Tim Reynolds

Tim Reynolds initially impressed singer/songwriter Dave Matthews through performances with his Charlottesville-based group TR3 during the early 1990s. Long established as a local presence in Charlottesville, the guitarist only gained wider recognition beyond Virginia once Matthews entered the picture. The pair developed a friendship that evolved into an enduring partnership. Reynolds joined Dave Matthews Band as an official member in 2008 while the group recorded Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King, yet he and the singer/songwriter had already been performing regular acoustic sets, and Reynolds continued issuing his own recordings as a solo artist and head of TR3 during breaks from that schedule.

Born a military brat in Wiesbaden, Germany, on December 15, 1957, Tim Reynolds relocated often throughout his childhood. Although raised Christian, he discovered secular music through the Beatles and began playing guitar as a teenager. His earliest performances occurred in church settings, after which he expanded into rock music with age. After finishing high school, Reynolds moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1981 and joined various local ensembles. He eventually formed Tim Reynolds Three, later renamed TR3, which performed frequently at Miller’s—the same venue where an emerging singer/songwriter named Dave Matthews worked as a bartender.

In 1993, while Dave Matthews Band prepared for national exposure, Matthews and Reynolds started collaborating on acoustic performances. These shows took place mainly in Virginia until DMB’s 1994 debut Under the Table and Dreaming achieved multi-platinum status, prompting the duo to tour together in 1996. The 1999 release Live at Luther College, drawn from that tour, marked Reynolds’s established position within Dave Matthews Band’s inner circle for both studio work and live appearances. During Matthews’s solo period in the early 2000s, Reynolds participated in the Matthews & Friends tour and contributed to the solo album Some Devil. He attained full membership in Dave Matthews Band during the 2008 sessions for Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King and has remained through subsequent annual tours and studio releases.

Despite his commitments to Dave Matthews Band, Reynolds sustained an independent solo career and kept leading TR3. His recording pace fluctuated because of an active schedule that also encompassed sessions with artists outside the Matthews orbit, yet he assembled an extensive catalog across the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, most often issuing projects on his own.