Photo by David Od
Needtobreathe
Needtobreathe
The past three years have been especially productive for Needtobreathe, considering the band has released three albums in that span, while also leaving quite a few extra songs in the vault. Keyboardist Josh Lovelace says the wealth of music reflects where Needtobreathe is at after more than 20 years as a band.
“Everybody’s just in a good space where we love the band, we love making music, but we don’t have to. It doesn’t feel like as much of a job as it has sometimes,” Lovelace said. “We don’t have to do this for a job. We’re very fortunate that we get to, but the drive for success or fame or notoriety, we’re all at a place in our lives where we’ve checked off a lot of boxes.”
The mood in Needtobreathe is especially striking within the big picture of the band’s career. For large chunks of time, conflict existed, specifically between founding members, chief songwriters and brothers Bear (lead singer, guitar, keyboards) and Bo Rinehart (guitar).
Both Rinehart brothers are talented songwriters. And that became a problem as the group began making albums, initially making an impact on the Christian rock scene with their first two CDs, Daylight (2006) and Heat (2007), before breaking through to mainstream rock in 2009 with the band’s third album, The Outsiders and their first top 10 album with The Reckoning (2011). The dynamic between Bear and Bo Rinehart had grown toxic. Rather than pushing them to write better songs, the competitive nature of the songwriting was corroding the brothers’ relationship and the dynamic within Needtobreathe as a whole. The Rineharts eventually agreed their relationship as brothers was more important than bickering over songs and they sought to de-escalate their writing relationship. For a time they succeeded, and Needtobreathe notched two top-5 albums with Rivers in the Wasteland (2014) and Hard Love (2016). But the issues returned, and in April 2020, Bo Rinehart left Needtobreathe.
With the band’s latest album, Caves, Lovelace said that he and his bandmates hope to elevate Needtobreathe to where they consistently headline arenas and will be able to tour at that level for some time to come. And Caves is meant to translate to the biggest concert stages.
