Guitar virtuoso Tim Reynolds cut his teeth on studio experimentation and complete mastery of all the different sounds one can get out of a guitar, but on his new album That Way, Reynolds revisits one of his first loves—the acoustic guitar.
The stripped-down record is fitting given Reynolds’ touring schedule this year—a trip around the globe with Dave Matthews as the two longtime collaborators and bandmates play as an acoustic duo while Dave Matthews Band takes a year off from the road.
We caught up with Reynolds shortly before the release of the record to discuss his new record, plans for the year and what he loves about the acoustic guitar and improvising.
Can we start with a recent show you and Dave played in support of Standing Rock? What was your memory of that night?
The ultimate awesome thing about that night, for me anyway, was playing with Graham Nash, and getting to rehearse that song and then do it live. It was cool, because he had his guy with him that did vocals and guitar. Basically, they just did it and we played with them, and it was really cool. It was awesome. I usually don’t get star-struck. I don’t know if it was star-struck so much as it was; ‘Wow, I listen to this song a lot. I know this song! This is my shit!’ It was cool that he was such a really cool guy. Just him talking, and seeing how fired up he was about the whole thing – it was cool.
And you also played with Neko Case that night. Was that the first time you’ve played with her?
It was the first time. She was awesome as well. It was cool because we got to hang out with her a little bit when we were rehearsing the songs and it was just cool. I never got to hang out with her, so that was neat. We hung out, worked on the songs, everybody was really cool about it.
Transitioning to your new album, That Way, which features acoustic work both new and old. When did you decide that it was time to put these tracks on record and how did you land on an acoustic-based record?
I had been working back to playing more acoustic gigs, and it was really nice that it came easier after we did a couple of summer tours where Dave did an acoustic set. Before those couple of years, a lot of the summer I wouldn’t have an acoustic guitar in my hand. I would try to go to acoustic gigs and I always felt like I was behind in my shit, trying to keep it together, because that’s a different animal.
Those kind of summers really helped me get back into having [a guitar] in my hand more. I wanted to make another recording, but I didn’t feel like I had enough songs. I had some old ones that I hadn’t recorded yet, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to use them. Some of them were really simple; I played them for a long time. I was kind of tired of them. You don’t listen to it like you listen to your favorite artist.
Then I got more into the idea of trying to record some of those songs and then I started writing new ones, and that really got it going. When we went to Europe the year before last, we didn’t do the acoustic set. What I started doing for myself, because I really enjoy that time of day – I started like an hour before any of those shows and played acoustic by myself in a little room. I started coming up with little ideas when we were in Europe, and probably some after, for sure. That’s why there are pictures of that there.
I really love doing that. It’s hard to find time to put it together. I’m always recording little ideas, but the next phase of that is always to put it together. That’s the kind of thing that’s hard to find time for when you’re always on the road. On a day off, you just want to chill when you’re at home, but I finally got it together and had some songs, and then I had too many.
Last January I said, “Okay, let’s do it.” I had a friend in town who I recorded with, so I just did that. The last thing I wanted to put string on the last song, and that was really inspiring. It took a little while to get that together, but I’m really happy with it. Whenever I do those kinds of recordings, there’s always no way I can fix the millions of mistakes that happen in my mind. But to me, I’m trying to get this music across. Once I’m satisfied beyond the mistakes, the music sounds like kind of what it’s supposed to sound like. I’m satisfied with that, because I can’t keep trying to make it perfect; that’s not the idea.
I just really had fun. For the first phase of touring on that, I’d play the record, like back in the ‘70s, where people would come out with a new album and that’s all they’d play. I mean, I play other shit because it’s only fifteen minutes. So, it’s just been fun, and now I’m really psyched to continue that. I hadn’t been able to find time to write in that medium for a while. Once I started doing it, I realized, ‘This is so fucking easy, man!’
I just really found how much I enjoy doing that. I mean, I love playing too, like improvising, but that kind of comes out of improvising, my writing. That’s just the magic of music for me: that it to you when you’re open to it. It’s already there somewhere, not in us, but out there, and it comes. And that’s what I love about it.
How much improvising do you get to do within your recording as well as live performances?
I like the balance of improvising in playing a song, because within that, there’s always room to improvise a song even though you’re not improvising, per say. In the last couple of years, I’ve really been getting into the freedom of improvising with a new language. I’ve been listening to these 20th century string quartets, like Bartok, and Schoenberg, and Berg, and Shostakovich, and the language of that is blowing my mind because when I first hear it, I don’t understand it; I don’t know the form.
Over a couple of years, I’ve been listening to it a lot, and it’s really opening up what’s possible with improvising, with the band. But then, I love playing solo guitar. It just opens up what you can do with space, starting by making space. It’s really just a whole different world. I’m really loving improvising.
But I also like playing tunes because I love tunes too. If I went to go see Peter Gabriel, I wouldn’t want him to start jamming! And then when I saw him and Sting—Sting is cool because he plays a song, but he’s also a little bit rock and roll where he has guitar solos, and that’s cool too. I like the balance. But I’m really into improvising now, a lot.
When I practice, I’m going for a full day. I’ll play a record that I like that lasts at least an hour, and just play to it—just go ape shit. That’s so much fun. That opens you up to have a vocabulary when you’re playing live. You have to practice improvising, so you can push through your habits, and go, “Okay, I just did that. I always do that. Fuck that, wait, do something else man!”
You’re not improvising sometimes, because you have to think to do something that’s not what you always do. But then you push through that. Usually for me, it’s just waiting. “Okay, don’t play that thing you’re going to play. Start with something else, and then build,” and then in a couple seconds you have a different phrase that you didn’t think you were going to do.
I’m trying to keep it fresh. And that’s, for me, in the last couple of years, been an informative exercise. When I listen to string quartet and then listen to Miles Davis, the next thing I go to is ‘60s Miles Davis where the certain band he had–it wasn’t his commercially successful band, but it was his really good E.S.P. record, Nefertiti, and Sorcerer. A lot of the improvising he does, they lay it out there: the piano, the chord progressions, the piano changes, and then when it comes back in, it’s like “Woah!”
It’s interesting for me, learning lessons that I still need through this strange exotic music of the string quartets. Then I put on Miles, which I’m familiar with, but then hear it like it’s simpler. Like, “Oh wow, I can hear that! Whoa!” Then, when the chords come in, at least subjectively, it’s expanding my listening strength, and it comes back out in improvising.
I’m just really enjoying trying to make time to give myself music lessons. With string quartets, and then listening to Miles and listening to jazz, which I grew up playing and then got out of it. It was kind of formulaic to play it in its standard form, but then, growing away from it, I really appreciate it now a whole lot more, especially with the idea of space. Instead of trying to play 64th note bebop runs forever, which is awesome I also like the idea of when you start new from space. You can make these poly-rhythmical statements that float over. They groove, and they create a phrase that takes sixteen bars to complete because it’s got so much space in it.
And where does rock and roll fit into that for you?
For me, it’s like every cell of my body is rock and roll. It comes out and mixes with that immediately. One night I was walking and I start singing this lick. To me, rock and roll is wide open; there’s Peter Gabriel and there’s ZZ Top, and they’re both rock and roll. They’re just different. So yeah, I think it all just goes back to rock music, because I can’t help doing that. I listen to rock music every day like I’m a ‘70s classic rock addict. I can’t stop listening to that. That’s the shit.
This will be your longest run of shows just with Dave probably since the ‘90s. How do you approach these longer runs with him and what do you want to accomplish as a duo?
We’ve already been playing all of the songs, pretty much, with DMB, so we just kind of have to figure out how many we can play that are well-represented in that format. It’s pretty much most of them. There’s a few that might be drum-heavy, and sometimes we’ll try to think of a way to compensate for that.
I’m really excited because I’ve been practicing improvising a lot, and I’m really excited to be able to do that a lot. In that format, that’s like the most improvising I do in any format, even my own. Because my solo thing is mostly the tunes and a little improvising, and TR3 is mostly tunes. We definitely improvise, but we don’t just jam.
In Dave’s tunes, since there’s a lot of space and a lot of tunes for that, as we keep learning and we keep playing it over the years, I don’t always have to rely on the original guitar part. Sometimes we’ll go back to it if we jam it a couple times not doing that, but you know the freedom of fucking shit up a little bit, in a good way. And you don’t know how that’s going happen until you start doing it.
That’s the thing about playing live for me–and whatever it is, solo, TR3, DMB–the freshness of each place you go to, the new day that that brings to the music, you never know what’s going to happen. You just throw it out there, playing the song, but then stuff happens, and that’s the best part; you don’t know what’s going to happen. You have a plan, but there’s an interface between your plan and reality, and that’s the cool part.
As far as arranging some of the DMB songs go—I’ve heard you play prevalent horn and violin lines in the past. Is that a calculated effort on your part?
Yeah. I mean, tune by tune, that just kind of comes out naturally I guess because we’ve been playing them so long. But yeah, we try to keep that for sure.
How do you feel some of the newer DMB songs have lent themselves to this format considering that Dave begins writing predominately on the acoustic guitar?
It’s his natural thing that he writes on—acoustic. With most of the tunes, it’s already there, just by him doing it on acoustic. I mean, not all the songs, because some are built more in production with other instruments, but a lot of them start with [acoustic guitar], so it’s easy to transfer that to the acoustic note and work with it from there.
As someone who has seen DMB evolve since the ’90s—what do you attribute to the group’s longevity?
Well, my time with them has really been touring consistently, only for the last 8 or 9 years, so what I can say about that time is that everybody gets along really well for such a long marriage, as it were, between those guys. I was a part of it at the beginning, but I never toured because at the time I was doing a lot of stuff around town; I didn’t really want to spend my life on the road then. I mean, I spend a lot of it on the road now.
But, I just think they have something in the songwriting of Dave, which is always fresh–he’s always writing stuff; he just keeps writing stuff. He writes so much that you can find great stuff in all of it. And it keeps coming, so he’s got that. And the fact that everyone gets along and is patient with everybody else, and everybody appreciates how that works into longevity.
It’s like that with all bands: when people can get along, it’s a good thing. That’s what I see, anyway, from when I’ve done it. I’ve toured one year for a couple months in ’98, just briefly, and it was a different experience. It was a whirlwind for me. I was coming out of not doing anything like that, other than on a very small scale. I mean, we did those acoustic tours early on with Dave. We only did a solid tour a couple times. So, I’m really looking forward to this one with new ears and eyes, as it were.
Aside from the dates with Dave, what else do you have planned this year?
I’m going to get married in August. I’ll probably chill a little bit, but I want to get back out with TR3 and do some more gigs. I’m trying to do an acoustic tour of my own sometime later in the year in Europe, and then I also want to get TR3 back to Brazil, because we had a really great time. And also just play, and try to conceptualize some more recordings.
Since I just put one out, I’m not feeling rushed to do that, but I’m trying to develop. I’ve never done this before, but I want to write a whole record for TR3 from beginning to end, and not necessarily go in and demand that this is how it’s going to be, but play with the idea. I’m just kind of fucking around with it; I’m drawing on material.
Also, whenever I have time, I’m ready to make another acoustic record. I keep writing shit for that, I just have to take time off to put it together, and then practice it. Sometimes, the new songs on acoustic require some kind of not super technical new thing, but I’ll come up with some lick on top with a bassline. I can’t do it yet, so I have to see if I can play it like I think it, or simplify it so I can play it, or vice versa. Some of the stuff on the new album, it’s still a stretch for me, but I manage to get through it alright. You know, there’s one part where you think about something, and then you try to play it and it’s really weird. I really have to remember that, or else I’ll forget to go there.
