Wilder Woods at the Uptown Theater (03-07-25)
Tour Dates
“Well, well, well! How goes everything?”
Just like that, as pre-concert music still played, Sam Westhoff, better known as HAFFWAY, stepped on stage like a substitute teacher about to take roll call. And like any good substitute teacher or singer-songwriter, he had a great patter. He apologized for coming on stage wearing snow pants, he said he was last in the Twin Cities playing at the great 7th Street Entry, and after he did a soulful rendition of Bruce Springsteins’s “I’m on Fire” he said, “I wrote that.”
After the laughter died down, he added, “I wrote that when I was five.”
Currently living in Nashville, HAFFWAY is mostly writing songs for other musicians. But he has also released a few of his own, which he described as sad songs, like “East Coast.”
The reason HAFFWAY was opening up for Wilder Woods had to do with how he first met Bear Rinehart.
HAFFWAY was brought on board to help write songs for Rinehart’s latest album. He must have made an impression because after the intermission he joined the band on stage as a back up guitarist and conga drummer.
We last saw Wilder Woods at the Varsity Theater in April, 2023, which seemed too small a venue to house all the fans who lined up around the block to get in. And so a larger setting, but Rinehart had a little trepidation. “I was afraid the room would be too big.” But after the crowd’s reaction to “Time on My Hands” and “Where Do We Go From Here” a sigh of relief came over him and a hearty “Thank You.”
Wilder Woods is a solo project to Rinehart’s main gig as the lead singer of NEEDTOBREATHE. He was generating more songs than the band could handle. As he told Mason Music: “The band doesn’t do as many shows as we used to, and I’m somebody that has to work all the time or I’ll lose my mind.”
Wilder Woods is at its best when it is fusing Southern Rock, Soul and Gospel, but Rinehart is a perpetual ball of energy and he wanted to push himself into other genres. Thus the name of his album, Curioso. As Rinehart told Leaf Chronicle: “I was looking around the studio as we were writing the record and thinking about the fact that I have a lot more influences on this newest record that are from my first love with music.”
So between his hits, he sprinkled in “Hide Anymore”, a rock anthem with shades of The Hold Steady; “Devil in My Eyes” which was full-on rock that segued into a sultry, back-alley blues instrumental that had Rinehart playing a guitar solo while his right-hand man, Tyler Burkum, kept count on electric guitar with a singular note chiming like a grandfather clock at the midnight hour.
The highlight of the evening was “Offering” which Rinehart called an “… old man love song. The least romantic song I ever wrote.”
The song is about a relationship going on decades where “You are not going to kill it every night.” But he said you “… just show up.”
On the studio album Rinehart sings along with Anna Graves. On Friday night at the Uptown he invited April Rucker to join him and she received the biggest applause of the night, even before singing one note.
