For a band that is the opening act of Taylor Swift’s tour, NeedToBreathe’s music is not what you would expect. Joe Stillwell, NeedToBreathe’s drummer, says performing for thousands of screaming girls takes some getting used to, especially when what you’re used to are rowdy rockers in small packed venues across the U.S. Claiming Charleston, South Carolina as their home, these boys are a southern rock band through and through, and even recorded their brand-new album The Reckoning at their studio there. It’s been two years since their last project, and they took their time crafting each song in the way they wanted.

 

What did you draw on when you put this album together?

On the last record, The Outsiders, I think we were trying to prove ourselves a little bit. The Outsiders was all about how coming from a small town, we never felt embraced by the music industry because we weren’t in New York, we weren’t in Nashville, we weren’t in L.A. We felt like we paved our own road in that way. So that’s what The Outsiders was about. And also not feeling completely accepted into mainstream music or the Christian music stuff. We do have songs that will be on Christian radio, but we don’t consider ourselves a Christian band. It’s us coming to terms with the fact that we don’t fit neatly into any kind of description and being okay with that.

For The Reckoning—I think because of the success we had with The Outsiders and the new fan base, and the popularity of the band had grown so much, we put a lot of expectations on ourselves for this record. But I also think that a lot of people had expectations on what we were going to do. So The Reckoning is like living up to those expectations. This is the reckoning time, this is the time we prove that we are a band that you should know about.

There’s a little bit of darkness to it. We let out a little bit of aggression on this record, but we show a tender side too. It wasn’t all testosterone on this one, but we got some good rockers in there.

Are there any particular songs on it that mean a lot to you?

The last song on the record, it’s called “Learn to Love.” At the time we were making the record, I was getting ready to get married and that song hit me in a really personal place. The lyrics “learn to love through the darkness and the light / I’m on your side”—it got me all teary-eyed and mushy when I listened to it for the first time in the car with my fiancee. That one meant a lot to me.

What do you draw on to write your lyrics?

Inspiration comes from any place. We’re not trying to get super intellectual with it, we’re not out to write a rock opera and every song blends together in this grand story. We just write honest songs, and we feel like the fans can tell when somebody is a little too big for their britches. For us, it’s just about being honest and trying to write good music that means something to us. I think that’s part of why people connect with our band. They can see that honesty, they can see that passion that we have for the music.

Do you think that your musical process has changed from your earlier albums?

On this one, we were tired of going in to do a record and being like, “Okay, we’re going to do these songs here and then we’re going to have to fly here for these songs, and then we really want this guy to work on these songs so we’re going to go here for that.” We’ve got our own studio in Charleston that we do most of our tracking on. All of our demos we do there. And this time around, we had just come off a 50-something-date headlining tour in the fall and we were starting the record in the middle of January. We decided to do it all at home and bring somebody to us to help us work on it. That was really, really cool because when you’re working at your home studio, there’s no pressure on what kind of money you’re spending because you’re not renting the space. We gave ourselves all of the time we needed to devote to every song, whereas before it might have been a situation where we were really strapped for time. This time we didn’t tell ourselves, “Well, this is good enough.” We were like, “We have to do absolutely everything that a song needs,” and we took the time to do that.

So you guys did things on your own terms?

Oh yeah. Our bass player Seth, it’s his studio. He basically destroyed a house and made it a studio in South Carolina. We go and start recording—well, not in the early morning but closer to lunch. We are rock stars after all, come on. And we would take a break at night and grill and just hang out. It was very comfortable for us. It was a really good environment to make the record in.

You guys have been together for a really long time now. Do you think the group dynamic has changed—gotten closer?

We definitely know how to push each others’ buttons. But you can get on each others’ nerves and there’s arguments and there’s fights, but at the end of the day we’re all working towards the same thing. Bear and Bo [Rinehart] are brothers, and that kind of dynamic has carried over to the rest of us. I feel like the rest of the guys are my brothers. We can fight and argue, but the next day we’re still family. You work it out and you keep your priorities straight as far as what’s important and what’s not important. I think we’ve definitely grown closer over the years. I met these guys when I was 12. We can definitely have our fill of each other at times, but, at the end of the day we’re all here for the same thing.

You guys have been touring with Taylor Swift. What’s it like going on tour with someone who’s been blowing up?

It’s pretty insane. Our bus is sometimes parked closest to the far gate at the arena, so we’ll get woken up at 9 a.m., sometimes even earlier than that, girls just screaming outside of the fences for Taylor dressed up in their puffy pink t-shirts, signs made with glue and glitter. It’s definitely not what we’re used to. But I think we’ve acclimated ourselves pretty well. It’s an opening set, so it’s not like we have a long, stressful day. We play a 35-minute set and we do our rock ‘n’ roll thing as much as we possibly can and hope that it translates. For a lot of these girls, it’s not the first concert they’ve ever seen, but we consider the fact that we’re probably the first rock ‘n’ roll band they’re going to see. We want to leave that impression, we want to leave them hopefully with their jaws on the floor after we leave the stage.

Have you had any special moments playing for these packed venues?

The first show of the tour, it was a little overwhelming. You just can’t prepare yourself for how loud it is. Their gut reaction as young girls is to just scream at the top of their lungs. When you’re in an enclosed space with 12 to 13,000 people doing that, it’s deafening. And then when you do a stadium show, it’s like that times ten. It’s that many more people. You have to take a second to let it sink in, but then you move on and you play your show and give them the best kind of performance that you can. I think we’ve really come around to it. But today we’re in Wichita, Kansas doing a headlining show that we’re kind of sprinkling in when we have days off from the Taylor thing, and these shows are really our bread and butter. Playing a full on rock ‘n’ roll show to a room full of sweaty people—that’s what we really love to do.

I know that some of your influences are Led Zeppelin and Pearl Jam. Are there any current artists right now that you’re listening to?

Delta Spirit. Also Dawes is really good. There’s also a side project called Middle Brother with the singer of Delta Spirit and Dawes and the lead singer of Deer Tick, and I think that’s really, really cool. I still get back to Zeppelin and Pearl Jam most of the time, but I’m also a really big Radiohead fan. Whatever I can get my hands on, typically. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I don’t listen to a lot of modern radio. I search out stuff that’s still genuine and makes you feel good.

One of my favorite bands of all time is a band called Jump Little Children. They’re not together anymore, but they were the coolest South Carolina band when we were growing up.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN_ze7QVYKg[/youtube]

NeedToBreathe opens for Taylor Swift tonight at the New Orleans Arena. Tickets are still on sale. The show starts at 7 p.m.