MUSIC: Guitarist Reynolds evolves to ‘letting space just be’

By Jack Hill (Contact)

TR3 is bassist Mick Vaughn (from left), guitarist Tim Reynolds and drummer Dan Martier.

LITTLE ROCK — Guitarist Tim Reynolds was invited to join a band in 1991 that was being formed by an unknown musician who Reynolds knew only as his favorite bartender in Charlottesville, Va., the home of the University of Virginia. Though Reynolds liked the earnest bartender/would-be musician, he politely passed and suggested that he start his own band, since Reynolds was happy with his own TR3 trio format and lineup, which he had formed in 1984.

So Dave Matthews took Reynolds’ suggestion and started his own band.

But the two men didn’t exactly go their separate ways. Reynolds has made appearances on several of the Dave Matthews Band albums: Remember Two Things in 1993, Under the Table and Dreaming in 1994, Crash in 1996, Live at Red Rocks in 1997, Before These Crowded Streets in 1998 and Live in Chicago in 2001. In 2005, Reynolds self-released a solo set, Parallel Universe.

“I just spent the whole summer on the road with Dave,” Reynolds says. “Before that, it was back in ’98 the last time I went out with him and the band. But we’ve done a lot of little tours, just the two of us.” In 1999, Reynolds and Matthews collaborated on a project, Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds - Live at Luther College, recorded at a tiny college in Decorah, Iowa, which contained a hit song, “Streams,” written by Reynolds.

In 2007, the duo released a second album, also as a DVD, of Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds: Live at Radio City Music Hall. The two men did a free benefit in April for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama at Indiana University, followed a few days later by a “Seeds of Compassion” benefit with the Dalai Lama in Seattle.

“Now I’m back on the road with my own trio,” Reynolds, now 50, adds, “which is a different kind of energy, but really fulfilling. I’m playing just electric guitar right now, but will probably bring in some acoustic eventually. Music is like my religion, my connection to the past, and I’m always trying to learn, going back to the days of Albert King and Robert Johnson to the new technology that’s always developing.

“We’ll be doing a few older TR3 songs that never really made it out there, and a few cover things. One is something I wanted to learn, Chris Whitley’s ‘Wild Country,’ so we went in the studio and spent half a day learning that.” Other nonoriginal songs that may be heard in a set include songsby Peter Gabriel, Prince, Pink Floyd and James Brown. Embracing rock, jazz, funk, rhythm and blues, world beat and “jam band” sounds, Reynolds likes to bounce all over the musical map, throwing in instrumentals to boot.

TR3 consists of Reynolds, bassist Mick Vaughn and drummer Dan Martier, whom Reynolds met when he moved to the Outer Banks of North Carolina from Santa Fe, N.M., in the summer of 2007. Vaughn, a Chicago native, had moved to the East Coast in 1995, and Martier, who grew up in Pittsburgh before moving to Florida, moved to the Outer Banks in 1989.

“I’d played a benefit there for Stanley Jordan and gone on somevacations there, and really liked the place,” Reynolds says. “Back in New Mexico, I’d become kind of a hermit, maybe too much of one, and I decided I needed a new musical direction. After I moved here, I noticed I could walk to the end of the street to get coffee and everyone was closer together. I met Mick and Dan and we did a gig together that really went well, and it developed into the kind of symbiotic relationship you have with a band, so near the end of the summer of ’07, we decided to become a band and go on the road.

“We started working on an album and we’ll put that out in the beginning of ’09.” The TR3 did its recordings at Matthews’ Haunted Hollow Studios, on a farm outside Charlottesville.

In his formative years, Reynolds was influenced by several “power trio” rock groups, especially Grand Funk Railroad and The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Hendrix’s later outfit, Band of Gypsies. He also throws in Led Zeppelin, which he calls “a power trio with a singer.” “As I’ve gotten older, I’m more into letting space just be,” Reynolds explains. “You just leave more space between notes and hear more than you would have 10 years ago.”TR3 (The Tim Reynolds Trio) 9 p.m. today, Revolution Room, 300 President Clinton Avenue, Little Rock Opening act: Nathan S. Hancock Tickets: $15; open to those age 18 and over (501) 823-0090

Weekend, Pages 66 on 11/21/2008