Tim Reynolds: “It’s great to be able to play a gig and just like some of these songs so much, even more than in the past.”

MCT / Robert Costa

Relaxing on a plush couch backstage after a concert with Dave Matthews Band, guitarist Tim Reynolds was tired. A half-hour before, he was playing a fiery cover of Neil Young’s “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” and DMB’s own “Tripping Billies” as the band’s lead guitarist during a spirited encore in front of over 20,000 fans at the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden, N.J. Now, the seats were empty and DMB’s crew was packing up equipment for the night.

Matthews milled outside Reynolds’ dressing room, conversing with friends. The backstage area was notably quiet — with drumsticks, copies of the set list and empty water bottles scattered alongside duffel bags, guitar picks and left-over trays of melon and crackers growing staler by the minute — hardly the making of an E! True Hollywood Story.

Unlike many guitarists considered among the best of their generation — and Reynolds certainly is — Reynolds revels in finding ways to not dominate songs with a powerful lead riff, especially when he plays with Dave Matthews Band, the jam-friendly multi-platinum rock-band from Charlottesville, Va., which Reynolds has been associated with since it formed in 1991.

Reynolds, who grew up as an oft-moving Army brat with devout religious parents before settling for many years in Charlottesville, where he first met Matthews, has enjoyed playing on the band’s current summer tour — a consistently sold-out annual American music rite that mirrors the following of the Grateful Dead at least in terms of fan fervor and dedication. The band comes to the Comcast Center in Mansfield, Mass., on Tuesday.

This summer’s DMB tour is Reynolds’ first with Matthews & Co. in a decade.

Reynolds hasn’t exactly been slacking since his last outing with DMB in the studio on 1998’s Billboard-topping Before These Crowded Streets. He fronts his own rock trio, TR3, which has been through numerous incarnations since it began in 1984 but seems to have found new life this past spring during a cross-country tour of colleges and clubs.

After living in New Mexico for the last eight years, Reynolds recently relocated to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where he ran across two musicians, bassist Mick Vaughn and drummer Dan Martier, who eventually joined Reynolds in reigniting TR3 this past January. Being in the Outer Banks also has given him a shorter commute for his DMB studio work.

Reynolds undoubtedly is an integral part of the current Dave Matthews Band sound, especially after keyboardist Butch Taylor unexpectedly quit DMB in late May after 10 years of playing with the band.

“It’s just really a lot of fun,” said Reynolds about DMB’s summer tour. “I’ve played some of these songs for a long time but I’m feeling the songs now more than ever. It’s hard to describe — it’s really nice. I’m really connecting with the music. It’s great to be able to play a gig and just like some of these songs so much, even more than in the past.”

For Reynolds, coming back to Dave Matthews Band this summer has only endeared him more to the music he began playing alongside Matthews in cramped Charlottesville bars and cafes more than 15 years ago.

“(Dave Matthews Band music) has been around as long as a lot of other great music that you’ve been around and you’ve heard it long enough that it hasn’t faded away,” said Reynolds. “When you hear it, you still go ‘That’s a great song.’ There’s nothing better for a musician to be able to play than some great songs, because that’s what you live for.”

Reynolds is joining Matthews and other DMB members Carter Beauford (drums), Boyd Tinsley (violin), Stefan Lessard (bass) and LeRoi Moore (saxophone) at Haunted Hollow, DMB’s personal recording studio on a private farm outside Charlottesville, for the group’s yet-untitled latest studio effort. Producer Rob Cavallo, best known for producing Green Day’s blockbuster 1994 album Dookie, is DMB’s choice for producing its next release.

“We’re laughing a lot, which I think is important,” said Matthews about DMB’s new studio work. “We’re all writing together, which I think is important. It’s a change right now. It’s difficult to be in an organization, a group of people, in a gang that stays the same for so long. There’s a lot of crap that comes along with it. This time, for whatever reason, it’s really open and we’re in each other’s faces a lot. It’s good.”

Reynolds first gained widespread national acclaim as Matthews’ playing partner on the two friends’ 1996 acoustic tour.

A live performance by Matthews and Reynolds from February 1996 at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, led to RCA releasing Live at Luther College, which has since sold over 3 million copies, in early 1999 shortly before Matthews and Reynolds embarked on yet another national acoustic tour together. Matthews and Reynolds still enjoy performing acoustic shows outside of DMB studio and road efforts. In April, Reynolds joined Matthews at Seattle’s Key Arena for a “Seeds of Compassion” benefit with the Dalai Lama, a few days after the two played their free Obama concert at Indiana University.

Outside his work with Dave Matthews Band, Reynolds is also very busy with his own trio, TR3, recording a new album and planning a fall tour. “We just really finished,” said Reynolds about recent TR3 recording sessions — which like the upcoming DMB sessions were also recorded at Haunted Hollow.

Reynolds sees TR3’s new music as part of the great rock ’n’ roll tradition of playing as a three-piece ensemble — with a drummer, bassist and guitarist forming a concise, tight sound.

“This approach had more history to it in the sense that it’s the power-trio, rock-trio, three-piece, whatever you want to call it,” said Reynolds. “Over the years, that’s been a mode I’ve been really comfortable with, starting in the ’80s when TR3 first started.

“Now, being a little older and listening to music more,” said Reynolds, “revisiting that format, I’m really liking it and learning a lot every time we play.”

“The first power trio I really got into was Grand Funk Railroad, then Led Zeppelin, which was like a power-trio with a singer,” recalled Reynolds about his inspirations for TR3. “Band of Gypsys, Jimi Hendrix, as well as Jimi Hendrix Experience — but particularly Band of Gypsys — amazing trio stuff because of the space that the drums and the bass used. Whereas with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, which was great as well, the drummer was kind of jazzy and the bass was not playing a whole lot of stuff ... Band of Gypsys is just like from heaven, it’s transcendent.”

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