Events

[ROCK] When the Dave Matthews Band was forming back in 1991, guitarist Tim Reynolds opted out. Seventeen years later in 2008, he changed his tune and joined as a full-time member.

It signified a turning point in the careers of all concerned, and perhaps was a means of pulling closer in the wake of losing DMB saxophonist LeRoi Moore, someone Reynolds had worked with well before Matthews became part of the Charlottesville music scene.

“They asked me to record with them on the GrooGrux record, and I hadn’t played on any of the band records in quite a while,” he said during a recent phone call. “I moved back to the east coast, which helped logistically, and then while we were working on the record, LeRoi passed. It seemed like everything fell apart and came together again at the same time.”

Reynolds, 58, explained that since Matthews was mainly doing his Stateside touring in the summer months, when his own schedule was usually at a lull, the idea of officially joining the band had more credence than ever before. One of the main reasons he’d avoided it the first time around was to make certain his own band, the more classically-rocking power trio, TR3, didn’t fall by the wayside.

Despite this, the pair kept finding ways to work together through the years in between. Reynolds watched from the sidelines as the DMB quickly became a national entity, something he attributes, in part, to having not just one but two managers from the very start (whereas most bands start with zero management). He recorded with the band up through 1998’s Before These Crowded Streets and joined them on the road frequently.

Additionally, he and Matthews indulged their mutual love for improvisation with sporadic duo performances, which led up to a 40-city duo tour in 1996 and the release of Live at Luther College, the first official Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds recording.

It’s in the acoustic duo format that Reynolds will appear with Matthews at Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center in Canandaigua — CMAC — on July 6. He says that reworking Matthews’ material into something appropriate for two guitars is more than just a distillation.

“It’s gotten easier now that we’ve been doing it for so many years,” he said. “It becomes more fun and works almost like muscle memory. We’re breaking down the songs to their most essential ingredients, but it allows more room to explore when the spirit moves you; without all the other parts coming in, you have more places you can go. Naturally, we can’t do certain songs from his catalog where the essence is a groove or a drum beat, but you never know until you try it, really. Different rhythms lend themselves to a guitar better than others. Material gets chosen on a song-by-song basis.”

Alongside his work with Matthews, Reynolds kept busy with  TR3 and a steady stream of solo recordings (TR3 will tour extensively this fall, followed by the release of a new solo disc; new DMB material will possibly see release next year). En route, he expanded his musical palette to include an array of other instruments besides guitar: djembe, sitar, violin, and harp, to name a few. Although he says he didn’t learn them all thoroughly, the process widened his perception of how a guitar can be used, particularly in the acoustic realm.

But for a multi-instrumentalist that tends toward improvisation, Reynolds wasn’t a big fan of the jam band idiom for many years.

“When the jam phenomenon really got started, I rebelled against it pretty harshly,” he admitted. “I think it’s part of why I’ve always been so adamant about protecting the rock energy of TR3, although the concept of a jam band isn’t the same thing as it was back then. Obviously, I enjoy improvising, but it has to be done with harmonic structure and it needs to come from the gut — it has to be played with feeling. If you’re thinking about it too much, it just becomes gobbledygook that’s badly in need of some mojo.”

Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds at CMAC, on Wednesday, July 6.