Taylor Swift isn’t afraid to pause Eras Tour concerts to help fans in need — and she’s been that way since her early days in the spotlight.
NEEDTOBREATHE — comprised of Bear Rinehart, Seth Bolt, Josh Lovelace, Randall Harris and Tyler Burkum — saw that side of Swift, now 34, back when they served as an opening act on her 2010 Speak Now tour. (Hunter Hayes, Josh Kelley, Frankie Ballard, Danny Gokey, Randy Montana, James Wesley, Charlie Worsham, Adam Brand, David Nail and Hot Chelle Rae also had opening act slots during various legs of the tour.)
“Honestly, we learned a ton [and what] everybody says about her is true,” Rinehart, 43, exclusively told Us Weekly at CMA Fest on Friday, June 7. “Enough people say it [and] obviously it’s a real thing, but she works incredibly hard. She cares a lot. She’s the most professional [and] the first time we saw her, she’s like doing soundcheck with nobody in the arena and she’s acting like there are people and we’re all looking at each other like, ‘This is the weirdest thing we’ve ever seen.’”
He continued, “Then you get to appreciate it as you go. You’re like, ‘Man, the commitment to what she gives the audience and the way she cares about fans and that’s why she is who she is.’”
NEEDTOBREATHE performed at 83 of Swift’s Speak Now tour stops.
“She just liked the band,” Rinehart explained of how they joined the roster. “There was no business person [who told her too]. I think probably all the business people told her not to do it. So it’s kind of give it to her credit that she was just like, ‘I like this band. I wanna bring them out.’ And she did.”
Swift also was kind to the group on the road, with Bolt, 40, telling Us she once made them a spaghetti dinner.
“[It was] a nice, good safe bet,” Bolt quipped. “Hard to mess up, [but] you’ve never seen marinara like this!”
Since wrapping her Speak Now tour, Swift went on to headline international concerts based on her Red, 1989 and Reputation albums. She launched her Eras Tour, a three-hour show to highlight all of her past and current albums, in March 2023 and is currently touring Europe and the United Kingdom this summer.
Throughout the Eras legs, Swift has called out security guards from the stage to provide assistance to concertgoers.
“She’s right there. I’m just gonna keep playing until somebody helps them, I’m gonna be singing this song,” Swift said on Friday in the middle of her concert in Edinburgh, still strumming her acoustic guitar. “Just let me know. I can do this all night.”
The 14-time Grammy winner only resumed her surprise song — a mash-up of “Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve” and “I Know Places” — when the security officials reached the fan in the crowd and reassured her that everything was OK.
NEEDTOBREATHE has also continued performing since the Speak Now tour.
“We’re playing, like, the rest of the year. I think we’ve turned a corner in a way of we just wanna play all the time,” Rinehart told Us. “So, we’re gonna be playing weekends for the rest of the year and then we’ll start thinking about a new record. We’re gonna do an acoustic tour at some point. We’ve never done an acoustic tour, like in the big market. So we’re gonna do like Red Rocks and those kind of places. … which would be kind wild.”
With reporting by Jeremy Parsons
