Photo by Rob Grabowski
Many of Tim Reynolds' fans discovered him by way of Dave Matthews, his friend and long-time collaborator. But the multi-instrumentalist's 11 solo albums stand as masterpieces in addition to his work as half of the Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds duo and as the Dave Matthews Band lead guitarist.
His latest, That Way, released last last year, is characteristic of his other solo work beginning with a jazz, blues, or Baroque-like motet, then finger-picking their way through intricate patterns of modal rapport before returning to the motet. Each song is similar in that they're all cinematic they could score a dramatic or adventure movie, but they also tell stories in their own right. This month (May 6-7), Reynolds makes his way to Nashville for sold out performances alongside Dave Matthews at Ascend Amphitheater. We caught up with the guitar master to learn more about his new album and the Nashville concerts.
Nashville Lifestyles (NL): You're on the road a lot for your acoustic shows with [Dave] Matthews, his band, your own band and your solo performances. When do you find time to write songs?
Tim Reynolds (TR): Nowadays it's so easy to pick up the phone and sing or play out an idea, so I just collect that stuff and after a while I put them on a CD. About half of That Way is really new, but there were like three time periods of writing this record.
Some of the songs I've been playing ever since I started playing solo acoustic, and I just never recorded them because I never felt I wanted to until I sat on them for a long time. Then there were a couple of songs from a couple years back that I spent four or five years working on, and then there were newer ones, and those are what got me going to make this record.
NL: You use a lot of improvisation when you play. How do you make sure the performance goes well when so much of it is unplanned?
TR: For the most part, and especially with the solo acoustic shows, there's a lot of space to improve in the tunes that I play. Sometimes you want to go into a space you're familiar with, but the idea is to not do that all the time. And that's always a challenge, so you just have to try and keep fresh on your instrument. You almost have to practice improvising every day, even if you're out on the road. You mess with it long enough so that when it's time to improvise you're like ‘okay, I'm not going to play what I normally play,' and that usually means taking a minute and not doing anything. Even if it's dead space onstage, you just have to hope something happens.
NL: What's your favorite type of show to do?
TR: In one way, solo performing has a certain freedom, but it's also the scariest if you think too much. But it's kind of two sides of a cointhe other side is having a group of musicians play and you have this interplay between what the space is filled up with. So you can wait longer to put something in the space, whereas if you're playing by yourself it's not that way.
The way I think about solo acoustic, playing by yourself is like a little band. That's how I hear music in my head. So the balance is with those little freedoms you have. The one is the freedom that you don't have to make all the music and you can just float on top of what's going on, and the other type of freedom is where you do have to make all the music, but you can also just stop it at any time.
NL: Your acoustic shows with Matthews have been going on for over 20 years now, spawning five live albums and selling out theaters across the world. What is it about your work together that has kept it so special for so long?
TR: I think it's kind of like, even though we weren't high school buddies, it's as if we were. There's something about this kind of easy-going openness. It's also really easy with just two acoustic guitars because the more we do it, the more open it is, and that becomes the fun part.
I mean, we rehearse the tunes in order to be able to play them, but once we get up there and play them sometimes it just goes somewhere else. It's kind of like the way cats play jazz, although it's not the same formula. Like within the context of a song, you don't know which parts going to start to go in a different direction until you do it.
NL: What do you like to do when you're in Nashville?
TR: Last time, when we [TR3] played at City Winery, between the sound check and the gig we got to go to the Gibson shop where they make catalog replicas of hi-fi Les Pauls and stuff. I don't think they do public tours, but I have a friend there. But yeah, we're looking forward to coming down there!
Photo by Rob Grabowski.