Welsh Primitive: How Gwenifer Raymond Creates Cinematic Landscapes with Solo Guitar

Welsh musician Gwenifer Raymond is among the most compelling acoustic guitarists working today, and with her third album, Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark, she pushes American Primitive guitar—a style shaped by John Fahey and his Takoma Records circle and later extended by players like Jack Rose and Glenn Jones—into bold new territory.

Raymond grew up in the borderlands near Cardiff and, like many teenagers of her generation, first gravitated toward alternative rock and punk bands like Nirvana, the Pixies, and the Velvet Underground before discovering Mississippi John Hurt, Lead Belly, and Fahey. She’s now based in Brighton, England, where she also designs video games professionally. In addition, she holds a PhD in astrophysics.

Since her 2018 debut, You Were Never Much of a Dancer, she has widened the music’s stylistic borders with virtuosity and European aesthetics—an evolving approach she calls Welsh Primitive. And while American Primitive is often associated with traditional fingerpicking, the style is anything but simple, drawing on blues, modal traditions, folk motifs from across the globe, and elements of Western classical music. In Raymond’s hands, the language becomes masterfully singular and cinematically grand: visceral, poetic, and intellectually alive.

Over the past eight years Raymond has toured relentlessly, bringing a passionate, propulsive, and fiercely compelling presence to both live settings and her recordings. All of this radiates throughout Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark—a powerfully immersive and utterly captivating album.

I recently caught up with Raymond to talk about her relationship with the acoustic guitar, the influences that drive her work, and the compositional processes behind her music.

What’s the inspiration behind your new album, and what internal or external influences shaped its evolution?

I always find it hard to fully explain the inspirations behind an album. But on this one, while writing and recording, I kept sensing an element of science fiction and high strangeness creeping into the material. Certain themes seemed to move under their own power. With that in mind, I bookended the record with cosmic-drone sections, framing the whole album as something that bursts into existence, drifts through the universe for a brief moment, and then ends in a sort of catastrophic gravitational collapse. I liked the idea of that entire arc happening within the space of a single record.

Your native Wales seems to hold a special place in your music. “Bliws Afon Tâf” is a good example. What does the title mean, and how does Wales—its people, language, history, and landscape—influence your work?

“Bliws Afon Tâf” just means “Taff River Blues.” I grew up in a house directly across the road from the river’s edge—it was always in view, part of my daily geography. The title also nods to Fahey’s “Sligo River Blues,” since the riff reminded me of it, and I imagine the Sligo held a similar place in his imagination.

I suppose the influence of Wales as a whole on my music is that of the landscape, kind of majestic and gloomy at the same time—it’s something that I think influences the Welsh character—and maybe a little propensity for gallows humor.

In what ways have American blues and folk inspired your music?

Technically, massively. My whole style is built on that alternating-thumb technique I picked up from trying to emulate Mississippi John Hurt and other early country-blues guitarists. I guess what’s unique about American folk is the melting pot: taking influence from traditions from all over the globe and throwing them in a blender, but somehow still being able to evoke something uniquely American. I find that blending of traditions sonically interesting.

Do you have any classical, jazz, or rock influences?

Certainly. Big, ’orrible fuzzed-out rock was my first love, and it still shapes how I attack the acoustic. I play loud and hard when I want to, and those noisy, droney rolls feel like the acoustic-guitar version of feedback.

Classical music influences me structurally. I love the sense of movement—how a piece takes you somewhere, then somewhere else, and that new place recontextualizes what came before. I often imagine a little ghost orchestra in my head when I’m writing, and I’m trying to coax those parts out of a single guitar. Plus classical music just has some of the best riffs—it’s totally undeniable.

Your music feels cinematic. Do your melodies evolve through playing, or away from the instrument?

They settle through playing live—night after night they refine themselves until they have a more definite shape, though never a completely fixed one. Away from the guitar, things shift too. I call it offline processing. Anyone who’s learned an instrument knows that strange leap-forward feeling after a week off. Composition works the same way: your brain keeps running the operations while you’re washing dishes or doing the hoovering.

You use a thumbpick and fingerpicks. How essential are they to your technique, and do you use anything special?

Super essential. My soft flesh gums up the works. Picks give me the clarity, power, and speed I need. I use two metal fingerpicks and a plastic thumbpick, nothing fancy, but I coat the insides with a sticky gel called Gorilla Snot. It gets pretty gross after a while, but helps things stay put when you’re sweating under stage lights. 

Your sense of timing and ability to shift tempos is incredible. Did you play drums before guitar?

I started drums after guitar, around 14, but my early band years were as a drummer. That’s just the natural order of things—more guitarists than drummers in the world. I eventually switched to guitar in bands, and since I’m a pretty ropey drummer, that was smart. But the preoccupation with strong rhythms has stayed with me, and made its way into how I play guitar now.

How does your sense of rhythm shape your writing for guitar?

Rhythm often comes first. With alternating-thumb style, you’re your own rhythm section, so sometimes the initial hook is purely rhythmic. The groove dictates where the melody sits.

How does rhythm differ for you between composing, recording, and performing—and is there an emotional catharsis that propels you when playing live?

There’s an immediacy to playing live—you don’t get a second take. Add in the monitors, the room, the audience, whether you’re happy with the last tune—it’s a technical and emotional minefield. But that volatility fuels the performance. Propelled really is the right word, because all that variable energy is fuel for the performance. I think this music only really exists when it’s played live. 

Do you mostly play in alternate tunings, and do different tunings influence your writing?

Almost exclusively open tunings: mainly C minor [C G C G C Eb], G minor [D G D G Bb D], and D minor [D A D F A D], with occasional major variants. Different tunings have different personalities. D minor is claustrophobic and spooky; C minor is equally uneasy but more expansive. Even the same piece, played note-for-note in two tunings, will sound different because of sympathetic resonance. Those subtle shifts create distinct moods.

How much of your music is improvised live?

Very little. I’m more interested in composition—letting a piece evolve until it finds its perfect form. Things change from show to show, usually quite iteratively and subtle, but that’s more what I’d call discovery than improvisation.

You’re closely associated with a ladder-braced Waterloo WL-14. Is that your main guitar live and in the studio?

It’s my primary gigging guitar and often used in recording. It’s a great honky little thing—perfect for faster, more aggressive material. I use other guitars for slower, more subtle pieces. As for ladder bracing versus X-bracing, I honestly don’t think about it much. I play what sounds right rather than approaching a guitar with specifications in mind.

Are there other types of guitars you like to play?

Plenty. On the last record I used an 1880s Joseph Bohmann guitar gifted to me by Henry Kaiser—a remarkable instrument for slower tunes, because when you have the space to really listen to what it has to say, it says a lot. I also have a Fylde I used for my version of the Welsh hymn “Llef” on the [Welsh folk music stage and program] Tŷ Gwerincompilation [Stafell Sbâr Sain]—great for recording, though not energetic enough for live use for my taste. And for anything slide-heavy I’ll reach for my National tricone—hard to beat that sound. 

You also play banjo. Does that instrument influence your guitar playing?

Maybe—I play clawhammer banjo, which is fairly attacking, and certain hammer-on/pull-off patterns have made their way into my guitar picking. Any instrument you can play even half competently will edge its way, at least a little, into all others. 

You’ve been touring constantly. How has life on the road influenced your music?

Songs only really find themselves through constant live playing. Touring—moving from place to place with a single purpose—gives everything an intensity and clarity. Everyone you meet and everything you encounter along the way becomes contextualized through a guitar-based hue. It’s an altered state of being relative to not touring or playing more one-off shows.

How do you feel your music has evolved since your debut?

I’ve moved more into a compositional, storytelling style—further from straight folk and blues, closer to something more avant-garde. I feel I’ve found a voice that’s really my own thing, rather than just emulating the sounds of my guitar heroes. 

You recorded and mixed Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark. When did you start recording yourself, and why?

I didn’t learn formally; I just did it because it was cheaper and I figured, how complicated could it be? I’d planned to record Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain in a studio, but then Covid happened, so I ended up recording it myself, because there was no other option really. That’s when I got truly interested. By the time I got to working on the new album I had a clearer sense of the process. If I know what I want something to sound like, it’s easier to work it out myself than having to rely on a go-between pair of ears. Plus I had access to very nice microphones—which always helps.

The album has incredible depth. What recording techniques and gear did you use?

I used a mid-side setup with a Sennheiser MKH 30 [figure-eight pattern] and MKH 8040. Those mics did most of the work. I added a bit of saturated low-pass signal in the center for depth. I also used multiple guitars, choosing the right instrument for each tune. Recording yourself gives you time to mess around and experiment and discover details like that.

You’re a voracious reader and love horror films. Do books or films influence your music?

Absolutely. I cited Philip K. Dick and Rudy Rucker on the press release for this album, but there are many others. Novels and instrumental music both share a theater-of-the-mind quality—grandiose yet deeply personal. Writers like Kurt Vonnegut do that brilliantly. To achieve even a small fraction of that effect in music would be incredible.

Films, too—I think half of my brain is made up of movies. I love soundtracks, and I’d love to score one myself someday. My head is basically always running in cinematic mode.

WHAT SHE PLAYS

Gwenifer Raymond’s main touring guitar is a Waterloo WL-14 L, which she relies on for anything fast or aggressive. It’s also the guitar that survives the road best. “It’s tough as nails,” she says.

At the opposite end of her toolkit is a late-1800s Joseph Bohmann, which she says is best for parts that need more air around the notes—its recorded sound is unusually open—and handles slide well. More recently she has added a Fylde, which sits between the Waterloo and the Bohmann. It’s “beautiful when played slowly and delicately,” she says, but still holds up when she digs in.

For bottleneck-centric material, there’s no substitute for her National Polychrome Tricone. “It just sings with slide,” Raymond says. The guitar is too heavy to haul around on public transport—“it weighs about as much as I do”—but its voice is unique in her lineup.

Raymond typically uses Martin Monel strings, changing them after every show. They settle in immediately, aren’t overly bright, and last long enough to justify buying in bulk. She’s also been trying D’Addario 80/20 bronze for similar reasons.

Her picks are basic Dunlops: a plastic thumbpick and metal picks on her index and middle fingers. To keep them from launching into the crowd, she coats the insides with a bit of Gorilla Snot—well in advance of playing. One final rule: fingerpicks need to fit tight. As she puts it, “If you can feel your thumb by the end of the show, you’re not doing
it right.”  —BC