Bear Rinehart Is Preparing and Performing Like It’s Game Day
Like a football powerhouse, Bear Rinehart and NEEDTOBREATHE have been riding a high-octane offense at every tour stop for nearly a quarter century. The jump from South Carolina bar band to platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated showstoppers has come from the same tried-and-true game plan: Leave every ounce of energy onstage each night, leave fans wanting more, then leave town and repeat at the next stop.
Although an artist’s work has no offseason—there’s always new music to craft and songs to release, such as the recently dropped video for “Take Me Dancing”—the new season begins Aug. 26, when the alt-rock-Americana artists kick off The Long Surrender Tour in Maryland Heights, MO. At age 45, Rinehart is nowhere conceding an ounce of energy to Father Time, not for this tour, nor hopefully for any in the near future.
“Maybe I’m one of those guys who still thinks he’s 20, but in terms of the live show, I feel like we’re better than we’ve ever been,” Rinehart says.
When he was 20—at a time when platinum records like 2014’s “Brother” were still lofty but perhaps out-of-reach dreams—Rinehart was setting receiving records at Division I-AA Furman. The two-time All–Southern Conference wide receiver helped lead the Paladins to four playoff appearances, including a trip to the 2001 championship game.
Rinehart treated football just like a concert, meaning he left it all on the field for four quarters. In his final game, Rinehart set a team record for receptions in his final game, a playoff loss to Villanova—then walked away, even with the remote possibility of landing with an NFL team.
“My body was beaten up pretty bad,” he says. “I was like, ‘Man, I don’t think I could’ve seen myself doing this for three years and being better than I was right then.’”
At 45, Rinehart is in his music prime. Remnants of the passion and energy from his wide receiver days show up onstage. But music has its own version of wear and tear. While Rinehart’s voice remains as sharp and powerful today, his body he says is starting to show signs of fatigue, especially during the tail end of a four-night run.
Unfortunately for Rinehart, music offers no load-management days. Fans who pay top dollar to see the 18-time GMA Dove Award winners (honors given to the best in Christian and Gospel music) on Night 4 of a four-show stretch don’t care how well he performed three nights earlier or how his body feels at showtime. They expect, and deserve, the same intensity they’d get from a fresh band on Night 1. And Rinehart is doing what takes to deliver each night.
“The big challenge for us is to try to let them feel like that night is special,” he says. “It’s like we’re all in this together. I know that they weren’t there the night before, and for the band, sometimes it’s easy to forget that.”
This year, Rinehart is approaching the lead-up to the band’s 25-city tour like a training camp—an approach he began implementing during last year’s Barely Elegant Acoustic tour. He’s started by eliminating the easy distractions, beginning with late nights and the drinks that come with them. For him, an early-to-bed mentality has been the catalyst for more mindful mornings.
“I’ve become such an old man,” he says of his routine. “[After the show] I’ll have a meal when I get offstage. Then it’s like, I want to read a book, call my wife, and then I’m in bed.”
For the “Testify” singer, clarity on the road begins with an early breakfast, before the rest of the band wakes.
By stacking an early win at the breakfast table, the rest of his itinerary falls into place, starting with more consistent workouts—something he’s struggled with in years past. Now there are really no excuses. He hits the gym whenever possible and has even adjusted the simple pleasures of tour life to put on the best performance. An innocent round of golf may be preempted—especially in the summer heat—which can leave him spent by showtime.
All this preparation points to one simple takeaway: Fans can expect a stronger, more energetic performance night after night.
“It’s been a commitment of mine over the last year,” he says. “I have to keep this going. I feel tons better when I keep it rolling. On that fourth day when you’re tired, it’s like, ‘Man, let’s go get a sweat in’—you’re going to feel good about your day.”
How to Build a Big-Play Receiver at a Small School
Reading Bear Rinehart’s media guide profile painted him as an all-around player who ran “efficient routes,” with the ability to make the “spectacular reception and big play after the catch,” a “proven threat off the reverse,” and a “quality blocker.”
One of those plays—a one-handed grab against Tennessee State—remains embedded in his memory.
“It was a slant route, I remember, right over the linebacker,” he says. “He was kind of covering the flat, so it was right off his back shoulder. The ball just sailed, and I really just threw a hand up. It wasn’t like I planned it. And somehow I came down with it.”
His full name is William Stanley Rinehart III, and he earned the nickname “Bear” from his parents, so football became an obvious part of life growing up in South Carolina. But even after earning all-state honors his senior season, at around 6′ and 185 pounds, Rinehart wasn’t the prototype-size athlete that excited big-time college scouts. He had to build himself into becoming legitimate big-play college receiver. On the field and in the film room.
“I was a fast kid coming out of high school,” he says. “But back then, if you weren’t 6’5″, it wasn’t D1. All the slot receivers that exist now did not exist then.”
What Rinehart had in his favor was the support of a football legend: South Carolina native and 2025 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Sterling Sharpe, who was one of the coaches at a summer football camp. Rinehart says the former Green Bay Packers wideout took a liking to his attention to detail and route-running ability. “I became his favorite,” he says. “So he was sending letters out for me to colleges. I just loved every little detail of route running. I just wanted every edge I could get.”
He stayed in-state, accepting an offer from Furman, then a Division I-AA program (now the Football Championship Subdivision, or FCS), where he immediately made an impact.
Rinehart finished his career as the Paladins’ all-time leading receiver with 126 receptions. In his four seasons, Furman made four playoff appearances, won two Southern Conference championships, and reached the national championship game his junior year in 2001, before losing to Montana.
He entered his senior season knowing there was a chance the NFL could come calling. But he made his decision before the 2002 first-round playoff loss to Villanova—then went out and set a school record with 12 catches for 139 yards. Despite the performance, he had already chosen to pursue music full time. With his body already breaking down, and the grind it would take to train for the combine, there was still only a slim shot he’d land on an NFL team.
Music was already blooming. No matter how hard the choice, he stuck with it.
“Physically, I just didn’t feel [great], and music had started to happen,” he says. “There were agents calling at the time, and I would’ve been invited to camp as a free agent and see if you can find a fit somewhere. So I had decided that I wasn’t going to go to all the pro days. I was just like, I think I’ve moved on.”
Still, the finality of his last game lingers.
“I think about that all the time—walking in that locker room the last time with guys I’m still on a text thread with now. It was really the end. It was crazy.”
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NEEDTOBREATHE won’t be touring alone. The husband-and-wife duo of Drew and Ellie Holcomb will be supporting the band for its entire run. Three months before showtime, Rinehart says he’s already given Drew an unofficial but equally important role: golf tour manager. “Drew is a big golfer, so I told him he has to be, like, the tour manager for golf,” Rinehart says.
Getting in 18 holes of golf is one of the ways Rinehart unwinds during his time away from home. While golf has its physical and mental benefits, during the summer months he has to be more mindful of when to shut it down before showtime. “I played Peachtree one year,” he recalls. “It was the night we were playing the amphitheater in Atlanta, and I was totally spent by the time I got to the show.”
Golf is one side essential of Rinehart’s recommitment to regaining the receiver-like stamina his battle-tested body has begun lacking over time. The rest, he says, comes from a consistent routine built on fundamentals for keeping his body in check for the physicality of two-plus hours in front of packed theaters. “It’s the boring stuff—rest and water and all those kind of things,” he says. “I do a steam thing now as part of my real routine. I feel like I’m a pitcher pitching every five days.”
The regimen, he says, is nothing splashy or over-amped, which is a long way from the weight rooms of Furman. Rinehart laughs when he thinks about his freshman introduction to the highly energized Paladins gym. “I remember walking in the locker room with all these guys, and they had chains on everything,” he recalls. “Everyone was slapping each other, and it was hot. It was so meathead—you’re talking max squats, max hang cleans, all that kind of stuff.”
Now, as a 40-something father of three boys, Rinehart doesn’t need to clank together multiple plates on the bar for a 1RM, but he still uses the same basic Furman template that helped him set a season-record of 70 receptions for 892 yards in 2002. “I do the upper-body workouts and shoulders and back and all that stuff, pretty similar to what I did then,” he says.
With defenders no longer chasing him down, running has become the odd activity out in his training program. Like a fighter who gets in shape by sparring, his real conditioning comes from two-plus hours of performing. “I get plenty of cardio in the shows,” he says. “I might run a couple times a week, but it’s really about lifting and trying to stay strong.”
To keep the voice in tune—especially for one-off shows—he’ll even add singing on the treadmill as part of his vocal plan. “I have to kind of do a lead-up to [one-off shows]—two or three days I’ll sing while I’m on the treadmill, walking, to try to get my body ready for that moment,” he says. “Once I’m out there, I get stronger and stronger vocally.”
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Bear Rinehart Has Made the Winning Adjustments
Nearly 25 years later, it could be argued that Furman buried the lede in its 2002 media guide entry on Bear Rinehart. Tucked at the bottom was one non-football factoid: “Plays in band called ‘NeedTo Breathe.’” While some band members have changed since those early 2000s days, the goal remains the same: create an original sound with a powerful message on every new release.
“I wasn’t sure we were going to make it,” he says. “At the time it was a crazy decision to go into music. There is no scoreboard in music. You have no idea if there’s going to be a chance to break in. But we had to decide that if we’re going to do this, we’re not going home until we figure out a way to make it work.”
Rinehart credits football for giving him the drive to go all in, even with self-doubt. The real turning point may have come when he was called out by an assistant coach.
“I had a coach come to me when I was a sophomore at Furman,” Rinehart recalls. “He basically was like, ‘Listen, I’m not gonna tell anybody else this, but I don’t care if you make any more mistakes. Quit worrying about me getting on to you. Just go full on. If you go full on, I’m happy.’”
Now, with the second half of his career in full swing, Rinehart—who roomed with former University of Florida head coach and current James Madison coach Billy Napier—is making adjustments like a top-tier coach. One of those adjustments was giving up alcohol nine months ago. Staying off social media soon followed. “You get used to it when you’re on the road,” he says. “It can help in some ways—it kind of makes you ready for the stage. But in terms of sleep and mental clarity, it’s just obviously horrible.”
Now post-shows consist of a quick breakdown of the show, before turning out the lights for the night. “We call it ‘sandcastle,’ he says. “The band talks about the show, we look at it—pros and cons, whatever—and then we wipe it.
The results from these simple changes have gone far beyond simply making it to the breakfast line first. The moes have opened a freshly creative perspective, reflected in recent work like The Long Surrender.
“Writing music is a release,” he says. “There’s a lot of stuff that maybe doesn’t get said in a conversation that I can put down on paper and really work out. What’s crazy is it ends up helping people, and that cycle—I’ve become a little addicted to it. I love that about songwriting.”
That may be the biggest performance hack he’s learned in 45 years. As long as the passion to create and perform is there, he can keep reshaping his life around it.
“I’m inspired by people all the time,” he says. “I met Springsteen, and what he does now is insane. We opened up for the Counting Crows recently, and Adam Duritz, who’s 60, sounded incredible. When you’re young, sometimes you think by the time you’re 30 this dream may be over. But now, I’m still having fun.”
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