“It’s tiring, what we do. It’s a creative thing, so it’s very stressful, and everybody’s going to have opinions. You’re going to have a wrong opinion. I’m certainly guilty of it,” he admits. “You need confidence in order to create good things, but you have to have people around you who are empowered to say, ‘Hey man, you’re off you’re rocker. You’re over the edge now, and you need to come back.’ And I think that was probably one of the biggest things that’s helped us.

“The other thing that was really key was just empowering everybody in the band to have a say,” he continues. “I think, for a while when Bo and I would get into a fight, everybody left the room. So it was important for us to get everybody in the room and say, ‘Hey, sometimes I’m going to be wrong; sometimes he’s going to be wrong; sometimes neither of us is going to be wrong—it’s just going to be muddled; but we need you guys to speak up and be the peacemakers in the situation.’ I think that’s something that really has changed a lot about what we do.”

NEEDTOBREATHE, CCM Magazine - image

photo: Eric Ryan Anderson

COMPADRES FOREVER
Moving forward, the band is focused on allowing their creativity to emanate from their unwavering bond as brothers and band mates. And on H A R D L O V E the group is reinventing itself with an aggressive new sound filled with smoky choir vocals and flashes of brass. They’ll hit the road August through November on their second annual Tour de Compadres with friends Mat Kearney, John Mark McMillan (leg 1 only), Parachute (leg 2 only) and Welshly Arms. Their fellow compadres’ high regard for the band is only further evidence that while the members of NEEDTOBREATHE may have evolved through the years, the integrity with which they approach their craft has remained unchanged since the release of their debut in 2006.

“I love their raw electricity, honesty, and the way they seem to revel in the moment,” remarks Compadres Tour mate John Mark McMillan, a longtime friend and fan of the band. (Bear was featured on “Monsters Talk” from McMillan’s The Borderland Sessions in 2014.)

The highly-anticipated outing will mark Mat Kearney’s first time to tour extensively with the band, though they’ve been friends for some time. “When we were both starting out, NEEDTOBREATHE and I opened for an artist in really small rooms playing for just a few dozen people a night. Back then I quickly could tell that they where humble, genuine guys. A lot has changed for both of us since then, but they are still the same,” Kearney reflects. “I think they are amazing songwriters and even better live than their records. I’m excited to finally play some shows with them in some rooms a little bigger than when we first started.”

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