Bear Rinehart of NEEDTOBREATHE Talks Black Crowes, Different Influences – Billboard

Earlier than Bear Rinehart co-founded the band NEEDTOBREATHE and have become a platinum-selling, arena-filling rock musician, he was impressed to choose up a guitar by one of many nice Southern rock bands of the previous few a long time: the Black Crowes. The son of a Christian pastor, Rinehart grew up round gospel music. The Black Crowes had an uplifting sound — with a swagger — that made sense to him. “It’s like such a gospel-soul-rock and roll mesh,” he tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast.

Rinehart lives exterior of Nashville — the middle of nation, Americana and the Christian music companies within the U.S. — however grew up in South Carolina, not removed from the Black Crowes’ residence of Atlanta. Rinehart was surrounded by “a well-rehearsed, very gifted” church band with “every kind of nice gear,” he recollects. He picked up the music of nice soul singers like Joe Cocker, Ray Charles and Otis Redding too. And rising up within the South left him surrounded by bluegrass and mountain music, the place banjos and mandolins are customary devices. 

A youth spent listening to bluesy roots music and uplifting church music comes by means of in Rinehart’s second solo album, FEVER/SKY, launched on March 24 by Dualtone Information underneath the title Wilder Woods. No Melancholy known as FEVER/SKY “a celebration in a bottle, an ode to the sweaty depth of old-time rock and roll.” Throughout its 11 tracks, FEVER/SKY additionally captures the uplifting feelings that drawn listeners to NEEDTOBREATHE.

“It all the time felt such as you’re making an attempt to sing songs that you could lean on, what I imply?” Rinehart says. “I really feel like that’s the place gospel comes from. It’s virtually just like the factor that you should survive with. And I feel as I’ve grown up and bought right into a ton of various kinds of music, I might say, that’s in all probability the thread that I nonetheless really feel as essential. The music I hearken to principally meets me in that place it wanted to satisfy me.”

Wilder Woods opens for the Avett Brothers on July 8 at Purple Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colo., and can carry out on the Moon River Music Competition in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Sept. 10. NEEDTOBREATHE will play three dates in mid-July earlier than beginning a string of dates on Aug. 11 in Inexperienced Bay, Wis., that concludes on the Kansas State Honest in Hutchinson, Kan., on Sept. 8.

Hearken to the complete Behind the Setlist interview with Rinehart at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeart, Amazon Music or Audible.