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?”
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
Guitars
- 1989 Guild True American
- Gibson SG
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.”
Bush had an unbelievable debut with 1994’s Sixteen Stone that eventually surpassed 6x platinum status. The post-grunge juggernaut continued making moody, mercurial, and sometimes menacing music has continuing mutating while keeping them modern with a total of nine full-length releases with 2022’s The Art of Survival as their most recent chapter.
The band’s headlining Ryman tour stop was furthering their support for the October 2022 release where the camp invited PG’s Chris Kies onstage to catalog their compact setups. Guitarist Chris Traynor starts the chat covering his instruments that run the gamut from import steals to one-off custom baritones with and without frets. The baton gets passed to Gavin Rossdale tech Trace Davis who covers the frontman’s arsenal of Strats, SGs, and Jazzmasters before breaking down Rossdale’s core patches living within his Fractal Audio FM9.
Brought to you by D'Addario XPND.
Blacktop Bargain
Longtime Bush guitarist Chris Traynor is no sticker snob. He’ll play anything if it serves the song or sounds good—bias be damned. Case in point, is this 2010s Fender Blacktop Baritone Telecaster that he scooped off Reverb for just $400. He tunes it B to B and lows its rumbly character. Traynor is a big glass of water and so he also appreciates the extended scale length (27") and bigger strings make the instrument not feel like a toy.
Dealing in D
This 2017 Gibson Custom Shop 1968 Les Paul Custom Reissue that does the heavy lifting for any Bush songs in D. Traynor notes in the Rundown that if he could duplicate this beauty he wouldn’t need to tour with many other guitars to cover the band’s deep catalog and growing tuning list. He supercharged its sounds with a new set of Fishman Fluence Javier Reyes pickups. He made the move during COVID when the band was doing livestreams and playing in front of massive light walls that were making his traditional humbuckers nosier than normal. This one takes a custom set of Ernie Ball strings (.010–.054).
Standard Paul
Bush’s earliest work typically was written in standard tuning so this 2014 Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul Standard sees the spotlight for those jams. It too shares the Fishman Fluence Javier Reyes pickups and Traynor remarks that he really loves voice 3 that brings his beefy Paul into a chimey, single-coil land.
Mimicking Micawber
Traynor enjoyed his experience with the Blacktop Baritone he commissioned the Fender Custom Shop to build him an extended-range copy of Keith Richards iconic 1950s butterscotch blonde Tele. The single-coil-looking bridge pickup is a stacked humbucker but he claims it still retains a single-coil charm. He tunes it C to C for “Heavy Is the Ocean” off 2022’s The Art of Survival.
Set It And Forget It
“Steve Fryette of VHT told me once that ‘if you got something you love, don’t mess with,’ so haven’t touched this guitar since getting it. He bought the above 1990s USA Gibson SG from a neighbor in the hopes his daughter would connect with it, but the magnetism never took. Traynor gave it a go and loved it. He doesn’t question things when lightning strikes.
The Sizzler
Yet again proving that he lets his ears lead the way, Traynor rocks this Squier Vintage Modified Baritone Jazzmaster onstage every night with Bush.
To Fret, or Not to Fret
For the song “More Than Machines” off The Art of Survival Traynor recorded overdubs with a fretless guitar. To bring that single to the stage, he created this Frankenstein with various Fender parts—plus a Lollar Imperial humbucker—including a 3-fret baritone neck that helps him ballpark the pitch as he goes down the neck into murky, undefined territory. Like his Blacktop Baritone, it’s tuned B to B.
The Same Is Sublime
Same big rock tone, every single night, regardless of the venue,” states Traynor. Consistency keeps Chris calm knowing that every performance will sound the same thanks to the Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III. He has one core sound that’s actually available to download and one other for “The Kingdom” that incorporates a pitch-shifter. He prefers to let the guitars change the mood rather than building a complex choreography inside the Axe-Fx III. A Matrix Amplification GT1000FX powers the Fractal and he runs his signal through a pair of arctic Mesa/Boogie 4x12s.
Heavy Chevy
This American Professional II Stratocaster HSS looks as fast as a fastback 1970 Camaro. Gavin Rossdale tech Trace Davis comments that this stock Strat has an oddly dense, weighty alder body that gives the silverburst a heavy and husky tone. All of Gavin’s guitars take Ernie Ball Beefy Slinks (.011–.054).
Custom Cat
Recent years has seen Rossdale gravitate towards single-humbucker, “super-strat” guitars for their no-frills firepower. This custom Shabat Lynx intensified its roar when they removed a P.A.F.-style ’bucker for a hotter handwound Undertow humbucker from Piedmont Pickups that carries a toasty 16.8k rating.
The Dark Knight
When it’s time to lower down to drop-C tuning for songs from The Kingdom or The Art of Survival, Rossdale brandishes this sleek Gibson Custom SG that’s entirely stock aside for upgraded ground wiring handled by tech Trace Davis.
Sweet Sixteen
For classic cuts “Glycerine” and “Comedown” off 1994 mega-hit Sixteen Stone, Rossdale will perform with this Fender Custom Shop Jazzmaster. It’s been enhanced with a set of Lollar P-90 Jazzmaster pickups.
Rocky Mountain Way
While this sunburst Jazzmaster rides backup to the previous black model, it’s worth sharing because the neck on this one is taken from a ’66 Fender Jazzmaster Rossdale acquired years ago that actually once belonged to Joe Walsh and was said to be used on rhythm parts for Hotel California.
Gavin Rossdale’s Rack
The longer the band has been around and continued to tour the world, Rossdale has reduced his sonic footprint. His condensed setup currently includes a Shure AD4D-US Axient Digital Two-Channel Wireless unit, a pair of Matrix GT1000FX Power Amps, an Interstellar Audio Machines Octonaut Hyperdrive that chases down the Klon Centaur, a MXR M135 Smart Gate Noise Gate keeps things silent, a Trace Davis-implemented Analog Man Beano Boost for any extra oomph on solos, he hits the strings with Steve Clayton Acetal Rounded Triangle .80 mm picks, and a Fractal Audio Systems FM9 Amp Modeler that builds out Bush’s set with 4-5 key scenes that range from mild to wild.
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.
By this time, us audience members have been sitting in Manhattan’s chilly Ed Sullivan Theater for about 90 minutes. We’ve gotten our seats, had a bathroom break after getting settled, and had some fun with warm-up comic Paul Mecurio. The first musician summoned by announcer Jen Spyra is drummer Joe Saylor. Wearing his trademark cowboy hat, he jogs out, gets behind the kit, and kicks off an up-tempo second-line groove. Next comes upright bassist Endea Owens and percussionist Nêgah Santos. The band’s trumpeter, Jon Lampley, is introduced, and he’s brought along his bandmates in the Huntertones as guests, so saxophonist Dan White and trombonist Chris Ott come out as well.
Louis Cato feat. Stay Human "Look Within"
The multitalented Louis Cato leads the Stay Human band through a special rooftop performance of his song “Look Within,” from his album, Starting Now.
The audience is now on its feet, the band’s pocket is thick, and the energy is building. When bandleader Louis Cato charges onstage, he reaches his mic on the bandstand and shouts, “I feel good today!” with explosive enthusiasm and a big grin, and the band launches into Jon Batiste’s “I’m from Kenner.” Cato sings the catchy and gleeful refrain: “I feel good, I feel free, I feel fine just being me / I feel good today.” And the audience is feeling the love. Almost everyone is bouncing and clapping along.
A couple minutes in, when it seems like the song has reached its super-positive-vibe, high-energy climax, Cato shouts into his mic, “How do you feel today, Stephen?” And with that, Colbert comes running out from the middle of the set. Cato leaps from the bandstand toward the host as the crowd explodes. The two grab hold of each other and attempt to spin around, but the bandleader, holding his black-sparkle Tuttle T-style, loses his grip and goes sliding across the shiny stage. There’s a second where both are comically stunned—Kevin McCallister Home Alone-expressions on both of their faces—but Cato quickly jumps to his feet, both he and his guitar unharmed, and runs back to the bandstand, where he keeps the song moving along with his bandmates, who haven’t missed a beat.
All this excitement isn’t even for the TV audience! Colbert is coming out for the un-televised pre-show Q&A. In a few minutes, they’ll do a new taped intro that looks more like what we see every night. But they’ve gotten the crowd energized, and we need to keep it up. They need our energy to do their jobs.
The Late Show Band welcomes a lot of guests up on the bandstand. Here, Cato and Joe Walsh boogie down.
Photo by Scott Kowalchyk
As Cato sees it, that’s what his role as bandleader is all about: keeping the audience engaged and amplifying the drama and action of the show. “That translates to the energy that the viewers get at home,” he explains. “For all of us here, we’re able to feed off that energy and do the best possible show that we all can.”
Colbert agrees with that job description and adds that the bandleader himself has the same contagious effect on his players. “Louis is an extraordinarily gifted multi-instrumentalist,” he says, “whose spirit of creativity and collaboration not only elevates everything the band does musically but inspires me to be better at my job.” He adds, “I’m so happy to call him my friend.”
Beyond his infectious energy and charisma, there are a lot of ways Cato keeps the Late Show Band invigorated from night to night. For one, he keeps the music fresh by tackling a new cover song every day. That doesn’t mean running down rote note-for-note charts. Cato and the band take a reconstructionist approach that fans of his work—whether from his collaborations with artists such as the Huntertones, Scary Pockets, or Vulfpeck, or from his regular Instagram cover-song posts—will recognize.
“Louis is an extraordinarily gifted multi-instrumentalist whose spirit of creativity and collaboration not only elevates everything the band does musically but inspires me to be better at my job.”—Stephen Colbert
On this evening, the band runs through a host of multi-genre reinterpretations during the two-episode taping, including a slow-burning and soulful “Smokestack Lightning,” a New Orleans-style “Down by the Riverside,” and a fingerpicked, acoustic-led take of Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man in Paris” that gets Colbert lip syncing along off camera. On a horn-driven arrangement of Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s in Need of Love Today,” there’s a re-worked bridge that creates a generous feature spot for the guest horn players.
Every arrangement brings a new and unique perspective to a classic track, to ensure the band is “not just a wedding band doing a cover of a song on the radio.” Cato adds, “We’re arranging it and making it our own—because that’s the sonic fingerprint of our show.”
St. Vincent jams with Louis and crew.
Photo by Scott Kowalchyk
A Lifelong Path
Listening to the story of Cato’s musical life, it seems that this job—with its demand for a blend of careful strategizing and on-the-fly creative thinking, as well as effortless instrumental skills and charismatic showmanship—is what he’s been training for since the beginning.
On the morning of the taping I attended, I meet Cato in his dressing room. Painted with sky-blue walls and a cloud mural on the ceiling, it’s a comfortable place to hang. The bandleader is wearing slim-fit floral pants, a hoodie over a black T-shirt, and a long necklace. He sits across from me on his couch, next to a guitar stand that holds a few instruments—including his Tuttle, a Jesse Stern-built baritone acoustic, and his Univox LP-style—and a ’65 Deluxe Reverb reissue with a Universal Audio Dream ’65 pedal plugged into it.
“There’s not a time in my brain when I was not making music in some way or form,” Cato says. His mother, a pianist in the Church of God in Christ, bought her son a Diamond drum kit that he recalls having paper heads when he was just 2 years old, and she started teaching the toddler to accompany her. “I marvel at my mom,” he laughs. “Like, who buys their 2-year-old a drum kit?” After playing those drums every day for a year, he started accompanying her at services.
The family moved around a lot. Cato’s father was in the Air Force, and Louis was born on a base in Lisbon, Portugal, before moving to Dayton, Ohio. Not long after he started playing in church there, they moved again to Washington, D.C., and when Louis was 5 they settled in Albemarle, North Carolina. A few years later, Louis started playing guitar on a “little burgundy sunburst acoustic. Eventually, I busted a string and busted another string and just kept playing with four strings. I delved more into bass from playing bass lines on the acoustic guitar. So, for my 9th birthday, my dad bought me a 4-string bass.”
“I’d show up to Tip’s and we’d do a week of writing sessions with John Legend or have André 3000 in the studio for a couple of weeks.”
While it was strictly pragmatic reasons that initially drew him to the bass, he says his biggest inspiration was the bass player he knew best: his mother’s left hand. Her playing, rooted in the COGIC (Church of God in Christ) style, “involves heavy left-hand bass. I wasn’t as psyched to play bass in church since the way my mom plays is very defined. But eventually I kind of had to learn how she plays. It was always just her and me playing. And I had to learn to move with that and follow that. She’s a great bass player.”
Along the way, Cato picked up more instruments. By the time he headed to Berklee, he was playing drums, guitar, and bass as well as tuba, trombone, and euphonium. “I was going from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a large pond of super-talented people who had heard oodles of music I had never dreamed of,” he recalls. So, he decided to focus his studies on the instrument he’d played the longest.
Louis Cato's Gear
A glimpse at Cato’s pedals and amp, which mostly live outside of the camera’s eye, behind his stage monitor.
Guitars
- Univox LP-style
- Tuttle Custom Hollow T
- 1961 Gibson SG reissue
- Martin OM-28
Amps
- ’65 Fender Princeton Reverb reissue
Effects
- Boss FV-500H Volume Pedal
- Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner
- Dunlop Cry Baby
- 3 Leaf Audio Octabvre
- J. Rockett Archer
- Truetone Jekyll & Hyde
- Xotic RC Booster
- MXR Carbon Copy
Strings and Picks
- D’Addario EJ16 (.012-.053)
- D’Addario EXL110 (.010-.046)
- Dunlop Max Grip .88 mm
Cato completed just two semesters—fall ’03 and spring ’04—before deciding to concentrate on playing the gigs that were paying his bills. “My rationale was, much to my parents’ chagrin, here’s an opportunity where I can keep learning on the job and be working my way out of the debt I went into in this year.”
Gigging with wedding and church bands gave the multi-instrumentalist an opportunity to keep all his instrumental and vocal skills alive. “My oldest daughter was born soon after that,” he recalls, “so I felt really, really aware of how lucky I was, how lucky any of us are, to make a living and support a family as a musician.” Cato spent five years in Boston, playing various instruments in gigging bands, and he frequented local institution Wally’s Cafe Jazz Club, just two blocks down the street from Berklee, “for self-education and inspiration. When that felt like I hit a ceiling, I looked at where I could go to continue my inspiration and working on the kind of projects I wanted to be working on, and that led me here.”
By that time, Cato’s friend Meghan Stabile, had moved to New York and created the promotion and production company Revive Music, which was dedicated to the kinds of jazz and hip-hop collaborations he wanted to pursue. Cato moved to Bushwick, Brooklyn, with his band Six Figures— “There were six of us; we did not make six figures!”—and would head back to Boston each weekend for the gigs that were paying his bills. Eager to soak up the New York scene, he’d return to New York on Sunday nights and go directly to jam sessions.
All that time back and forth on the Northeast Corridor paid off. A self-described musical “utility knife,” Cato’s multi-instrumentalism, as well as his talents as a songwriter, arranger, producer, and engineer, made him a major asset as a collaborator, and the New York scene took notice. Soon, he established essential connections that would affect his career, forming “an instantaneous brotherhood that continues to this day” with producer Kamaal Fareed, aka Q-Tip. “Through that, I ended up really delving into a lot of relationships and credits.”
The two artists worked on high-level collaborations that not only bolstered Cato’s reputation but served as a major piece of his education. “I’d show up to Tip’s,” he explains, “and we’d do a week of writing sessions with John Legend or have André 3000 in the studio for a couple of weeks. Sometimes things would come from it, and sometimes nothing would come from it. But being in the creative process on that level in a trusted space was invaluable for me. I learned so much.”
Outside of Q-Tip’s studio, Cato was learning from plenty of masters, mostly from behind the kit. “It’s really special when you find yourself learning things you connect to,” he says about his work alongside artists such as bassist Marcus Miller, keyboardist George Duke, and guitarist John Scofield. “And I learned so much about myself from connecting to some of these people.”
Staying Human
Back in 2015, Cato received a phone call from pianist Jon Batiste. The two had never met, but Batiste rang him up about a mysterious project—a theme song for a TV show that he couldn’t disclose. “I had a wisdom tooth appointment back in Boston, and I got a random call,” Cato remembers. “I think his exact words were, ‘I’d love to have your ears on it.’ And I followed my gut, rescheduled my trip, stayed in New York an extra day with an abscessed wisdom tooth.”
The two got together to co-write and produce “Humanism,” which would become the theme song for the Stephen Colbert-hosted Late Show. Batiste played piano, Cato played the guitar, bass, and drum parts and “put on my editing hat.” They brought in Joe Saylor—who would become the show’s drummer—to play tambourine, as well as saxophonist Eddie Barbash. “After the session,” Cato remembers, “I went back, got my wisdom tooth out, and went back on the road with John Scofield.”
Three of the four go-to guitars Cato uses on The Late Show: a black Tuttle T-style, a cherry-red Gibson SG, and a Martin OM-28.
At first, Cato played the multi-instrumental role of his dreams, attempting to surround himself with every instrument he could play. “That lasted about three days before reality set in,” he laughs. “Slowly, one by one, things started disappearing—a floor tom going away here, a Pro Tools setup going offstage there. Eventually, as the band formed out, I moved around to what was needed. I was the utility guy—played a lot of kazoo, a lot of cowbell.”
While on the road drumming with Sco’, Cato got the invite from Batiste to join the show’s band, Stay Human. “It was a huge life shift for me,” Cato explains. “I was making really good money on the road with really good musicians, which was really fulfilling. And I took a chance. I loved the idea of being a part of something creatively from its inception.”
Eventually, Cato settled into a more consistent electric bass role, until Batiste brought in upright player Endea Owens, and he moved to guitar, where he’s mostly stayed. When Batiste left the show last year, Cato took over as bandleader—officially starting this season, back in September—and decided he’d lead from his role as guitarist. “Of all the places I occupied,” he says, “guitar was the easiest and most natural to me to lead the band, in the energy. From behind the drums, it’s a different thing, and we’ve done it when Joe was out. But it just was a really natural progression.”
Same Show, New Job
In just a few months, Cato’s new role as bandleader has had an impact on the show. The renamed Late Show Band’s engine seems to be burning on a new kind of fuel. And it feels as though that energy is coming directly from Cato.
When we talk, the guitarist is deeply engaged, in a kind of hyper-focused way that is not intense but more casually un-distractable. He brings that same focus to the show. While Colbert delivers monologues, Cato is zoomed in on the host, listening to every word, often riffing around on his guitar to contribute musical commentary. During interviews, he’s taking cues and following the tone of the conversation, looking for ways to adapt.
The bandleader gig requires loads of big-picture improvisation, but also lots of prep. Cato explains that each week he makes a set list, but the band will react and make changes in the moment. “My job ends up being a lot of judgement calls that affect the flow of the show,” he says. “We have a group of compositions we wrote for the show that can complement different moments. If there’s a major energy shift in an interview that takes a turn or something happens in the day, like a tragedy, we’ll call one of the songs we wrote for the show for a moment such as that. Recently, we had a guest on that started improvising a song. So, I have on our in-ear mic and call out the key and start playing, and we all jump in, and now we’re doing this instead.”
Cato poses with his black-sparkle chambered T-style, made by Tuttle. “When I’m checking off core priorities in sound,” he says, “if I’m going for rhythmic things, I go to the Tele.”
Photo by Scott Kowalchyk
Watching the Late Show Band in person, I see this play out as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explains the steps the U.S. can take to avoid a recession. It’s a heavy and heady conversation, and, frankly, it’s anything but fun. Cato knows he’ll need to pick the audience back up. As he watches from the bandstand, he gives tempo cues to the band, who nod along, so they can effectively shift the energy and get the audience re-focused for the next guest, actor/director Sarah Polley.
As a guitar player, Cato says he sticks to playing things that feel most natural to him so he can concentrate on his bandleading duties. He adds that he considers himself more a rhythm guitarist than a lead guitarist. (It’s worth noting that his delineation is more conceptual than musical: Cato is an inspired and dynamic melodic lead player, but his deeply rooted phrasing and feel is at the forefront of everything he plays, so the rhythm-first thing applies to it all.) “This is not a space as a guitar player where I’m jumping out of the box trying any and everything and exploring,” he explains. “You get to some of those places. But for me, it always has to start from something I can do while leading the band and reading the energy and making judgement calls.”
“We’re arranging it and making it our own—because that’s the sonic fingerprint of our show.”
That rooted, pragmatic ethos applies to the gear he chooses as well. “I never was a big gear person,” he admits. Luckily, he has Late Show Band tech and informed gearhead Matt Mead to help him keep his pedalboard well-stocked. “There’s so many things I’m learning about the job and trying to keep straight in my head that this ends up getting the short end of the stick, and it wouldn’t work if there was not a Matt Mead to make up the rest of that stick and make it sound good.”
“The show throws a lot of curveballs,” Mead points out. “He steers the boat as far as the tones he’s looking for and if there’s a particular sound he’s looking for. Sometimes, I’ll recommend stuff and say, ‘Hey I notice you’re doing this, maybe we should try this.’”
Cato’s collaboratively curated pedalboard is pretty simple at its core: It starts with a Boss FV-500H volume pedal, a Boss TU-3, a Dunlop Cry Baby, and 3 Leaf Audio Octabvre. Cato shows me how he uses the latter for more traditional, Hendrix-style playing, but he points out that the band plays a lot of montunoes, and he tends to use the octave pedal for those. For drive, he uses a J. Rockett Archer and a Truetone Jekyll & Hyde, which are followed by an Xotic RC Booster and an MXR Carbon Copy, all into a Fender ’65 Princeton Reverb reissue, and powered by a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power Plus.
In live performances outside of The Late Show, Cato uses various guitars, but says that the studio’s cold temperature doesn’t do many favors for instruments such as his Gibson Luther Dickinson ES-335 or some of his acoustics, so he’s careful when selecting which guitars come on stage at the Ed Sullivan Theater. The three guitars that most commonly appear on the show are his black Tuttle Custom Hollow T, a cherry red Gibson SG 1961 Reissue, and a Martin OM-28.
Another guitar that sometimes appears on the Late Show is his LP-style Univox, which I ask Cato about in his dressing room. “If I need to be altogether comfortable,” he explains, “I pull out the Univox, because it’s my earliest guitar. I’ve had this since high school.”
Cory Wong "Lunchtime" - The Late Show's Commercial Breakdown
When musical guests visit The Late Show, they get the full-band treatment from Cato and company. Here, Cory Wong sits in for a rhythm guitar showdown of the highest level.
Back when he first got the guitar, Cato remembers, it was in rough shape, desperately in need of wiring and pickup repairs and a new set of tuners. It stayed that way until he was in Boston. When he picked up a wedding band gig playing trombone and guitar, he was lucky enough to have a roommate who could get the Univox performance-ready by replacing the original tuners with locking units, cleaning out the electronics, and swapping the pickups for a pair of Seymour Duncans.
“I didn’t even know there was a such thing as a professional musician.”
But Cato says that even before those repairs, he’s always “loved it because it’s all I had. I remember I was playing a little Vox amp, and this guitar had a feeling out of that amp. This guitar just became home base and felt super natural to my fingers. If I need to just not be thinking at all, this is home.”
Did he ever dream he’d be on television every night, holding this Univox and chumming with a late-night host? “Never! Not once!” he says. “It was just a product of my nurture growing up in a small town. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a professional musician.” And yet, Cato pursued music as fully and single-mindedly as he could. “I just knew that I liked it and felt connected to it.”