Gwenifer Raymond

Tickets cost $22 in advance, $27 day of show (including service charges). They are also available by phone through Hold My Ticket at 505-886-1251.

FUSION | The Cell is a black box theater that can be configured in a variety of ways.  This show will be all seated.

Gwenifer blew us away at WOMEX in Manchester, England last year. It's an unexpected treat that we can bring this amazing Welsh guitarist to New Mexico!

Wales-born, 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. The Guardian has described her as a "profound talent" whilst The Observer has praised her "awe-inspiring technique and intense musicality," and Uncut Magazine has championed her "fast-developing talents as a composer of eerie menace." 

Gwenifer Raymond recently released her third studio album Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark (2025, We Are Busy Bodies), which has been preceded by Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain (2020, Tompkins Square), a Welsh Music Prize Nominee, and You Were Never Much of a Dancer (2018, Tompkins Square).

Once Raymond had completed an MA and PhD in Astrophysics at Cardiff University and moved to Brighton to become an AI and video game programmer, she was discovered by instrumental guitarist Doctor Turtle playing open-mic nights and—via the circuitous trans-Atlantic journey of her demo—signed to San Francisco's Tompkins Square Records in 2017. 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 a 1880s Joseph Bohmann guitar which she feels may be possessed by some fingerpicking demon. 

Johnny Bell is a Northern New Mexico-based instrumental musician exploring the banjo as a progressive instrument desiring to evolve beyond its traditional roots. From within the lineage of American Primitive music, Johnny’s current work juxtaposes traditional clawhammer banjo techniques with acoustic drone, ambient field recordings, radio broadcast, tape loops and other found sounds to create recursive sonic textures that are trance-inducing and cathartic.