Sometimes, you need to come up for air.

After several years of music and four studio albums, strained relationships forced NEEDTOBREATHE, the alternative rock band anchored by brothers Bo and Bear Rinehart, to take a time-out to reevaluate life before coming together to complete their newest record, “Rivers in the Wasteland.”

Seth Bolt, bassist for the South Carolina group, sat down with The Daily Beacon following a Saturday afternoon performance at Hangout Fest to discuss playing for the sold out music festival and what it’s really like to work with family.

Daily Beacon: How’s the festival been so far?

Seth Bolt: So far so good. I mean I slept until like 11 a.m. and then woke up to the sound of music and crawled out of my bunk on the bus and got to hear some good music and play, and I’m really looking forward to hearing The Killers tonight. We have some mutual friends but I’ve never actually gotten to see the show, so I’m really looking forward to that. Great weather.

DB: Are you all going to be hanging out for a while or are you heading out tonight?

SB: I actually wish that I could stay tomorrow, too. The bus rolls tonight at midnight on our way home, back to Charleston, South Carolina. So we’ll hopefully catch all of The Killers’ set and make our way.

DB: How do you think your show went today? What are your feelings?

SB: I think it went really well. I think, much credit to the fans in the crowd. We got so much good energy from them, and I feel like that always makes us better. So big shout out to them. Thank you.

DB: What kind of expectations did you have coming in to the show and coming into Hangout?

SB: Well, when we played here before there was some sort of hurricane warning right before we played. We played on a Sunday, I think, and like Saturday before, everything was canceled because of the storms and so it was a nice surprise to see that the weather was great, everybody was in a good mood and lots and lots of people.

DB: What’s the biggest shift for you playing a festival versus just a normal venue?

SB: We always get a little bit nervous because we don’t have time to do like a proper sound check. You’re kind of going up there expecting the worst and hoping for the best. Today everything really worked out. It felt good to us, you know, what we heard on stage. Good looking crowd, too. I think we brought about half our lights. We always have tons and tons of production and lights and stuff, and they let us use some of it, so that was cool, too.

DB: What does a typical NEEDTOBREATHE show look like? What’s your goal when you step up on stage?

SB: I think when we’re playing in the tour, we’re always looking for ways to reinvent. We usually just book some time where we’re not really even just practicing the songs as we’re gonna play them. We’re just kind of jamming around and seeing what happens because we’re trying to put as many fresh musical moments into each song and into the set and sort of let it come alive in a different way than it has before. I do feel like a lot of fans come out tour after tour, and I hope that they come kind of expecting to hear something new and different. We just put out a new record called “Rivers in the Wasteland,” and I think we’re maybe surprising people this time around with how many songs we’re playing from the new record. It’s also been really cool for us that people have left saying, like once again this is the best time that they’ve seen us. And it’s unique that a band that’s been playing as long as we have is able to play so many songs from a new record and people not leave mad that we didn’t play this song from this old record. So I think that says a lot about our fans and we’re really enjoying it.

DB: Going to your background, how did you become connected with Bear and Bo?

SB: I met Bear and Bo when I was seven years old. It was cool, their dad was a preacher, and they grew up in Possum Kingdom, South Carolina, which is really small. I didn’t even know that existed when I was that age. So when they moved to town, I kind of got two new friends and we became best friends and played sports together and really just grew up together being little boys out in the country. You know, running around barefoot and that kind of thing before we ever played music. So, I don’t know, I kind of feel like I was adopted into the family early on. Their mom taught me piano lessons, I’m pretty sure I fell in love with their sister a couple times, and yeah, it’s been a family affair the whole time.

DB: On stage, Bear mentioned that it’s been a rough year for the band. Do you want to elaborate on that?

SB: Yeah, of course. It’s really tough to work on any kind of project, especially any sort of art project, with a brother, you know, with a sibling because it’s kind of like two hands on one paintbrush, and you’re gonna disagree about stuff. They used to disagree a lot. It was all day, every day, and it kind of got pretty bad. It got to the point where they weren’t talking to each other anymore, and it was really sad for me to see that. I think we all felt that if things couldn’t change, you know, we didn’t want to keep doing it because it was just one big fight. So we took some time off for probably the first time in seven years. During that time off, it was enough time off that we went from blaming one another for the first week or two of it, to we started actually getting our own lives and brains in order, and coming back down to earth and realizing that we were all part of the problem and it wasn’t the other people. That really changed everything. I think the work that we’ve done on ourselves and that God’s kind of done in our hearts has really made all the difference in the world. The environment’s totally changed. We actually get along and have a lot of love and respect for one another, and that’s really made its way on stage and into the songs that completed the record.

DB: How much did that influence the theme of “Rivers in the Wasteland?”

SB: I think a lot, because originally the record was going to be called “The Wasteland.” It’s weird to think about it now, because when we started the process, we didn’t necessarily know that we were in such a bad place. I guess we felt it maybe creeping up a little bit. It’s what Bear wrote that song about, feeling like there was a just a crack in the door filled with light, that was at least some kind of hope that things could get better. We didn’t know that they would, we didn’t know that things would get worse before they got better but they did. At the end of the process we felt like God had put a river in a dry wasteland and really put life back into something that had become barren.

DB: Where do you think having endured this sort of strain will take you next as a band?

SB: I feel like we’ve renewed our vows in a way. I hope that we can stay on this course and continue making music for a really long time. I think we all feel a certain partnership and relationship, now, with the fans, too. I would hope that we would not be so selfish as to just, you know, hang it up or quit making music to do something else because we certainly don’t feel that way and it’s really cool to talk to people after shows find out that our music has been a part of their journey, in some cases for years and years now. I hope that that continues and we can continue to be relevant to our fans and people that come along.

DB: Now that you’ve released your new record, is your focus just on touring now and what’s in the future for NEEDTOBREATHE?

SB: Pretty much. We’ve got a couple of cards up our sleeve with some ways that we want to actually, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this or not, but there will still be some new music coming that should interesting and something that’s much different for us, sort of an evolution of “Rivers in the Wasteland” and a continuation of that story. We’re just now getting settled into the tour and we’ll be touring for the rest of the year, crossing the country and going over to Europe. But I think… things are really starting to pick up pace. For a while our output was very, very little because of all the fighting and stuff, but now that everything’s clicking and coming together, I’m excited to see where that takes. Hopefully it’ll mean a lot more content and music for the fans.