Needtobreathe’s frontman out on his own

Wilder Woods, also known as Needtobreathe’s frontman Bear Rinehart, chose a forbidding date-city combination—Feb. 20, Cleveland—to launch his current tour. With large, wet snowflakes making sidewalks slick and Lake Erie winds making temperatures plunge, simply walking from car to venue—the House of Blues—was a risk.

Nevertheless, several hundred fans, many familiar enough with the Wilder Woods catalog to sing along when asked, braved the elements. Their reward was a cracking, 19-song show that included a Black Crowes cover (“She Talks to Angels”) and all but two of the 10 selections on the new album, Curioso (Dualtone). If Rinehart or the six musicians in his band felt opening-night jitters, they hid them well.

A few days earlier, in an interview with NPR’s Scott Simon, Rinehart said naming his solo act after his sons Wilder and Woods “was probably the worst marketing decision ever” and that the purpose of his Wilder Woods side hustle was to provide himself with an “identity outside” Needtobreathe.

To anyone as strongly identified with a band as Rinehart is, achieving that kind of independence can’t be easy. But three albums (Wilder Woods, Fever/Sky, Curioso) and one EP (Work Tapes) into his quest, he isn’t doing half bad. In contrast to Needtobreathe’s blend of the arena rock and gospel music that Rinehart absorbed growing up as a preacher’s kid, the Wilder Woods sound resonates with classic R&B and Southern soul, of which the Cleveland crowd got a healthy dose.

The Work Tapes love song “Heavenly Light” (song 2 of the evening) proved a melodic dead ringer for the Miracles’ “The Tracks of My Tears,” Wilder Woods’ “Mary, You’re Wrong” (song 10) borrowed the introduction of the Impressions’ “People Get Ready,” and Fever/Sky’s “Heartland” (song 3) repurposed The Band’s “The Weight.”

At other times, though, Rinehart’s tips of the hat (he wore a wide, flat-brimmed cowboy number, by the way) were less specific. The synthesized bell-like sounds that the keyboardist Bobby Steinfeld sprinkled throughout “Supply & Demand” (song 18) might come from Gamble and Huff’s Philly-soul playbook, but the melody is a Rinehart/Woods original.

So is the one that nudges the reflective spiritual-warfare anthem “Someday Soon” (song 6) toward this climactic bit of wisdom: “Don’t think the battle’s over just ’cause you say ‘Amen.’” On that song as on Curioso’s “Offering” (song 13) and “Wildfire” (song 14), April Rucker’s gospel-honed vocals did yeoman’s work.

The tour runs through March 29.