Gwenifer Raymond

Guitar convincer, banjo thumber, Welsh Primitive musician, is Gwenifer Raymond’s shorthand description of herself. She persuades her instrument to venture into the darker complexities of open-string tunings, using the clawhammer banjo picking technique, drawing from the legacies of the pre-war blues musicians and Appalachian folk players that inspired the American Primitive genre, a term coined by its progenitor, John Fahey. Gwenifer Raymond began playing guitar inspired by punk and grunge. After years of playing around the Welsh valleys in various punk outfits she began lessons with a blues guitar teacher – a move inspired by hearing Nirvana do a Leadbelly cover – who taught her open-string tunings and played her a John Fahey record, setting the seal on her musical path, creating her own American Primitive-styled compositions, laced with punk and folk-horror.