The Hobbledehoy’s favorite practitioner of “American Primitive” guitar, Gwenifer Raymond
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Interview with Welsh guitarist Gwenifer Raymond
Gwenifer Raymond is truly a Welsh guitar great and is, sadly, nowhere near enough well-known, in her homeland. Gwenifer was born in Taffs Well, near Cardiff, leading to the title of her album, ‘Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain’, one of Uncut Magazine’s top 50 albums of 2020.
She regularly tours the world, playing her self-penned, ‘American Primitive’ compositions on her cherished and much sought after, Waterloo guitar. By day, Gwen is a game designer/ astro-physicist, by night, she is a truly extraordinary musician and composer.
How a forgotten folk hero inspired Led Zeppelin
“I approached it more like a jazz singer.”
In the 1960s, the English folk scene was experiencing a transformation that saw many traditional Irish songs become repurposed, fragmented, and rearranged for then-modern audiences. The artists behind these reinventions didn’t care much for imitation, many of which followed a path of authenticity, making good use of the lack of copyright issues and creating sounds that harkened back to old, cherished tunes.
Anne Briggs spent a lot of her younger years sneaking out to pubs in Scotland and soaking up the monumental folk scene that began to brim at the time. Her journey is what led her to Bert Jansch in the 1950s, and together, they became immersed in their shared love of traditional folk sounds despite being less privy to its history or even the ways it sounded.
Briggs and Jansch began working on ‘Blackwater Side’ in the early 1960s after Briggs encountered a version of the song shared with her by folk collector Bert Lloyd. The version that fell into her hands was by Mary Doran, a young 21-year-old traveller of Waterford, Ireland. Of course, Briggs’ version likely differs as it showcases her sultry vocals and ability to seamlessly melt across various notes, often uttered in a quick, snappy pace, putting more of an emphasis on vocals than the accompanying arrangements.
At the time, this was certainly a trend, according to Briggs. “Everybody up to that point was accompanying traditional songs in a very three-chord way,” she explained, adding: “It was why I always sang unaccompanied, but seeing Bert’s freedom from chords, I suddenly realised—this chord stuff, you don’t need it.” It was precisely this attitude towards experimentalism and innovation that set Briggs’ version apart. Traditional folk needn’t remain restricted to convention; exploration can give it greater longevity and more meaningful resonance.
Jimmy Page claims to have come across Briggs’ ‘Blackwater Side’ in a London club, which inspired him to write Led Zeppelin’s two-minute instrumental song ‘Black Mountain Side’. “I wasn’t totally original on that [song],” Page explained to Guitar Player. He explained that while Briggs “was the first one that I heard do that riff,” Jansch was “absolutely brilliant”, and his version “crystallised all the acoustic playing.”
Briggs had a significant influence on the sound of Led Zeppelin, not just because of her intuition but also because she approached music creation with fierce independence. From a young age, she adopted a mindset that was, in her words, “pretty unconventional for the time”, which resulted in her “shedding everything as I went” to prove that women had a right to be as free as men. Musically, she threw out the rulebook and decided to mix and match, which wasn’t a commonplace approach at the time.
“I approached it more like a jazz singer in terms of my timing and decoration. It was very individual,” Briggs said, discussing her take on traditional ballads. In a way, Briggs gave to the folk scene what punk gave to rock ‘n’ roll, as she refused to be put into a box, stalling fame even though it was well within her reach. Led Zeppelin’s version of ‘Blackwater Side’ may sound like a significantly different spin, but the sprinklings of rebellion are still there as Briggs’ unwavering influence continues to live on.
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The 10 easiest masterpieces to play on guitar
A beginner’s guide to masterpieces.
By Tom Taylor
Nobody has ever said that learning to play the guitar is easy, but it is made a lot harder by striving to tackle Igor Stravinsky compositions one week into the journey. Technicality takes time, a hell of a lot of it. You have to face up to the reality that Jimi Hendrix might always be out of hand, and finger-plucking like John Fahey is for a select few.
However, that does not mean that you can’t have fun learning the guitar. In fact, within a few weeks, you may well be able to play a masterpiece. Some of the greatest songs of all time are a mere two chords, and, in fact, many of the greatest songs use just four. That is the beauty of pop music, and it gets sweeter still when you can even simplify that further to a beginner’s level that strips a song to the bare bones but remains recognisable.
Our first tip is to learn on an electric. This might sound counterintuitive given that the very notion of an acoustic seems to simplify things, but the slimmer neck of an electric makes it much easier to handle, the strings are harder to snap, and if you don’t plug it in the more muted tones are a blessing that won’t serve to discourage you.
So, when you’ve picked one up, learn five or six simple chords and try to change between them on a single strum. Then when you’ve got that dexterity nailed down, you can move on and give the masterpieces below a bash. From the riffing ways of Black Sabbath to the sing-along stylings of Ben E. King, these epic tracks are all within reach of even the most primitive beginners.
The 10 easiest masterpieces to play on guitar:
‘Paranoid’ – Black Sabbath
Everyone assumes heavier songs are tricky to play because of the wall of sound they produce. However, one of the most orchestral wallops in rock history entails just a few very simple power chords. Two slow downward strums on the E power chord on the 7th fret, and you instantly get a feel for the whole song. With time, you can learn to throw in the quick hammer-on hammer-off that follows, but for now, that chord should give you enough flavour.
Then you simply rattle off A and D power chords in the same position – all with a steady slow downward strum – and you’ve pretty much got the track in the bag, and you’ll build up the strength of your power chords as you go. Of course, Tony Iommi is one of the most inventive guitar players of all time, literally helping to invent a genre, so there are flourishes to his work, but with that simple power-chord riffl, you’ll have tapped into the essence of the 1970s dark side.