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**I've Heard that you two met when Tim was playing ini a bar in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Dave was the bartender. Is that a true story?
Matthews: Mmm, sort of. I think we met before I started working at Millers. We lived in the same town, and I love watching music, and Tim was one of the Charlottesville musicians-
Reynolds: -posers.
Matthews: Posers. I just loved Tim's playing, so then we just got to know each other. The cool thing was that people like Tim had [the trio] TR3, he was doing his solo thing, he was playing jazz gigs, he had tons of gigs. All the musicians were sort of wrapped up together. Carter [Beauford], whos' with [the Matthews Band] on drums, played in Secrets and Tim was playing in Secrets, and they probably crossed paths in a lot of different situations.
And two of the guys who sat in on this last album [Before These Crowded Streets] were also old friends of ours from Charlottesville-Greg Howard [Chapman Stick] and John D'earth [string arrangements].
**Tim, were you playing free-imporv acoustic guitar at that time?
Reynolds: At that point I was probably doing electric, but that evolved. I did that gig for over ten years. It started out solo electric guitar with effects, and somewhere I started playing sitar and did that for a long time, and then I started palying acoustic.
Matthews: Monday night at Millers... I remember coming in, it was electric for a while, and then all of a sudden violin, and then all of a sudden cello, and then sitar. And then he'd even play drums for a while-it was cool.
Reynolds: I learned to play a lot of instruments on this gig. And that kind of led to the acoustic guitar as encompassing all the earlier stuff. I got way into that with the effects.
Matthews: And then he'd play a lot of Eastern-sounding scales and werid drums on the guitar.
**When you first started playing together, were you doing Dave's songs?
Matthews: Not really, not for a while. We started recording stuff in my basement or over at his house. I remember Joseph, his son, playing the drums with the balls on the end of the sticks. We'd do some silly recordings. It was open because we hadn't yet ben defined.
We had fun together, and the I, sort of at the [suggestion] of Tim and a few other people, started the Matthews Band. A couple of songs had been written before the band, but we worked them up and started playing them. and it was only really after that that Tim and I got together and started playing acousitcally. Remember we did the Prism [cofffehouse] thing? That was the first time the two of us played acoustics together.
**Tim was also involved in the band's first album. Dave, what were you looking for him to bring into those sessions?
Matthews: Tim and I had been playing acoustic gigs, and it just made sense to bring Tim in, to have some of that spirit, the vibe we had together.
**Tim, did you play more acoustic or electric on the early band albums?
Reynolds: A lot of acoustic. I'd spend about two months playing acoustic and three days playing electric.
Matthews: It was us sitting next to each other, strumming madly. It was so much fun.
Reynolds: We sat in the studio just like this [moves chair righn in fron of Matthews] with a glass thing between us, and that's how we did the whole first record. The band was all on the second floor.
Matthews: And then they'd inevitably turn this acoustic guitar way up and mine way down! That's [producer Steve]Lillywhite-I'm not saying whether he was right or wrong, but he'd say [affects British accent], " Ok, let's turn David down and Timmy up" [laughs]. I love how with the last alum, he said, "David, you don't really feature on this album at all, but don't tell anyone". We'd learn it, we'd all play, and then he'd turn me down.
**Were you playing the same parts?
Reynolds: On the first album we played the same part and then doubled it-like four acoustic guitars playing the same thing.
Matthews: And it made it sound really huge.
Reynolds: I would just overdub a little bit. I did more electric overdubs as the albums went on.
Matthews: The last one has a lot more production. We still recorded the rhythm secion live-guitar, bass and drums-but then much more stuff went on the top. Oh, put Stick there, piano...it doesn't matter if they're not in the band. We had a lot of other people. And Tim taped his face up and played lots of electric overdubs [laughs].
**Dave, have you always played exclusivley acoustic?
Matthews: I never really played the electric. Sometimes when I pick one up, I'm surprised. It's amazing how suddenly you're just like [makes wailing rock lead sounds]. Yeah, I know what that feels like now! And then I put it down, and I just sit back down with the acoustic.
**What drew you to playing an acoustic in the first place?
Matthews: I think in the first place it was a percussive thing. Also it's lighter and there are less things you need with it, so when I was younger and just traveling around, doing a lot of walking, it was always easier to have an acoustic. So I sort of grew attached to how portable it was. And when you're 16 and you can play "Father and Son" by Cat Stevens, [sings] "It's not time to make a change..." all of a sudden you're making out.
**It's interesting that you've always played an acoustic, because you hardly ever play standard acoustic guitar open-position chords. Instead, you favor closed positions and up the neck things that are more typical of electric playing. How did that stley evolve?
Matthews: I think one of the biggest inspirations was John D'earth. He's a trumpet player and a great teacher as well; he did the string arrangements on the last alubm. But he once said to me, "Guitarists always write everything in E or A or D." So I started playing as many things as I could that were a half step away.
**Do you come up with those closed-position patternts by hunting and pecking?
Matthews: A lot of things that I do come out of trying to find circular motions. I'll just go around and around with something-unlike Tim. I think one reason we're complementary is that I can play the same five notes in the same order for an hour and find it absolutley satisfying. And Tim can swim around; I don't know if Tim ever repeats himself. So then the two of us kind of land comfortably together.
**One of your sgnature guitar parts is the staccato "Satellite" riff, which opens up a lot of possiblities for Tim to play more sustained or legato types of things. I'ts not like playing over a big strum.
Reynolds: Yeah, exactly. It's clearly different, especially where there are just two guitars. With a band you can some up with a really simple part, because everyone else is laying down a lot of other stuff. But with two acoustic guitars, you have to be more aware of [the other guitar part].
**Tim, do you come up with the guitar melodies you play in "Satellite" and other songs when you're jamming?
Reynolds: I just come up with it in the studio, and Steve, the producer, says "Stick with that." And that becomes the theme. It becomes part of the song
Matthews: It really does. And people get excited when they hear that. When the band is live and Tim is not with us, I don't think people generally miss things, but people definatley react [when they hear that guitar line]. With "Crash," when they hear the little signature things that Timmy does, the pull-offs and stuff, the go "Yaaaah!" It's almost more familiar than everything else.
Reynolds: The [duo] thing is like a band. Because we play with bands, we hear a lot more in our heads than what we play. The psychic vibe of a band comes in, and we just lock in like a band.
Matthews: Sometimes I'm amazed by how it locks in, really amazed.
**There are a lot of songs on the live record with intense drone parts. I'm thinking for instance, of "Warehouse."
Reynolds: Oh yea, I tune this down [tunes sixth string down to B]. And then I have this pedal that in the backward mode can make it go up an octave or down. I set it so that it wil go down. So I get this drone going and repeat it and then I make it go down an octave. You can't get too busy with the backwards mode-it starts to pile up. But the chip lets it bleed off naturally, play one thing then it'll repeat a couple of times and you can actually play your next part, so there are two, three things going on at once just for a minute.
Matthews: That definatelty gets into a nice wall. So by the time we get into the body of the song, when it sucks back, this little window opens.
**Tim, do you ever feel limited when you're using effects with an acoustic guitar?
Reynolds: No, it's the opposite. I play so much electric guitar that I get my ya-yas out with that, and when I'm playing acousitc, I don't ever feel I need that. I get off on doing both.
I can play acoustic guitar without effects-I practice that way, and I've made records without them, but I like to have more colors. I have lots of records of acoustic guitars, but I don't listen to them as much as I listen to other records that have a lot more sounds. But that's jsut my own taste, and my tastes always change, so that's only today.
**"Minarets", "The Last Stop", and other songs make heavy use of Middle Eastern-sounding scales.
Reynolds: Yeah. I used to like bebop because it had a zillion chords, but then I kind of overloaded on that concept and got into Eastern music, which is just one chord, and I could relate to John Lee Hooker again. And that opened up a whole different way of improvising, based on sound as opposed to notes, and then mixing them together again. You know, you caplay just one note forever [plays one note with slow watery bend]. You're just messing around there instead of like [plays fast bop-style lines]-the nervouse Western industrial society approach. Am I penis yet? [laughter] For hyper people like me, that's a great society.
Matthews: But then Tim can access both of those.
Reynolds: John McLaughlin is known for going ape shit, right? But with Shakti, he does these beautiful opening bits, the Indian approach. He does these beautiful bends, Ravi Shankar kind of stuff where he bends it so much you can hear him tune the guitar back up during the song.
**Dave, what inspired you to explore Eastern territory in your songwrting?
Matthews: I get inspired by Tim a lot, but it's also a place that I haven't gone to and have always loved. If you're playing something like [plays rhythmic drone on two strings], eventually, if you don't like it, you're not listening [laughs]. And then after a while, when you go [drops down one step] or just a tiny change, it makes it so dramatic.
Reynolds: With Steve Lillywhite, any time you do any Eastern thing, he goes, "Oh, it's Adrian Belew." Because that's his only reference point for anything like that. You're doing a deep raga and he goes, "Oh, it's Adrian Belew." It's like, "Steve, take your rich ass over to India for a while" [laughter]
**Dave's songs start with his guitar but take on a different identity when the band arranges them. Is it hard to go back and play them with two guitars and forget what all the other instruments were doing?
Matthews: It's easy to forget about everything else that was going on. Some songs are a bit of a challenge-there are certain songs that we haven't even tried. "Crush" was one that I didn't know if it would work out. For some reason, in the studio [with the band] that song was a struggle. Finally we just said, "Well, let's just play it real straight." Then Fonzie found this groove that was like Marvin Gaye, and we were like, "Oh, that's good." And so the song fell in there when the Marvin Gaye came out, at least in the bass.
I just never thought of this song after that as being something that would work without that feel and it was a really pleasant surprise when Tim and I played it. It was just [snaps fingers]. It's really natural. It doesn't sound forced.
**When you're playing with just two guitars, do you find that you play more percussively?
Matthews: Yeah. It doesn't come out as much with a band, you know. If I were using one of these [full-body acoustic] guitars, I don't know if it would work. I use a Chet Atkins because it's like [makes sharp sound].
Reynolds: It's hard for an acoustic to cut through with all the instruments.
Matthews: Exactly. That's why it's so amazing when rock bands use acoustic guitars where it's like [strums open A-minor chord; stops and makes wretching sound]. Stop that, please, Bob!
**A lot of times a part like that becomes just a little texture, especially if you throw an electric guitar on top of it. In your band arrangments, you manage to avoid that trap, even though there's a lot going on. Your guitar has its place.
Matthews: Yes. But I guess it's also the fact that there isn't an electric guitar all the time. It's not based around that. When we're doing albums or when Tim is playing with the band, it adds, but not everything is built around sreaming rock guitar. There's a little more space.
**How much arranging do you do for playing as a duo?
Reynolds: We know these songs almost in the way that someone who's played standards for years plays those songs every night, and can go anywhere with them. In a second you can tell this is the bridge...It's almost like the music plays us, we play it so much. And when you play them that much, you don't give them life if you play them by rote; they have to change ever night.
Matthews: I'm impressed when I see bands that just come out and do a note-for-note thing of their album, which is really like classical muisc. I'm impressed by that, because it must be hard. I would go out of my tree.
Reynolds: When I was in Secrets, it was a great fusion band and there was al ot of improvising, but 99 percent of the time was all this synchronized tight shit. And that can get really boring fast, ' cause I like to improvise. I realized then that I wasn't cut out to be a fusion guy or anything like that. I had to be much looser.
[Dave's] songs give you an emotional thing, to open different chakras. It's real music, like all the ragas have a different meaning and emotion, and his songs cover all those colors.
**How would you compare the whole experience of performing with the band versus the duo?
Matthews: I love playing with the band. I realy, really love it. But there are more personalities, obviously...There's still the joy, there's still the generosity, but it's more like there's a choreography about it. You have to be more aware of each other, and there's sometimes the threat of falling a little too much into habit.
With Tim though, it's so intimate, it's like going out for a candle-lit dinner, except we're not eating. And I also feel that to a certain degree, if I was to suddenly go [makes jibbersih noises], in this enviornment, Tim would probably laugh. I don't know if it would be an appropriate thing to do with the band. There's a certain looseness about when the two of us are playing that's really beautiful and really different from the band. I feel like this is real precious, you know. The band, I'm amazed how quiet we can get, but Tim and I can get [whispers]real quiet.
**How about from your side, Tim?
Reynolds: Different layers of it are different. In the upper layers, you're playing a different instrumetn, different size crowds. Acsoutic has more subtle things because there's no rythm section, so you're not competing with more sound. Yet when you have a rythm section, that allows you a different kind of melodic freedom.
So it's different but it's the same, becuase the more it comes from, we're being played. Music is playing us, and we let it go the way it should go. Even if it's just for a second, that second lasts a long time. Whatever creates that is really the ultimate
**Unlike a lot of people who perform with rock bands, who get sort of timid when they unplug, all the intensity and dynamics are there in your acoustic show.
Matthews: I know exactly what you mean, when you go out and watch a band unplugged-especially if they try to bust out some mean electric licks. And it's like, "Don't do any of these, unless it's in humor-the acoustic will not be an guitar for you."
Reynolds: And then someone like John Hammond can rock on an acoustic. It's amazing.
**Some of the covers that you do are surprising, like John Prine's "Angel From Montgomery."
Matthews: I'd love to do Bonnie Raitt's version of that. We did a Marilyn Manson song last year ["Cryptorchild"]. We turned it into a beautiful song. It was great to play this lovely, sorrow-filled ballad about the arrival of bitterness and sadness and suicidal tendencies; I'd sing it and then afterwards say, "That's a tune by Marilyn Manson" [laughs].
**In your set, it's interesting to hear a song like "Angel From Montgomery," which has a standard folk/country chord progression, next to your songs, which almost never have standard progressions.
Matthews: But I love it in other people's tunes. I don't know why I can't write like that. I love tunes like "Wild Horsed" or [Lyle Lovett's] "Boat"-what a great song. I can't do it like him-he's got such a great delivery.
**When I listen to your songs for the first time, the parts almost always go somewhere other than where I think they're going to go.
Matthews: Maybe a lot of that comes from a blatant lack of knowledge. In some ways, I'm fired up by the fact that I don't write-
Reynolds: -that you haven't had chord progressions shoved down your throat, so you have a different way of looking at them. That's the shit, though, that's what makes it different. That's why most people, after they've learned everything, spend [so much time] unlearning. That's why when I used to play jazz, and I would write songs, I would never write a jazz song, because it would sound like jazz. I always like it when it was something like an accident. Like John Lee Hooker talks bout, "I never do my changes on the four or the eight, because that's what people expect of me. I don't even know what I'm going to do-I just do it the way I like it."
**I think of the typical verse/chorus/bridge structure of a song as a little wheel that keeps turning at a predictable speed. Your songs are more expansive than that; their structure is less obvious.
Matthews: With some songs, I think about the sections forwards and backwards-like maybe here's the main body of the song, and then there's a sort of chorus , and then the main body of the song, then I'll do the sort of chorus again, but maybe I'll do it twice as long, then I'll have another chorus, then the next one I'll do twice as long. I think of a lot of it in math-not clearly in math but like, "Well, that makes sense. That's balanced."
Reynolds: Music is a math without the formulas-
Matthews: -without the problem of ascribing. And then I write a lot in patterns. Like "Satellite" I started off as this [plays dissonant fingering excercise]. And we sometimes do that [in concert]-that's fun. It's amazing, people recognize it. And then when they're convinced it's the wrong song, we play it the right way.
**That song sounds a lot more sinister that way. It's like the satellite that they've lost track of over at mission control.
Matthews: The one that's fucking up all the telephones! That's the one I'm voting for.
