"We grew up in San Diego where it seemed like just about everybody splits their time between surfing and playing music."

(On surfing) "You know, I think it's a big part of our culture here, you know, growing up in San Diego on the beach. I think as a sport it has somewhat of a correlation with art in general just because you're sort of looking at waves as a blank canvas. For me, as far as an inspiration for playing music, it's always been a great escape from all the noise of the daily routine. You kind of jump out in the ocean and you're in another world. There are always those incredible moments when you're out there, and the sun is setting, and the dolphins are going by. You can't compare that to anything on land. Then there's also those moments when you've got 10 of your friends out there and you're just goofing around having a good time. It's sort of the best-of-both-worlds; you can be isolated or you can be in the midst of a lot of friends"

"I think my favorite aspect of being into a sport like surfing is the chase, the search for good waves. You're always traveling around wherever the waves are hitting that day to a different beach."

"We actually try to tour wherever there's a good surf spot, the major coastal cities. We always try to bring our boards on tour with us in the back of the bus.”

"It's definitely desperate times when you have to resort to the wave pool or behind the boat, but it's better than sitting on the tour bus."

"Surfing is a lifestyle that we will be living long after the band is over."
LOVE/FAMILY QUOTES

"I would love to see my kids grow up and become creative people."

"In different stages of my life, there have been different passions. I grew up caring more about music and surfing than any other activities. Now, as a husband and father, those things take priority. As a father, I have learned more about myself than in any other stage of my life. It's taught me about how selfish I am."

(On his most memorable moment of 2004) "The birth of my son Dylan. That's a life land marker milestone, and it will change your life. Makes you appreciate everyday."

(On marriage and being away from home) "I think traveling also forces you to be very intentional. That goes beyond [just] musicians, you know, I have friends who travel for work, all different lines of work, you know. I think that as a husband you have to be much more intentional with communication and trying to love very specifically and very directly, so it's taught me a lot."
MISCELLANEOUS QUOTES
"I would love to write a book about people's travels. I always read National Geographic and books about people traveling the world, and I would love to surf in Indonesia."

Interviewer: If Jesus walked the Earth today and had an iPod, what five songs would definitely be on it?
Chad: [laughs] "Well, if we're talking in the fantastic, I would hope that it had something from King David on it."

"Full speed ahead!"

"We're just passing through Texas, and you know, that's a country all in it's own. It might take us a few days."

I was a History of Science Major. Which is actually a rare degree, and UCSD is a good place to go if you're a history of science person. I spent a whole year on Galileo. And now I beat drums with sticks for a living. It's very primal."