{"id":1394,"date":"2014-10-22T16:30:02","date_gmt":"2014-10-22T20:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/?p=1394"},"modified":"2015-03-02T17:25:44","modified_gmt":"2015-03-02T22:25:44","slug":"a-conversation-with-needtobreathe-lead-singer-bear-rinehart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/2014\/10\/a-conversation-with-needtobreathe-lead-singer-bear-rinehart.html","title":{"rendered":"A conversation with NEEDTOBREATHE lead singer Bear Rinehart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"NTB1\"<\/a>
NEEDTOBREATHE (left to right): Bo Rinehart, Bear Rinehart and Seth Bolt. (photo courtesy of The Media Collective)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bear and Bo Rineheart\u2019s lives could have gone a lot of different directions. Bear was a star football player at Furman University and was talented enough to pursue a career beyond his college days. Bo appeared in the film Radio <\/em>and was on the verge of accepting a recurring role in the television series \u201cOne Tree Hill.\u201d<\/p>\n

But having been raised on a church campground in South Carolina where their artistically gifted parents were the caretakers, it seemed only natural that their love of music would dictate the path they would collectively walk. While many might have assumed the Rinehart\u2019s band NEEDTOBREATHE would head towards the Christian market, it was actually a unique opportunity from Atlantic Records in 2006 that pushed them headlong into the mainstream.<\/p>\n

Since then, NEEDTOBREATHE has released five critically acclaimed albums, has toured with Taylor Swift and appeared on major television programs including \u201cThe Tonight Show,\u201d \u201cLate Night with David Letterman,\u201d and \u201cConan.\u201d NEEDTOBREATHE has been equally embraced within the faith community where the band has won 10 Dove Awards and placed numerous singles on the Christian radio charts.<\/p>\n

In this Whole Notes interview, lead singer Bear Rinehart talks about changes the band has gone through over the years, why they have been embraced in multiple markets, and how a rift between him and his brother Bo nearly destroyed it all:<\/p>\n

Chad Bonham: How much have you guys changed from the earliest days of NEEDTOBREATHE and in what ways do you feel like you\u2019re still the same?<\/p>\n

Bear Rinehart: We\u2019ve gone through some serious changes throughout our career for sure, but I think it\u2019s all been a process of trying to get back to who we really are as people. The Outsiders <\/em>was a record that was kind of a peek into who we are. I think this new record (Rivers In The Wasteland<\/em>) is the most vulnerable that we\u2019ve been. It\u2019s probably the most true to who we are. I don\u2019t know why it\u2019s so hard for us to shed some of those layers, whether its production or things that are surrounding the band. But I really think that this record is what we\u2019re all about and I do think it\u2019s similar to how we grew up and what it would be like if weren\u2019t trying to make records and if we didn\u2019t have the mics turned up.<\/p>\n

Bonham: I\u2019ve never seen anything like what\u2019s happened with this band. Like no other artist, you guys were immediately embraced in both the general and Christian markets and you\u2019ve been able to play music wherever you want to play without dealing with much criticism from either side. Have you ever been able to figure out how that happened?<\/p>\n

\"Rivers<\/a>
Rivers In The Wasteland is NEEDTOBREATHE’s fifth studio album. (photo courtesy of The Media Collective)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rinehart: We\u2019ve been very fortunate in that way. There are a lot of bands that made that possible. Switchfoot was one of the bands that paved the way for that to happen. They fought some battles that we didn\u2019t have to fight. We\u2019re thankful for that for sure. It was really intentional, in terms of how we approached the early part of our career from a business standpoint. We got offered a lot of Christian contracts when we first came out and we turned those down because we wanted to make sure we set it up the right way and give ourselves a chance to be able to do everything we wanted to do. We made some mistakes along the way. I\u2019d be lying if I said we did it all right. It hasn\u2019t always gone according to plan, but at the same time, we\u2019ve been really fortunate to do what we set out to do, which was make music for as many people as possible. We wanted kids who were like us to enjoy our music, but we also wanted their friends to like our music too. We wanted people that would never go to a Christian store or go to a church to listen to music to be able to get into our music. That\u2019s what we set out to do. I think we\u2019ve been able to keep that dream alive. God put that on our hearts and it\u2019s been His plan, which has been amazing to be a part of.<\/p>\n

Bonham: You\u2019ve been pretty open recently about some struggles you and your brother Bo have gone through while working on music and touring together with the band.<\/p>\n

Rinehart: It got pretty intense there for a while. We had talked ourselves into believing that it was actually good that we were fighting. It was competitive. We were writing songs. He would write a song and I would try to beat it with another song. It just got to be almost a joke. It was two leaders of a band that were trying to be right all the time. It was really childish when you look at it. In the thick of those things, because our priorities had gotten screwed up a little bit, it made sense to us somehow. The process for making this record was huge for us. We were able to take some time off and look back at the situation. It drove us back to a place where we were ready to quit. We were over it. If this was the way it was going to be, we weren\u2019t enjoying it anymore. It was tearing up our family relationship. That\u2019s not how we got into this. We got into this because we loved every second of it. We got into this because we love each other. This couldn\u2019t be our identity. We do it because God gave us this gift, but it can\u2019t be more important than anything else. So we started backing up from that and it\u2019s changed everything about how we do things. Our relationship has never been better. There\u2019s a song on the record called \u201cBrother.\u201d It has a line that says, \u201cLet me be your shelter.\u201d We just want to defend each other. We want to be there for each other.<\/p>\n

Bonham: But it wasn\u2019t like The Police back in the \u201880s when Sting and Stewart Copeland were getting into fistfights during TV interviews before they broke up.<\/p>\n

\"NTB2\"<\/a>
NEEDTOBREATHE (photo courtesy of The Media Collective)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rinehart: No, it really was <\/em>like that. It had gotten so bad. We got to the point where we were in different dressing rooms on the last tour. And it\u2019s just childish. I can say it in a laughing way now, but it really speaks to how dark of a place we were in. Just like the first track on our record says, we were in a wasteland. \u201cI\u2019m the first one in line to die when the cavalry comes.\u201d That\u2019s the way it felt at the time. We titled the album Rivers In The Wasteland <\/em>because we felt like God put a river into our relationship and something had to be done and was <\/em>done. It was something new and refreshing that God did. He revived us from a dying place. It was a miracle. It really was. It took us a year to make that record that should have taken us three<\/em> weeks to make. We had all the songs written and next thing you know it\u2019s a year later. It just showed what kind of place we were in when we started. It was a God thing. He broke through and changed everything.<\/p>\n

Bonham: Anyone can be fulfilling their calling and walking out the path God laid out for them and still somehow wind up getting lost. Is that what happened to you guys?<\/p>\n

Rinehart: Definitely. We felt like we had hit the bottom. We felt like we had really messed things up. What you\u2019re saying is true. There were a lot of our friends and some other artists that saw us during that time and they would come to us and tell us how our music had impacted them. So God can use you regardless of what you\u2019re doing. He can still work through you. That\u2019s just a picture of God\u2019s grace throughout this whole thing. Even in our darkest times, God was still ministering through what we were doing in an incredible way. He chose not to take this thing from us, which is absolutely unbelievable to me. This process has felt like an absolute gift. We feel incredibly blessed to do what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

Bonham: After what you guys went through the last couple of years, was it important for this new record to be stripped down and transparent?<\/p>\n

Rinehart: I think it was, but I also think people sometimes give us too much credit when they listen to our record and think about the forethought that goes into how a record is going to end up. A lot of times, a record, when you\u2019re writing it, is so raw. A lot of the songs are written during those tough times. We were amazed at the end of the process how God put this record together. It was almost prophetic in a way. You know what you\u2019re writing about because you\u2019re in the situation, but you don\u2019t necessarily see the end of the situation and how it\u2019s going to tie itself up. Some of the tracks at the beginning of the record are in a really dark place and at the time, to be completely honest, I didn\u2019t know what the purpose of putting those songs down was. I just knew that\u2019s where I <\/em>was. That\u2019s the real power of the record. It was a real journey being documented. I think you can hear that in the songs. It keeps us humble for sure. It makes us know that we don\u2019t have all the answers. God allowed us to finish the process, but it was like He was reminding us that we have to trust Him moving forward. We had to learn while we were making this record. Our best records have been made that way. We couldn\u2019t see the end of it before we started and we didn\u2019t know how it was going to wrap up.<\/p>\n

To keep up with the latest from NEEDTOBREATHE, check out the band\u2019s official website: www.needtobreathe.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bear and Bo Rineheart\u2019s lives could have gone a lot of different directions. Bear was a star football player at Furman University and was talented enough to pursue a career beyond his college days. Bo appeared in the film Radio and was on the verge of accepting a recurring role in the television series \u201cOne…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":418,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,70,120],"tags":[744,604,605,417,742,743,748,746,433,747,745],"class_list":["post-1394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-music","category-music-feature","category-qa","tag-atlantic-records","tag-bear-rinehart","tag-bo-rinehart","tag-needtobreathe","tag-one-tree-hill","tag-radio","tag-rivers-in-the-wasteland","tag-stewart-copeland","tag-sting","tag-the-outsiders","tag-the-police"],"yoast_head":"\nA conversation with NEEDTOBREATHE lead singer Bear Rinehart - Whole Notes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/2014\/10\/a-conversation-with-needtobreathe-lead-singer-bear-rinehart.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A conversation with NEEDTOBREATHE lead singer Bear Rinehart - Whole Notes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bear and Bo Rineheart\u2019s lives could have gone a lot of different directions. 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Chad is currently working on five new books including Sooner Legacy, Husker Legacy and Lessons From Sooner Football (Cross Training) as well as The Faith of Stock Car Racing (Judson Press). When he's not writing, Chad lends his efforts to various independent television and film projects. He was the coordinating producer for Choosing Life (2010) and Life Happens (2011). Chad is currently serving as producer on a forthcoming documentary about Super Bowl champion Brian Kinchen. Chad and his wife Amy live in Broken Arrow, Okla., with sons Lance (September 2003), Cole (February 2008) and Quinn (February 2011).","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/author\/cbonham"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/418"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1394"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1400,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394\/revisions\/1400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/wholenotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}