#maroon weekly

By Sara Gilmore

 After spending the last couple of years selling out major venues like Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and appearing on festival stages at Bonnaroo and Austin City Limits, NEEDTOBREATHE is returning to smaller stages on their intimate Stomping Ground Tour. One of the last shows on the schedule—the only Texas performance—is right down the street in Waco, at Common Grounds on Nov. 3.

“This tour is about us getting back to our roots,” said lead guitar and back-up vocalist Bo Rinehart. “There’s nothing more exciting than feeling music together in an up close and intimate setting. We’re inviting our fans to experience some of our favorite venues across the country that played a big part in making us the band that we are today.”

We caught up with Rinehart last week about the tour and the band’s new album, set to drop in early 2014. If you’re going to the show, here’s a sneak peak at what to expect.

MW: Your Drive All Night Tour in the spring was huge, and now you’re doing this intimate college town, small venue tour. What’s up with that?

Rinehart: I think it started a couple of years ago. We went to Europe and were kind of playing these smaller shows again and kind of felt like the band was being reborn. We were loading our own gear, and we all had wedges and we just basically turned the amps up loud and you could play whatever you want. You didn’t have to stick so much to a show, and we just fell in love with it. It was just us playing music again, so we just fell in love with the idea and thought, “How cool would it be to do this in America and get rid of the extra production trucks, the extra bus, and just get all the guys we need all in one bus and make a show fresh and exciting every night for us?” And we knew it would be a cool experience for the fans to have.

MW: Waco is the only Texas date on the Stomping Ground tour. Of all the small, college town venues in Texas, why Waco?

Rinehart: I actually have no idea. Most of the schedule was all cities we’ve played before, and that’s why the name of the tour was to get back to our roots and play in our old Stomping Grounds. But there’s been a few cities that we’ve never ventured to, and it’s ironic we’re doing that on something called the Stomping Ground Tour, but I’m excited about it. We love playing Texas, and I feel like we’ve played in Dallas probably 25 times. And we love Austin, and I think we’ve made the rounds, but we’ve never played in Waco. So it’s exciting, and I can’t wait to see how it goes.

MW: You’re pretty well into this tour at this point; we’re kind of catching you on the tail end. What are some of your favorite things about being back in the small show setting?

Rinehart: Man, just the simplicity. We choose our set list every single show. We’re changing it up, and I think for me it’s been the easiest tour I’ve ever been on, because, you know, I’m always on my toes, trying to figure out where the band’s gonna go next. So it’s a lot more comfortable and relaxed, but it’s full on rock ‘n’ roll.

At one point with this tour we were thinking we were gonna do them acoustic, but we just fell in love with the interaction with the fans, and people have been coming to the shows ready to rock. And I think the fact that we can see your face, and see what you’re thinking, and see what songs the fans are responding to—it just fires us up. I feel like it’s been a while; normally you can only see the first two or three rows and then after that everybody turns into a sea of blurry. But in these rooms, you know, we can really see front to back and know everybody’s in there and have a good time together.

MW: You guys are kind of previewing a new album while you’re on this tour. Can you tell us a little bit about the new album?

Rinehart: We’ve taken a really long time making it, but I think it’s the most “us,” live, as any of the other records. We stuck to all analog and to tape, and I’d say about 95 percent of the record is all live performances. So it definitely sounds more like we do live more than any other record. We definitely pushed the bar a little bit as far as being intimate on the record.

MW: Any special things up your sleeves you plan to give fans coming to the Waco show?

New Post has been published on http://www.txmma.com/origins-the-history-of-the-legacy-fighting-championship/

Origins: The History of the Legacy Fighting Championship

The line outside Hurricane Harry’s for Lonestar Beatdown | Photo by Mike, Texas MMA Photographer

  Legacy Promoter Mick Maynard Talks About His Earliest Days Promoting Mixed Martial Arts Here In Texas

  HOUSTON, TX, July 17, 2013 - Houston-based Legacy Fighting Championship recently released an insightful video profile on their origins as a promotion dating back to 2006 when they promoted their very first events under the guise of the name Lonestar Beatdown in College Station, TX.

In the video, promoter Mick Maynard talks a little bit about those days long past – when the sport was barely emerging following the legalization of the unified rules of mixed martial arts in Texas less than a year earlier.

“It was 2006 so MMA wasn’t anywhere near as popular as it is today. I put together a Lonestar Beatdown promotion because I wanted a way to promote our newspaper and it (MMA) seemed to be our demographic,” said Maynard who initially ran his first events as a means to promote the newspaper business he owned and managed for Texas A&M students called Maroon Weekly.

Mick goes on to talk about the 16×16 square cage used for those first events – a cage where you as a fighter could almost literally meet your opponent at center-cage in just a few steps.

As a person who helped put that cage together for the first time, this writer can attest that it was equally as hard to construct as it was to fight in but luckily for everyone involved, Legacy has continued to evolve throughout the years to where it is now as a world-class promotion – that is still based here in Texas.