Guitarist · Songwriter · Record Producer · Blues Music Award Winner
Laura Chavez's Rolex GMT-Master II: The Globetrotter's Case for the Blues
In 2023, Laura Chavez became the first woman in history to win the Blues Music Award for Instrumentalist – Guitar. The Mountain View-born guitarist has spent her career logging miles in the service of other people's music — a side musician's life measured in tour buses, soundchecks, and time zones. The watch on her wrist is the Rolex GMT-Master II Rolesor: a two-tone traveler built for exactly that life.
| Rolex GMT-Master II Rolesor, Ref. 126713GRNR. Source: RolexSource: spot.watch Rolex Website |
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Laura Chavez grew up in Mountain View, California, deep in the heart of the Bay Area's underappreciated blues scene. Born in 1982, she developed her guitar voice in a tradition that prizes feeling over flash — the kind of playing that serves the song rather than the player. That sensibility made her a natural fit as a side musician, and she spent years building a reputation as one of the most reliable and soulful guitarists working the blues circuit. Stints touring and recording alongside Nikki Hill, Vanessa Collier, and the late Candye Kane cemented her standing not just as a hired hand but as a creative partner whose contributions shaped the music she played on.
The side musician's life is one of perpetual motion. Different cities, different stages, different time zones — a rhythm that has little to do with the calendar and everything to do with where the next gig is. It is a life that rewards adaptability and punishes sentimentality. The Blues Music Award win in 2023 — a historic first for any woman in the Instrumentalist – Guitar category — arrived not as a surprise but as a long-overdue accounting. Chavez had been playing at that level for years. The industry simply took a while to say so in public. Her 2026 debut solo album, My Voice, gave her first top billing on a record of her own: an instrumental statement that asked nothing of lyrics and everything of the guitar.
"The first woman to win the Blues Music Award for Instrumentalist – Guitar." — Blues Music Awards, 2023
Timepiece
Rolex GMT-Master II Rolesor — Ref. 126713GRNR
The GMT-Master has been Rolex's professional traveler's instrument since 1954, originally developed in partnership with Pan American World Airways for pilots navigating multiple time zones in a single flight. The GMT-Master II, introduced in 1983, refined the concept by allowing the local hour hand to be set independently from the 24-hour GMT hand — a genuine complication that makes crossing time zones a matter of one bezel click and a crown adjustment.
The Rolesor designation — Rolex's term for its two-tone combination of Oystersteel (904L stainless steel) and 18k yellow gold — places the 126713GRNR squarely at the intersection of sport and luxury. The bidirectional black/grey Cerachrom ceramic bezel reads the 24-hour scale against the steel and gold case with a legibility that holds under stage lights as well as sunlight. On the Jubilee bracelet, with its five-link construction and concealed Oysterclasp, it wears with a fluency that suits a guitarist who cannot afford distractions at the instrument.
| Reference | 126713GRNR |
| Case | 40mm Oystersteel / 18k yellow gold (Rolesor); bidirectional black/grey Cerachrom bezel |
| Movement | Calibre 3285; perpetual, bidirectional self-winding; GMT complication; 70-hour power reserve |
| Market price | Retail approx. $16,650 USD; secondary market typically $18,000–$22,000 USD (2025) |
A Working Musician's Watch
There is a particular kind of career that earns a GMT-Master II honestly. It is not the career of the executive who flies business class to quarterly reviews. It is the career of someone for whom travel is not a perk but a condition of employment — someone who needs to know what time it is in two cities simultaneously because both cities have a soundcheck. Chavez spent the most formative years of her career as the person behind the headliner, the guitarist whose playing lifted other people's records and other people's live shows. The GMT-Master II is, in its bones, a watch built for exactly that position: essential to the operation, rarely the name on the marquee, always present at the critical moment.
The Rolesor execution adds a layer of meaning specific to Chavez's 2023 milestone. Two-tone watches occupy a particular territory — neither purely utilitarian nor purely ornamental. They carry the sport specification of the steel but communicate something more considered in the gold. For a guitarist who has spent a career being categorized — blues, soul, R&B, side musician, first-ever female winner — the Rolesor's refusal to resolve neatly into one register feels apt. It is a watch that holds multiple identities without apology.
History and the Second Hand
What the Blues Music Award recognized in 2023 was not just a year of good guitar playing. It was a body of work assembled across decades of sideman gigs, tour van miles, and studio sessions where Chavez's name appeared in small print on records that needed a great guitarist and found one. My Voice, released in 2026, is the first time that small print has moved to the front of the cover. The GMT-Master II keeps two times simultaneously — the time where you are, and the time where you came from. For Laura Chavez, that second time zone is the long record of everything she played before anyone was watching the clock. Both hands are worth reading.
And at Spot.Watch — that's always worth noticing.
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