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Guitarists

Gary Rossington gets his wings onstage at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, New York, in 2013.

Photo by Frank White

The guitarist’s brawny Les Paul tones helped create the Lynyrd Skynyrd legacy on hits like “Free Bird” and “That Smell,” and made him a 6-string hero in his own right.

Gary Rossington—the guitarist who inspired Lynyrd Skynyrd’s song “That Smell” and then played the hell out of it, with sailing, melodramatic feedback and a corpulent, grizzly-bear tone decorated by squealing pinch harmonics—died on Sunday, March 5, after at least a decade of coronary issues, including bypass surgeries and a reported heart attack in 2015. Rossington, who held the reins of Skynyrd ’til the end, was the band’s last surviving original member.

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When Louis Cato received this Univox LP-style as a gift in high school, it needed some major TLC. A few years later, it got some practical upgrades and now makes regular appearances with Cato on The Late Show.

Photo by Scott Kowalchyk

The self-described “utility knife” played drums with John Scofield and Marcus Miller and spent time in the studio with Q-Tip before landing on Stephen Colbert’s show as a multi-instrumentalist member of the house band. Now, he’s taken over as the show’s guitar-wielding bandleader and is making his mark.

It’s a classic old-school-show-biz move: Bring out the band, introduce them one by one, and build up the song to its explosive beginning. It’s fun, dramatic, audiences love it, and that’s how every The Late Show with Stephen Colbert taping starts.

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Sunny War’s sound is focused and personal but draws on a deep well of eclectic influences. “I don’t understand how some people only listen to specific genres” she says. “Sometimes I just want to hear music from India, and I don’t even know what I am listening to, but it can turn into an obsession and last for months.... Why be limited to anything?”

Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins

The eclectic singer-songwriter showcases her inimitable feel for folk composition and audacious approach to technique, tone, and song selection on her latest full-length release, Anarchist Gospel.

Sunny War cannot resist a great pawnshop find—even if the guitar’s not any good. “There’s always some pawnshop, and you think, ‘That’s an unbelievable deal,’” explains the guitarist and singer-songwriter. “But then the thing is kind of broken, and you think, ‘That’s nothing, that can be fixed.’ But it can’t be fixed, and in the end, you’re just adding to your collection of broken guitars.” Although the point, she stresses, is that each guitar, at least in theory, is a winner. “I’ve got a lot of broken guitars with potential.”

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The Michael Landau Signature Strat comes equipped with noiseless single coil and humbucking pickups, vintage-Style Hardware and a faded "coma" red finish.

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Rig Rundown: Bush's Gavin Rossdale & Chris Traynor [2023]

Import steals to custom-ordered Fenders plus Fractal Audio modelers keep these post-grunge heroes sounding modern and rocking harder than ever.

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