
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?”
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.”
That compulsion exists despite the fact that the Nashville native has an almost spiritual connection with her main guitar, a 1989 Guild True American. “I can’t explain it, but I knew when I found it,” she says. “I’ve had a lot of guitars before that guitar, but none of them have been my guitar, except for this one. It’s just so warm. It has a little story to it when you hear it.”
Whether she’s collecting broken guitars or bonding with her primary instrument, War has an intuitive feel for those impossible-to-define qualities that make music special. She’s the master of the intangible, and that’s indicative of how she approaches her craft: be it her idiosyncratic fingerpicking style, deceptively simple-looking fretwork, or organic compositional bent. She can’t necessarily explain it, but she knows where the magic is, and all those characteristics came together with the making of her sixth studio offering, Anarchist Gospel.
Sunny War - "Whole" [Official Audio]
Ostensibly, Anarchist Gospel is a folk album with rich gospel harmonies, heavy blues stomp, and punk irreverence. “Love’s Death Bed,” the opening track, is a case in point: a slow guitar ostinato sits under a hypnotic call-and-response vocal figure that—at least to this writer’s ears—conjures up the spirit of the Gladys Knight & the Pips classic, “Midnight Train to Georgia.” “His Love” brings to mind Beatles-esque descending chord motion, and on “No Reason,” War lets loose on an SG that belongs to the album’s producer, Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Hurray for the Riff Raff). (The record also features a number of Nashville heavy hitters, like bassists Jack Lawrence and Dennis Crouch and guitarist David Rawlings, as well as artists Jim James and Allison Russell.)
“When I was a teenager, I started getting into old blues, like I was listening to Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James and even Chet Atkins at one point. I imitated the stuff I was listening to.”
Then there’s … a Ween cover? That’s right—and when you first hear War’s take on “Baby Bitch,”it sounds like she brought in a children’s choir to sing the raunchiest parts of the chorus. The incongruity is hysterical. “Those aren’t even real kids,” she laughs. “It was three middle-aged guys. We recorded the voices in slow motion and then sped it up until they sounded like children. Ladies were messaging me that that was so wrong. I was like, ‘They’re not even real kids, and even if they were, I would have had permission.’” (In case you can’t tell, War has a wicked sense of humor.)
Photo by Chris Estes
The taste War reveals in both her cover selection and her approach to arranging is further illuminated by her performance style. Forgoing a pick entirely, she fingerpicks with a distinctive claw shape, using just her thumb and index finger. “My thumb is calloused into a point, as is the tip of my index finger. It looks really weird,” she shares. “My parents had a friend I always used to see playing banjo—and I think I was trying to copy him as a kid—and then my uncle is a bass player. I saw them playing more than I saw people playing guitar, and I imitated how they plucked the strings. Then, when I was a teenager, I started getting into old blues, like I was list
Although sticking with an unorthodox approach has its drawbacks, too. “I am starting to have hand problems,” War says. “I have cramps and they kind of lock up. I have been playing since I was 7, and I am 32 now. It’s probably just not a smart way to play.”
War’s fretwork starts, at least as a default, with first-position open chords, and she uses a capo to find a key that works with her voice. But that’s just home base. She often ventures far beyond that box, employing a battery of glissandos, hammer-ons, open-string drones, and an assortment of other extended techniques. She’ll also put the capo high up the neck, somewhere in the vicinity of the 12th fret, to take advantage of the taut, mandolin-like feel of the strings.
For Anarchist Gospel, War sent a line from her guitar’s pickup straight to the board and also miked an amplified signal. Live, she requests a Fender Twin Reverb and tweaks the amp’s low end and reverb to beef up her sound.
“I am not thinking like a guitar player,” she says. “I was never trained like that. I just know the basic chords, so I have to invent stuff. Every chord I use is just a basic chord, and then I accidentally discover new chords. But it’s never that I know what it is.
“I don’t get how people can memorize other tunings,” she continues. “Like the song ‘Hopeless,’ from the new record, that song is played in an open tuning, and when we recorded it, I had to go sit in another room and figure out what it was because I couldn’t remember it. I still don’t know what it is. I have it written down somewhere on a piece of paper that I’ll probably never find again. If I want to play it live, I am going to have to have a separate guitar that’s already in that tuning, I guess.”
“I am not thinking like a guitar player. I was never trained like that. I just know the basic chords, so I have to invent stuff.”
While War is primarily an acoustic player, she almost always modifies her tone with an amplifier. For Anarchist Gospel, she sent a line from her guitar’s pickup straight to the board and also miked one of the different amps that producer Tokic had in the studio (don’t ask her which one it was). Live, she requests a Fender Twin Reverb and tweaks the amp’s low end and reverb to beef up her sound.
Her simple approach to tone belies her more nuanced musical sensibilities. Elaborating on the musical dimensions she was exposed to while growing up, War explains, “My parents were both really eclectic. It could be the Beatles one day, and then R&B the next, then blues, hip-hop, and Ministry. In the ’90s, we had hundreds and hundreds of CDs. Even now, I don’t understand how some people only listen to specific genres. Especially with the internet, you can really listen to whatever you want, and if it’s good, it’s good. 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. And it’s free. Why be limited to anything?”
Sunny War's Gear
Photo by Chris Estes
Strings
- D’Addario (.013–.056)
Anarchist Gospel breathes with the influence of that wide-open, voraciously curious ear that likely only fed into the album’s foundational demos, which War amassed during the pandemic. “I had a lot of these guitar parts from during Covid,” she shares. “It takes me a long time to turn them into a song. I always have little riffs, but I never know how I am going to make the thing around it.
“For ‘His Love,’ I had that guitar arrangement for a really long time,” she continues. “I had the part that is the verses, but it’s hard for me to then figure out a second part, or a chorus, or a bridge. I play in a circle—or a loop—a lot, and when I get in the circle, I can’t get out of it. I only have this verse and I can’t understand how I am going to expand it to something else. These guitar parts become my exercises, and I always have a couple of different little riffs and chord arrangements that I play all the time. It takes me a long time to see how it can be a song or something.”
YouTube It
Sunny War, with her trusty Guild in hand and backing band accompaniment, performs Anarchist Gospel’s “No Reason” on CBS’ Saturday Morning, her righthand thumb-and-index style on display throughout.
Often, it’s an outside factor—like wanting to buy more pawnshop guitars—that stimulates War’s creative juices and pushes her to finish her songs. “I had to finish these songs because I signed a deal with New West Records,” she laughs. “I am always trying to scheme—trying to get some money together so I can buy more broken guitars. I was like, ‘I don’t know how I am going to do it, so I’ve got to write an album.’”
Although, truth be told, War’s sights are set higher, and her real dream is a Gibson SG. “The SG is what I would prefer to have,” she says, maybe half joking, especially after having borrowed Tokic’s for the electric lead work on Anarchist Gospel. “I am trying to exploit myself so I can buy an SG. I’ve been wanting that guitar since I was 11 years old. My whole life has been working towards that. Once I get that guitar, I am done. I will have accomplished everything.”
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Ted’s parachute
If you want to escape from the pressures of modern life, go pick up your guitar. Now. You’ll be glad you did.
As I write this, we’re a few weeks away from the election, and I’m feeling as nervous as a cat in a dog park. No matter how you’re voting, there’s a good chance you feel the same way. These are complex times.
But we have a source of respite that many do not: We play guitar. Lately, I’ve made it a point to carve out an hour or so nightly to play through some of my band’s current repertoire to keep the dust off between shows and to explore some fresh sonic options to work into songs. The practice is paying off musically, but that’s not the biggest benefit. I’ve noticed, after I shut down my amps and pedalboard, and put my guitars back on their stands, that I feel better. About everything. For that hour or so, I am simply lost in the joys and mysteries of playing guitar. Things start to reveal themselves, new ideas tumble out of my fingers, and suddenly I’m in a place where anxiety can’t get to me and my mind is largely clear. It’s a safe zone where I’m not judging myself or others, and I’m relaxed and present. It’s a place where polling numbers and attack ads, family members with difficulties, and other concerns don’t even exist. And while it may be temporary, it is also beautiful.
I’m certain many of us have the same experience when we’re playing at home or onstage. And if you’re reading this while voices in your head are nattering with worry, I suggest you immediately go plug a guitar—the one that plays like melted butter—into your favorite amp and play a little melody, or your favorite set of chord changes, or even a nice campfire chord. I’d be surprised if you don’t soon feel the sensation of tension trickling out of your spine.
This is the great gift of guitar playing and music in general: Its ability to transport us to another place—that zone of safety and delight. Under the weight of the world, it is often possible to temporarily forget guitar playing’s curative power, or be distracted from it, and that is why I am reminding you.
"This is the great gift of guitar playing and music in general: Its ability to transport us to another place—that zone of safety and delight."
For me, and I’m sure this is not just my experience, music has always been a refuge—a special thing that makes my heart fill with peace, joy, and wonder. I recall watching Johnny Cash on TV as a child, listening to his spoken stories and the tales in his songs, and feeling like I was being swept through time and space, to places and eras full of exciting people and things. It stretched my imagination and worldview, and made it seem that life’s possibilities were endless. I still cherish that feeling, and listening to, for a couple examples, Tom Waits, Pink Floyd, Merle Haggard, Lucinda Williams, Son House, Kevin Gordon, Coltrane, and the Messthetics, still delivers it. And the next step, playing music and writing songs, makes me feel like an occupant of a small corner of their universe, and that’s a place I cherish.
I’ll mention safety again, and pardon me if this gets too personal. Many of us, after surviving the pandemic and the last decade of turmoil, do not feel safe. Having grown up in a household with a physically and verbally abusive father, where a blow could come at any time without reason or warning, that’s long been an issue for me. And when the news of the latest mass shooting, for example, is fresh in my brain, I tend to map out places to hide or flee when I’m at a concert or a mall or a large public gathering. Maybe that’s just my problem, but my gut—and what I hear from others—tells me it’s not.
Oddly, one of the places I can feel safest and happiest is onstage, whether performing solo or with my band, when everything is flowing and the music is in my veins. And that’s the magic of guitar and music again. It’s given me a place to be in the world that I love and that makes me feel complete. If you get that feeling from playing and listening to music, don’t let anything get in its way. Sometimes, in these times, that can be challenging, but the first step to your personal oasis is simple: just pick up that special guitar and plug in.
In this promotional photo of the Waikiki Trio, the standing guitarist is playing a Martin 0-42, and the seated guitarist is playing a Martin 0-18K.
Pacific Island pluckers had a hand in developing the beloved dreadnought acoustics, and changed the course of American guitar music.
In 1906, a devastating earthquake and three days of raging fires leveled 80 percent of San Francisco. Nine years later, to honor the opening of the Panama Canal and signal that San Francisco was back, the city held the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.
More than 18 million people visited. One of the most popular attractions was the Hawaiian Pavilion. Live music and hula dancing, integral parts of Hawaiian culture, were in the show, where they could be experienced on a large scale on the mainland for one of the first times.
That was the beginning of the Hawaiian music craze that had a good run in the U.S. until the Great Depression. Hawaiian musicians had already embraced the ukulele and steel-string guitar, originating the slide-based lap style (versus the typical, so-called Spanish-style playing orientation). Both instruments saw unprecedented demand on Hawaii and the mainland. The story of the ukulele is well-told, but in doing research for this article, I came across a funny comment that caught my eye: “It could be said that in the mid-1920s, Martin was a ukulele company that also made guitars!”
In early 1916, we made a large-body custom guitar for Hawaiian musician Major Kealakai. He ordered it through our largest distributor, Ditson. It was kind of a 0000-size, 12-fret, steel-string guitar with an extra-deep body. The Major and his band were touring the U.S. mainland, and he felt he needed a bigger, louder guitar.
Shortly after that, Ditson commissioned a new larger, pear-shaped steel-string guitar from us to capitalize on the growing interest in Hawaiian music. It was called the dreadnought. It had just 12 frets, a slotted headstock, and a sizable, resonant body. Initially, the dreadnought didn’t sell very well. We did find success, however, making many of our smaller-bodied guitars with steel strings set up for “Hawaiian-style” playing. These were often made with a koa-wood back and sides, and occasionally tops as well. Additionally, if players wanted to use our other guitars lap-style with a slide, Martin manufactured a nut extender to raise the strings far enough above the frets so they wouldn’t interfere.
“It could be said that in the mid-1920s, Martin was a ukulele company that also made guitars!”
While steel strings were available in the late 1800s, the quality was inconsistent. Thanks to the popularity of the banjo and the mandolin, steel-string quality improved. The steel string provided the extra volume many players were looking for.
During the Great Depression, Ditson suffered financial difficulties and was sold. We kept the dreadnought in the line and put the Martin name on it, but sales still remained low. In 1929, we made a one-off, 14-fret steel-string version of our 000-size guitar for a well-known vaudeville banjo player, Perry Bechtel. We squared off the shoulders to accommodate the 14-fret neck. He loved it—and we thought we were onto something.
Gibson also saw opportunity in larger-bodied guitars with steel strings and 14-fret necks. They introduced three new models in 1932: the HG-20, HG-22, and HG-24. The first two were slightly smaller than our dreadnought, and the third was slightly bigger. They realized the value of a 14-fret neck for modern playing styles with steel strings. But instead of squaring off the shoulders, they moved the bridge down and attached the neck to the slope-shouldered bodies.
Not only did those models have a traditional round soundhole, but they also had four f-holes and a sound baffle to try to compete with the newfangled resophonic guitars that were quite loud. But the Gibsons were not well received by consumers, and were eventually discontinued.
In 1934, we redesigned our dreadnought with square shoulders to accommodate a 14-fret neck. That same year, Gibson reintroduced the HG-24 body size with a single round soundhole—no more f-holes or sound baffle—and called it the Jumbo. The Martin Dreadnought and the Gibson J Series guitars are still wildly popular.
I do wonder if they would even exist today if Hawaiian music hadn’t entered the American-pop music sphere in the 1920s?
The tiniest TS on Earth has loads of practical upside and sounds that keep pace with esteemed overdrive company.
Solid Tube Screamer tones in a microscopic machine. Light and easy to affix to anything.
Small enough to lose easily! Vulnerable in the presence of heavy steppers?
$99
Olinthus Cicada
olinthus.com
The Olinthus Cicada’s Tube Screamer-on-a-postage-stamp concept is a captivating one. But contemplating the engineering impetus behind it begs questions: How much area does the pedal and mandatory/included TRRS breakout cable actually conserve? Where do you situate it in relation to other pedals so you can actually tap the bypass—which is the pedal enclosure itself! Would my neighbor’s cat eat it? As it turns out, there’s many good reasons for the Cicada to be.
For starters, small size and light weight on this order are a big deal. Flying with gear is stupid expensive. So, for players that don’t relish the antiseptic aspects of modeling, this micro-analog middle path could be a sensible one. Altogether, pedal and cable are about the size of a set of keys. You can stuff it all in a pocket, put clean laundry in your gig bag, and tour for a while, as long as the rain doesn’t soak your shoes.
All this assumes you roll with very small and very few additional effects. But if you can survive on overdrive alone, you can stick a little adhesive to the back—tape, Velcro, bubblegum, etc.—and affix the Cicada to almost anything. It sounds really good, too! A classic TS application—Fender combo and Stratocaster—yields soulful blues smoke. The same Fender amp and an SG means dynamite, raunchy, and rich Mick Taylorisms. It even does the Iommi stomp pretty well at high gain! I’m still not sure if the Cicada is a solution for a less-than-pressing engineering problem. Nevertheless, it opens up real practical possibilities and sounds more than legit in the process.
Featuring a slim Headlock system, water-resistant shell, and spacious front pocket. Available in classic Black and Ash, as well as new colors Moonlight Blue, Amazon Green, and Burnt Orange.
This brand new design reimagines and elevates the original to new heights, featuring a fresh range of colors and a refined slim Headlock system. The enhanced MONO Sleeve is engineered for durability, featuring industrial-grade webbing handles reinforced with steel rivets and bar-tack stitching, a water-resistant 420D shell, and plush interior lining. A spacious front pocket offers easy access to essentials like cables, tuners, and other gear, while the ergonomic shoulder straps ensure comfort during long-distance commutes. Sleek and compact, the MONO M80 Sleeve 2.0 is the perfect choice for guitarists on the go.
To bring the MONO M80 Sleeve 2.0 to life in the launch campaign, MONO collaborated with renowned guitarist Rock Choi from Seoul, South Korea, known for his bold and precise playing style, and Susannah Joffe, an emerging indie-pop musician from Austin, Texas, USA. Together, the artists showcase the M80 Sleeve 2.0 in a dynamic video set in New York City, demonstrating how effortlessly the case integrates into the urban lifestyle while offering superior protection for their instruments.
The updated Sleeve 2.0 is available in classic Black and Ash, and for the first time in MONO’s history, debuts a range of new colors: Moonlight Blue, Amazon Green, and Burnt Orange, giving artists fresh avenues to express themselves through their gear.
The MONO M80 Sleeve 2.0 features include:
- An ergonomically designed case that is sleek and suited for urban travel, along with comfortable shoulder straps and a tactile side handle for easy carrying.
- A water-resistant 420D shell and plush interior lining, built to military specs and extreme resistance to abrasion and the elements.
- A slim Headlock system, made from shock-absorbing EVA rubber, secures the guitar's neck and headstock, while the EVA insole protects the body and strap pin from impact.
- A spacious front pocket for essentials like laptops and cables, and a small interior mesh pocket for critical items.
- Side-release chest buckles provide added security and a construction reinforced with steel rivets for extra durability.
- Rock-solid, industrial webbing handles that are standard in MONO cases. Bar-tack stitching and steel rivets reinforce strength, while high-grade webbing offers a comfortable grip.
- String guard protection to safeguard your guitar’s strings.