Gwenifer Raymond

The headline greeting visitors to Welsh multi-instrumentalist Gwenifer Raymond's website describes the artist as a "Guitar Convincer. Banjo Thumper. American Primitive Musician." Based in Brighton, England, Raymond's driving, acoustic fingerstyle playing descends from techniques developed by John Fahey, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and Roscoe Holcomb. Her 2018 debut single, "Deep Sea Diver"/"Bleeding Finger Blues," wove together a hypnotic amalgam of bluegrass, acoustic blues, and mysterious Americana. New York's Tompkins Square label issued her debut album You Never Were Much of a Dancer to international acclaim. While touring Europe in support, the influence of the Welsh landscape, its folk traditions, and the rich history of Celtic and British Isles folk music crept into her playing and was revealed on 2020's Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain. Raymond was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1985. At age eight, her mother gifted her a cassette copy of Nirvana's Nevermind. She was so moved that she asked for a guitar and began teaching herself to play. She spent her entire adolescence playing guitar or drums in a series of punk and rock bands across Wales, soaking up influences from a variety of punk and post-punk outfits like the Butthole Surfers and the Fall. Her musical world expanded again when she discovered vintage recordings by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and the Velvet Underground in her parents' record collection, but Nirvana intervened yet again. Their MTV Unplugged CD contained a cover of Lead Belly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" Raymond found its sparse presentation, modal melody, and lyrical emotional directness astonishing. Though inspired to learn Lead Belly's version, the song opened the restless, curious young musician's eyes to the world of American pre-War blues recordings and players. Raymond began teaching herself to play fingerstyle acoustic guitar from instruction books by Stefan Grossman. She eventually found a capable blues guitar player locally who agreed to teach her. In addition to technical instruction and folk-blues music players and history, he exposed her to the recordings of players from the American Primitive school including John Fahey, the player she most identified with due to his dominant, rhythmic right-hand playing. While attending Cardiff University she earned an MA and a PhD in Astrophysics. She studied folk music on her own, relocating to England and beginning her career as a professional programmer, first in artificial intelligence, and later as an audio programmer for video games. She continued to study and play gigs in coffee houses and pubs. In 2017, after receiving a tip from WFMU DJ Jeffrey Davison, Tompkins Square's Josh Rosenthal contacted Raymond and established a correspondence. He signed her to the label in late 2017 and in April of the following year issued her debut vinyl single "Deep Sea Diver"/"Bleeding Finger Blues" on Record Store Day. In June, after critics had embraced it, Tompkins Square released her debut long-player, You Never Were Much of a Dancer. The album's release was greeted with critical acclaim in Europe, the United States, and even Asia. She received massive press attention that made her the subject of large, glossy magazine spreads in English music publications such as Mojo and Uncut, as well as airplay on the BBC. Raymond undertook short touring jaunts around the U.K., building her fan base. In December, she issued the digital single "The Three Deaths of Red Spectre." Raymond finished out the year playing high-profile gigs across the U.K., including a headline show at London's Royal Festival Hall in November. In February of 2019 she toured Finland and England through the spring and summer and made appearances at the Black Deer Festival of Americana and Country Music, Cafe OTO, Great Escape, Green Man Festival, and the Moseley Folk Festival. While traveling, her musical repertoire continued to expand as she wove more traditional folk sounds from Wales into her kinetic American Primitive stylings. For her second album, Raymond took inspiration from the eldritch Welsh countryside, as well as from her homeland's tradition of folk horror. Recorded and mixed in a small, makeshift studio in a basement flat in Brighton, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain appeared in November 2020 on Tompkins Square. ~ Thom Jurek