Tim Reynolds

Tim Reynolds (born 15 December 1957) is an American guitarist and multi-instrumentalist known as both a solo artist and as lead guitarist for the Dave Matthews Band.

AllMusic critic MacKenzie Wilson has called Reynolds "an under-rated master".

Reynolds plays the guitar, piano, sitar, drums, violin, bass, keyboards, ethnic percussive instruments, solo djembe, harp, uses drum machines for special effects, and sings, although his performances are primarily instrumental rock music.

As well as being the founding member of the band TR3, while he was a regular performer at Miller's, a bar in Charlottesville, Virginia, he befriended and encouraged the bartender, a young Dave Matthews, to form a band of his own, introducing him to local musicians, several of whom make up the Dave Matthews Band.

Reynolds was performing in Charlottesville in the late 1980s when his friend Nic Cappon encouraged him to perform at a local bar, Miller's, where he met bartender Dave Matthews.

Reynolds explains: "I played there [Miller's in Charlottesville] all the time. Dave Matthews was the bartender. I knew the rest of his [future] band way before that. We played together in Charlottesville since I moved there in 1981. I would play with LeRoi Moore and Carter Beauford. Dave moved to town in 1987. When the Dave Matthews Band started (1991), I already had my own band (TR3). I told him (Matthews), 'I've got a band and I kind of like the way it is. You should start your band.' I could see that he needed to do his own thing."

By the 1990s, he had formed the Tim Reynolds Three, or TR3, and had added other influences, such as Nine Inch Nails, Bob Marley and Marilyn Manson.

In addition, he continued to learn to play other instruments, including the sitar, sarod, the mandello, keytar, tubular bells and other "exotic" instruments that were not commonly seen in Western rock music of the time.

In 1993, Reynolds and Matthews started playing a few acoustic duo sets.

These featured Matthews' music, stripped down to just the acoustic guitar, paired with Reynolds' guitar and occasional use of slide guitar.

During these sets, Reynolds would play between one and four of his own pieces that spanned his own catalog of work.

After a few years these shows gained popularity, and in 1996 Matthews and Reynolds embarked on their first full tour together as a duo.

While Reynolds long declined the offer to join as an official member, he recorded and toured as a sideman with the Dave Matthews Band from its inception until late 1998, joining them as a permanent member in June 2008.

He often tours with Dave Matthews as an acoustic duo in addition to performing as a member of Dave Matthews & Friends.

Reynolds was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, where his father, who served in the U.S. Army, was stationed.

He says he hails from nowhere, because the family moved so often.

His family lived many places, including Germany, a farm in Indiana, an army base in Alaska, Kansas, and Missouri, where he lived longer than any other place until he was old enough to move away as an adult.

Both parents were extremely devout Christians and he says he grew up with Christian music all around him.

However, his older sister owned some albums from the Beatles, which he says, even as a very young child, he loved instantly, playing air guitar to their music.

Upon reaching adolescence, Reynolds learned guitar and bass guitar, so he could perform in the family's local church choir three times a week, while also beginning to experiment with learning what eventually became second nature: adding riffs infused with rock and roll, funk and soul music by the age of twelve.

Upon graduation from high school, he moved away from the Midwest.

His talent brought him together with what would be two other founding members of the Dave Matthews Band, Carter Beauford and Butch Taylor in the fusion band Secrets in Richmond, Virginia.

Later landing in Charlottesville, Virginia, finding jazz, jazz fusion, and experimental music enthusiasts there, Reynolds found the college town a more welcoming environment for him to branch out musically than any of his previous homes, and added to his experimentation other musical influences to his repertoire, including sixties psychedelic rock, citing some of his early influences as Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana and Led Zeppelin.

In 1999, coinciding with the release of the 40-date tour, Live at Luther College was released.

After a short break, Reynolds toured again with Matthews as a duo in 2003.

Reynolds and Matthews then reprised their duo shows as an opening act for the Dave Matthews & Friends tour in 2003 and early 2004.

It was Reynolds's first recording collaboration with Matthews since 2003's Some Devil and his first with the Dave Matthews Band since 1998's Before These Crowded Streets.

Following the release of Dave Matthews' first solo album, Some Devil, Matthews brought together many of the album's collaborators and embarked on a small winter 2003/2004 U.S. tour.

The group consisted of Trey Anastasio (of Phish) on guitar, Brady Blade on drums, Tony Hall on bass, Ray Paczkowski on keys, and Reynolds on guitar.

Each show opened with a small acoustic Matthews and Reynolds set, and then followed with the full-band set with Reynolds performing on electric guitar.

Most of Some Devil was played live that tour, along with a wide variety of covers, including, by Reynolds' request, Peter Gabriel's hit "Solsbury Hill".

They played several shows together in 2006 and 2007.

Reynolds joined Matthews on a mini-tour of Europe in February and March 2007.

On 14 August 2007, Matthews and Reynolds released a live CD/DVD set, Live at Radio City, including the songs "Stay or Leave", "Gravedigger", "Cornbread", and "Dancing Nancies," among others.

It also includes two of Reynolds' own songs: "You are My Sanity" and "Betrayal".

The Radio City show was also released in high definition on Blu-ray.

In 2008, Reynolds once again joined Dave Matthews Band for the recording of Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King with producer Rob Cavallo.

Reynolds and Matthews performed together several times in April 2008: in support of Presidential candidate Barack Obama, at the "Seeds of Compassion" show in Seattle and at Jack Johnson's Kokua Festival at the Waikiki Shell on the island of Oahu, in Hawaii.

Reynolds toured as lead guitarist with the Dave Matthews Band in support of Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King in early 2008.

As of the summer/fall tour of 2023, he is still a full-time member of the Dave Matthews Band.