Friday May 31 * doors at 7, music at 730 * $10-20 * TICKETS

Gwenifer Raymond hails from Wales and currently resides in Brighton, England.   Gwenifer began playing guitar at the age of eight shortly after having been first exposed to punk and grunge. After years of playing around the Welsh valleys in various punk outfits she began listening more to pre-war blues musicians as well as Appalachian folk players, eventually leading into the guitar players of the American Primitive genre. She has since been playing her own moody and often-times manic original American Primitive styled compositions on guitar and banjo around the UK and the US.  Since her first release on Tompkins Square in 2018, she has won many fans with her incredible dexterity and impressive finger picking.  

Max Ochs came up through the ranks starting in Annapolis before studying at University of Maryland College Park.  He frequented the early DC folk scene eventually sharing stages and record labels with other guitar luminaries from the DMV like John Fahey and Robbie Basho.   In 1962 he found himself in Greenwich Village where he collaborated with the late great Buzzy Linhart in the group The Seventh Sons.  In 1966, he appeared on the Contemporary Guitar LP on Takoma Records and has released additional albums over the last 40+ years under his own name, on various labels like Tompkins Square, and with collaborators like Neil Harpe and an up and coming group called Rugburn.  Max Ochs has performed at Rhizome many times over the years and is excited to share the stage with Gwenifer Raymond again; both Max and Gwenifer were on the bill for Takoma Park’s primitive guitar festival, the Thousand Incarnations of the Rose in 2018.