Cardiff-born and Brighton-based instrumentalist Gwenifer Raymond is a celebrated champion of the finger-picked guitar. She has drawn international acclaim for her repurposing of Mississippi blues and John Fahey’s intricate Americana to embody her roots in rural South Wales, and her interests in folk horror and the avant-garde, inventing a new form dubbed “Welsh Primitive”.
At the age of eight, her love of Nirvana’s Nevermind prompted her to ask her parents for a guitar, then the cover of Lead Belly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” from their MTV Unplugged in New York show sent her scurrying in search of whatever recordings she could find from the roots blues gods of fingerstyle: Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Boy Fuller, and Skip James.
While playing around South Wales in punk bands as a drummer and guitarist, she taught herself blues guitar and Appalachian folk from the books of Stefan Grossman, practising the clawhammer banjo style until it became second nature.
At sixteen, she found a tutor in Cardiff who taught her the famous alternative thumb technique and also introduced her to the American Primitive work of John Fahey. She set about merging these Americana learnings with the pent-up energy of her teenage punk years, and her fascination with folk horror classics to create a sinuous, primaeval and cascading British blues all her own.
She completed a PhD in Astrophysics at Cardiff University, moved to Brighton to become an AI and video game programmer, and was discovered by instrumental guitarist Doctor Turtle playing open-mic nights. Her first proper gig was at the Thousand Incarnations of the Rose Festival in Maryland, where she hung with heroes such as Glenn Jones, Marisa Anderson, Daniel Bachman, and Peter Walker, and was presented by Henry Kaiser with an 1880s Joseph Bohmann guitar, which she feels may be possessed by some fingerpicking demon.
She doesn’t read music, and memorises or feels the tunes rather than writing them down - quite something, considering their huge complexity. Gwenifer will be playing solo, in support of her third studio album, Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark, and is not to be missed under any circumstances.
“She is legion. This Welsh musician plays like a vengeful bluegrass musician conjuring up roiling fury, then dropping into languorous eddies, switching between paces with pin-sharp precision”
“Betrays a huge debt of influence from the formative players for American Primitive, winding a thread back through John Fahey to Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James”
“Awe-inspiring technique and intense musicality”
Doors 7pm / Music 8pm / Tickets £12
All seating/tables are first-come, first-served.