Hear Wilder Woods, Jim James Team Up for ‘Time on My Hands’ Song

Bear Rinehart is used to fronting his rock band Needtobreathe in large arenas. But on this November day, he’s playing a small open-air stage as a solo artist, with an intimate audience of a couple hundred at the Highlands Food & Wine Festival, an upscale gathering in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

“I was writing too many songs for the band,” Rinehart tells Rolling Stone backstage. “There were songs I wrote that wouldn’t be right for the band [that] I forced on the records, and I was falling in love with this new thing. The band was okay with me doing it. [They’re] like, ‘Go get this out of your system.’”

That “new thing” is Rinehart’s solo outlet, Wilder Woods. Named after Rinehart’s two oldest sons, the project first appeared in 2019 with a self-titled debut album and expanded with 2023’s Fever/Sky. Both offered an in-depth glimpse into the life of one of modern rock’s more mysterious and elusive singer-songwriters. “I think that’s the hardest thing about being in a band for a long time,” Rinehart says. “People think they know who you are.”

His latest album as Wilder Woods blows those preconceived notions to smithereens. Titled Curioso, the 10-song LP is a vibrant, kaleidoscope of indie-rock, Americana, and pop sensibilities that defies any rules or boundaries. The mission during the recording process was one of sonic exploration, Rinehart says, going on to compare the finished product to the music of a famously eclectic artist. “This is a ‘Beck’ kind of project for me,” Rinehart says. “This record turned out more alternative than I thought.”

Curioso is much more alternative than the arena-rock approach that Needtobreathe has perfected over its nearly 25-year career. So much so that there’s even a special appearance by My Morning Jacket’s Jim James.

“’Cause we got time on our hands/We got love that we can’t deny,” James sings with Rinehart atop the freewheeling “Time on My Hands,” a highlight of the record. “Oh, we got time on our hands/Slow it down, let the water just roll on by.”

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“We were in the studio working on the track and I was just kind of joking with the guys that [James’] falsetto on this would be insane,’” Rinehart recalls. “I emailed around to find somebody who knew him, because I’d never met him.”

The next day, to Rinehart’s surprise, a reply from James was sitting in his inbox. “He’s like, ‘I’m in. I love this song,’” Rinehart says. “And that [track] is one of my favorites on the record.”

While “curioso” means “curious or inquisitive” in Italian, for Rinehart, there’s a little more to it. It’s a word that connects him to his upbringing. “My grandmother had a ‘curio cabinet,’ where you put all your keepsakes,” Rinehart says. “It’s these little memories stuck in there, where it reminds me of [these] things I love, pieces of my life.”

And “oso”? “‘Bear’ in Spanish,” Rinehart grins.

Rinehart views Wilder Woods as a circling back to the music of his youth, growing up in the 1990s in Seneca, South Carolina. As a teenager, he’d tune into “The Bulldog,” a popular alternative station broadcasting from just over the state line in the Southern music bastion that is Athens, Georgia. He notes that bands from that era like Violent Femmes and the Breeders still resonate within him today.

“That’s what I listened to on the way to high school,” Rinehart says. “As I started getting into what I actually love when I’m putting music down, that’s some of it.”