Boyd Tinsley Interview #2

Followers give Boyd courage to Love more!

Boyd Tinsley Interview Part 2

We had an opportunity to sit down with Boyd Tinsley in Chicago after the show to follow up on Faces in the Mirror and some other questions...here is what happen:

12/5/2012  11:37PM

DMBTattoo:

Now that Faces in the Mirror has been out for a while, how has the feedback been for you personally?

Boyd Tinsley:

It's been really cool, really special, from the very beginning.  Somehow I got to the point to expect really beautiful things to come from this movie.  Its been that way for four years. What's happened and the way it happened I could never had imagined.  Everywhere it goes it sprouts love.  Love amongst my twitter followers who were really brought together though this movie.  Through Narnia.  Which almost goes hand and hand with this movie.  That's who is really out there spreading the word about this movie.  Its been a thing of love man.  We have had these events all over the country.  You know they are free, for the most part. It's about sharing the art with people to experience this movie together particularly on the big screen because this is a big screen movie.  Especially on a theatre sound system as well.  It sounded f*cking awesome when we played it in the AMC in Pittsburgh.  It was awesome! That was the first time I  had seen it in a regular movie theatre.  That's what it was made for!! I was so psyched! Yes we did it!

DMBTattoo: You already kind of answered my next question regarding the grass roots of spreading the word with this movie, but what's next for Boyd Tinsley, the producer?

BT: I'm going to continue on with this movie and try to do creative things with music in conjunction with it.  We have the soundtrack out now. So now the whole musical element is out now which is almost separate from the movie itself, when you separate it, it's an album.  They are two separate things almost.  It's like another branch that has sprouted out.  What happens from here man, I don't know, I definitely want to do another movie.  When? I don't know.  It's going to be like one of those times, just like everything else in my life, like oh now it's time.  It just comes in a moment, but that moments been years in the making and preparing.  That's the way we did this movie which is insane to do it for that amount of time, to just wait for the magic to happen.  But it just kept happening over and over and over so we always expect just amazing stuff to happen.  I honestly don't know. The only thing I know is I want to continue to put this movie out in front of people and let it spread from people to people.  It was amazing in Pittsburgh, I was so surprised.  I thought there would be 15-20 people .  I went in there and was like holy sh*t! There was 150-200 people  there, I had no idea! Where did these people come from! I had no idea.  Its spreading, just like how DMB spread.  We were grassroots we had fans come in tape our shows, send em around and we started the same way. So that what I know is taking it to the people.  I don't know any other way to do this, in an honest way.

DMBTattoo: Its been a great start so far, everyone loves it, keep it up and we will help as much as we can.  Got a few more here for ya.

DMBTattoo: What's your favorite new song to play form the new album?

BT: I like that one, Rooftop.  I like Drunken solider too.  That's a fun one.  I like the Riff. 

DMBTattoo: I gotta ask ya, I run the DMBTattoo website and I failed to ask you last time but...do you have a tattoo?

BT: No, where should I get one? What should it be?

DMBTattoo: I was going to ask you! What would you get if you ever got one?

BT:  What would I get? I'm not gonna tell you...it's interesting I don't know.

DMBTattoo: What do you think about the fans, the basis of my site, we have 1600 tattoos, all 50 states, 14 countries, all related to Dave Matthews Band.  Some are of your signature.  How do you feel when you sign someones arm and a day later they email it to me tattooed on their arm.  Fans go to this level, how does it make you feel?

BT:  It's intense man.  It's really cool.  It's something I've never experienced before.  In all these years no one has tattooed my signature.

DMBTattoo: Oh there are several of yours! Next time you sign someones arm they may go get that tattooed!

BT:  Actually this summer I do know of a few.  Some have done it since I've been on twitter, starting with Andy Benedetto. It's cool man, it's wow.  You have this eternal connection with this person, part of you, on them for life. It's an intense feeling but it's also sort of a bonding thing, it really is.

DMBtattoo: Well thanks to you and the band I have seen some really creative and unique tattoos so thank you.  Keep on signing people and they will keep getting me tattooed!

BT: I think about tattoos a lot.  I just can never decided exactly what I want.  There is something first I do want, I don't know man.

DMBTattoo: If you could play with any musician that you have never played with before, who would it be?

BT:  Um...that's the thing, that's a short list! The artist I would love the band to do something with is Stevie Wonder. I would love to do a show with him, or have him come out and sit in with us.

DMBtattoo: Finally, what does Boyd Tinsley want for Christmas?

BT: Not much...not much.  Mostly Peace and love.  Presents are presents. They are cool . The thought of it is great, but the actual thing is just a thing.  Half the things you get you put em away and lose em. Bring em out years later and say oh yeah i got  this for Christmas. Those are presents.  But the thing that is cherish able for ever is just love. Not taking everything for granted. Not taking life for granted.  Just know that every time we have the opportunity for love, and we get love it's a beautiful thing to be cherished. There's a lot of fuc*ing non-love, negativity, evil in the world.  It's either one or the other.  To me, just being with these twitter followers and Narnia followers has opened my heart in a big way.  It's given me courage to love more.

DMBTattoo: Thank you Boyd.

Be sure to check out Faces in the Mirror Movie & Soundtrack, available on Itunes and various other platforms.   www.facesinthemirrorfilm.com  

Follow Boyd: @BT_DMB

Follow Faces: @facesfilm

Follow us: @DMBTattoo

Boyd Tinsley Interview #1

7/7/2012 7:00PM, Alpine Valley Music Theatre

Recently,  we had the opportunity to sit down with Boyd Tinsley before he hit the stage at Alpine Valley to ask a few fan questions and discuss his upcoming film, Faces in the Mirror.  Here is what happen:

DMBTattoo.com:

So tell us the gist of the movie, we have seen the previews and the BT behind the scenes video on YouTube, but just talk about the movie a little bit.

Boyd Tinsley:   It's just an idea that sort of hit me one night to do this movie.  Making a movie was something I've wanted to do for about 15 years and I have thought about the way I was going to go about it over that time.  The way I really wanted to do it was have it based around music.  So we started off with music, we had a story about this guy named Ben, whose Dad had passed.  He came back for the funeral, but he and his Dad had a falling out.  When he was small his Dad was a workaholic and was away a lot so he didn't see him.  So he became bitter and when he grew up he never saw his father until on his father's death bed.  On the day of that funeral he goes through this dreamlike odyssey where he meets a lot of people, very interesting people that are sort of like guides to him.  It takes course of one night, one complete day.  It's a journey.  I won't go beyond that, but it's a complete dream.  It was a joy to make, it's a beautiful movie, beautifully shot.  It has great actors, the lead Ryan Orr, [he is] just really expressive.  The movie doesn't have a lot of dialog in it. For me the most important thing about a movie is the feeling, I love the feeling I get from a movie.  Just the way the scenes make me feel, like in Star Wars when the ship comes out in the very beginning, you know this is going to be good and you feel it.  I love that ship.  You had great music in that movie too, John Williams is a great composer.   You had great music and you had great movie.  When you put those things together its huge and that's what I wanted to happen.  I wanted to have great music and a great movie put that together and I wanted to get those chills.  That's what we did.  That was my guide post for making this movie, every scene I have to get the chills and it has to have big moments when things really burst into this huge explosion of emotion.  So that's where I come from as a film maker.  We made this film, it took a lot of belief and a lot of faith to a make a film where we did not know how it was going to turn out.  To me like in music I like taking one idea and just sort of expanding on it and seeing where it goes.  Like creating a story and ride it and see where it goes.  Just like in this movie, I didn't want to have the complete story, I wanted only part of the story and just let it start.  I knew as it went along we would figure out what the story was.  It was a 3 year process to make this movie but all through this time we were all thinking about it.  The major players, me, the directors, the producers, everybody was thinking about this, this whole time and we were like yes this and we knew exactly what do .  It was cool and was really a cool thing for us to discover what this movie was in the end.

DMBTattoo: What did you feel producing/acting, what was the biggest challenge for you in each of the roles?

BT:  I did have to learn a lot.  The music producing I had done before at least on one occasion.  I was exposed to that to a degree, but then, producing a movie, of course I had never done that before but like you said I had to learn as we went along. I never really studied film making in the sense of how you make a film.  I just knew what I wanted to get out of the film and I knew a way to get that.  So I just followed that.  The challenge was everything to a degree, but honestly the biggest challenge was because I pretty much had to spent every day.  Every day off, sometimes days we were on, You know I have a gig, I was editing music or doing some aspect of the film and have to be away from my kids.  Honestly that's the hardest thing, I work so much with the band and with this movie so I am away a lot so honestly missing my kids is the hardest thing.  Everything is else is, yes its hard work but I love what I do and I don't mind that.

DMBTattoo:  Looking forward, assuming the success of this film, where do you want to take this? Do you want to produce more?  What do you want to do next?

BT:  I absolutely want to do more.  What we are going to do with this movie after the premiere.  This is an idea I first had was take it into music venues and theatres.  I wanted to do it a few scenes maybe every week or so, and have a band play.  Then have this music film thing going on and introduce a new scenes every time and then show the entire movie.  We are going to do that after this.  We are going to take the movie on tour.  Show the movie and have a band playing as well.  We will probably have musicians from the soundtrack as well.  We will take it directly to the fans.  I guess I always knew I would have to make a movie myself but also I didn't want to have to have a third party to get it to people. What's  the wait, put it in music venues, that's my home and bring in bands and then that's the way we will do it.  So we will do that and beyond that I think if enough mass appeal happens on this grass roots level, I would love for it to be in theatres.  It's a movie that's made for the big screen.  We had this event in Philly and I saw it on the biggest screen that I saw so far and I was like holy cow, I couldn't believe! It was really cool man.

DMBTattoo: We can't wait to see it, you have leaked a little but about a Chicago date on August 2?

BT:  It's going to premier in Seattle on August 30.  We are going to have an event where we show a scene from the movie, like this bonfire scene, then the trailer.  A question and answer and a band.  I'll bring somebody from DMB with me, we had Rashawn in NY and we have Jeff this time.   We are still working on plans for Chicago. But it's definitely going to happen.  I am looking forward to that.

DMBTattoo: Can you tell us which venue it will be at for Chicago?

BT:  We are still nailing down those plans, we will have that all sorted out by the beginning of next week but we are all really excited about that.

DMBTattoo:  Being a new twitter member, how has your experience been?  The amount of interaction you have had with fans has had to be overwhelming, but what do you think?

BT:   Its really cool man.  I love talking to fans.  Like in the early days I used to spend a lot of time outside kicking it with fans and talking to them.  So the bigger you get, you get more removed from fans sometimes in the way you could kick and talk.  So it's really cool to have the opportunity again to talk to the fans and get to know them and them to get to know me.  It's fun, it's just like I interact with them and people ask a lot of questions and I love answering them when I can.  I send out some birthdays and it's just fun, everybody has been really nice.

DMBTattoo: Being a twitter user for several years now, with fans and friends, everyone appreciates it.  Being able to talk to BT, even with questions your answering, people love it, being able to see a little bit inside to who BT its very nice, we encourage you to keep it up, we really appreciate it.

BT : Thank you, thanks man I appreciate that.

DMBTattoo: We have a few fan questions as well, not related to the movie.  Are you a vegetarian?

BT: Yeah

DMBTattoo: Related to that, working out as much as you do, what do you eat for protein being a vegetarian?

BT: The trick is, I drink a lot of protein shakes.  As a vegetarian, to work out and build muscle you have to drink protein shakes.  There's no way we can eat enough Boca burgers you know you can't do it. The secret is protein shakes [laughing]  It was a problem for a long time till I figured out to do the shakes, it was you have to sit there and stuff down tofu and Boca burgers to get that protein.  That's the toughest thing being a vegetarian is getting enough protein.

DMBTattoo: As a vegetarian, what's your favorite meal?

BT: I like batter fried tofu and tofurkey, a lot.  I like anything that just tastes good.  I'm not a vegan so I  also eat eggs.  Boca burgers, veggie burgers, my diet is pretty simple when it comes to that.  I'm not a gourmet veggie eater, I eat to survive mostly.

DMBTattoo:  We have had a few fans send in questions and have also been dying to know, what is the hardest song for you to play?

BT:  I'm going to tell you what, they are all tough to play.  There isn't a single easy song in Dave Matthews Band repertoire, trust me.  I mean I have sat in with other bands and I've never sat in with a band with songs like ours.  It's like a whole different world man, but it's cool.  There's not one in particular, all of them are hard, but all of them are a lot of fun.  That's just the way we roll I guess, it's the way that is  There's not one song that I sit there and say oh wow this is going to be hard.  I just look at it like one song at a time.

DMBTattoo:  We were wondering, do you know anything about the Mardi Gras mask that is on the speaker stack next to you?

BT: There's a Mardi Gras mask? I never even noticed it? I had no idea, I had nothing to do with it at all.  It's really bad, honestly I didn't even notice it.  Is it right next to me?

DMBTattoo:  It's right on the stack next to you, we thought it might have a meaning?

BT: Oh I gotchya,  I never noticed it man. [laughing] I'm going to look for it tonight though.

DMBTattoo: Finally, if you weren't playing with DMB, as a world renown musician, what would you be doing?  When you were a kid, did you have a career that you wanted to do?

BT: I don't know man, something different. I wanted to be a musician, a guitar player, but I wanted to rock like I rock now.  I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do except I'm playing the violin instead of the guitar.  So I am living my childhood dream.

DMBTattoo:  That is something very few people can say and is absolutely amazing.  We are very happy for you and we love you rocking out! Last night was a great show and looking forward to tonight.  Really appreciate taking the time to chat with us.  It's been a pleasure.

BT:  Absolute, Thanks for coming.  Thank you very much.