THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH SHARES “COLORS” 
 
FIRST NEW MUSIC IN THREE YEARS 
 
FALL US TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED 
 
 
Photo Credit: Marko Mijalovic 

 
"Matsson has made some of the best and most-compelling folk songs of the 21st century.” — Paste 
 
“The Tallest Man on Earth has released some of the best modern folk music of this century. He writes elegant, homespun ballads that draw you in toward the proverbial campfire.” - GQ 

 
Swedish singer-songwriter The Tallest Man On Earth aka Kristian Matsson is announcing a 2026 US fall tour today and the song “Colors”, his first new music in nearly three years. Recorded by Mattson in his home studio, the song whirls and swirls with his violin, guitar playing and signature croon. Yearning for the verdant inspiration of summer, head below to listen and watch the song’s new video featuring handheld camera footage from Kristian and his crew on a recent run of European shows.  
 
Watch/Listen to “Colors”: https://thetallestmanonearth.ffm.to/colors  
 
The Tallest Man On Earth has captivated audiences using “every inch of his long guitar cord to roam the stage: darting around, crouching, stretching, hip-twitching, perching briefly and jittering away…” (The New York Times). His tour this fall begins October 15 in North Carolina and snakes through the East and West coasts, ending in Phoenix on November 15. Head below to check out all upcoming tour dates.  
 
Critics often draw comparisons between The Tallest Man on Earth and Bob Dylan, citing similarities in both songwriting and vocal style. Matsson himself has acknowledged Dylan's influence, revealing that he started listening to him at the age of fifteen. Fascinated by Dylan's covers, he delved into their origins, which gradually introduced him to early American folk artists like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. However, Matsson is quick to distance himself from being part of any specific tradition, stating, “I don’t want to be part of a tradition. I just want to do what feels natural to me. This is how I play, and this is how I write songs.” 
 
His 2023 album ‘Henry St.’ marks the first time Matsson recorded an album in a band setting. As described by Matsson, it’s the “most me album yet, because it covers so many of the different noises in my head. Having been away from it taught me that making music and performing is what I’m doing for the rest of my life, and I’m so grateful for it. It has given me new confidence and playfulness. This is what I do. It’s unconditional.” 

TOUR DATES 
June 26 – Glumserud, Sweden @ Kullens Gårdsfest 2026 
June 27 – Gullabo, Sweden @ Folk Från Skogen 2026 
July 11 – Tänndalen, Sweden @ Musikkväll På Kalfjäll 2026 
July 29 – Gysinge, Sweden @ Gysinge Live 
Aug 26 – Dublin, Ireland @ National Concert Hall 
Aug 27 – Cork, Ireland @ Live At St. Luke’s  
Aug 28 – Bangor, United Kingdom – Open House Festival 2026 
Aug 29 – Kilkenny, Ireland @ Cathedral Church of St. Canice & Round Tower 
 
Oct 15 - Saxapahaw, NC @ Haw River Ballroom 
Oct 16 – Asheville, NC @ Orange Peel 
Oct 17 – Washington DC @ Lincoln Theatre 
Oct 18 – Glenside, PA @ Keswick Theatre 
Oct 20 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall 
Oct 21 – Boston, MA @ Royale 
Oct 23 – Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall 
Oct 24 – Ann Arbor, MI @ The Ark 
Oct 25 – Ann Arbor, MI @ The Ark 
Oct 27 – Madison, WI @ Majestic Theatre 
Oct 28 – Maquoketa, IA @ Codfish Hollow Barnstormers 
Oct 29 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall 
Oct 30 – St. Paul, MN @ Palace Theatre 
Nov 1 – Boulder, CO @ Boulder Theatre 
Nov 2 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Commonwealth 
Nov 4 – Boise, ID @ Treefort Music Hall 
Nov 5 – Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile 
Nov 6 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore 
Nov 8 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall 
Nov 10 – San Francisco, CA @ Palace of Fine Arts 
Nov 11 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room 
Nov 12 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room 
Nov 14 – San Diego, CA @ Observatory North Park Theatre 
Nov 15 – Phoenix, AZ @ Musical Instrument Museum 
 
 

 
 
https://thetallestmanonearth.com/ 
Instagram | Twitter 
 
For More Info on The Tallest Man On Earth, Contact: 
Kelly Kettering | kelly@epitaph.com 
Meena Aspeytia | meena@epitaph.com 


GWENIFER RAYMOND

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 is set to release 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).
Gwenifer was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1985. At the age of eight her love of Nirvana’s Nevermind prompted her to ask her parents for as guitar, and later the cover of Lead Belly’s Where Did You Sleep Last Night from their MTV Unplugged in New York show sent her scurrying in search of whatever recordings she could find from the roots blues gods of fingerstyle: Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Boy Fuller, the more “eerie, threatening, almost not from this world” sounds of Skip James. “The first time I heard Mississippi John Hurt, I just assumed there were a couple of guys playing on that recording,” she says. “When I discovered that it was just one guy playing guitar I immediately wanted to figure out how to play like that myself. It’s just such a full sound, so fully realized and covering this wide sonic range. It seemed to offer so many possibilities.”
While playing around South Wales in punk bands as a drummer and guitarist - in thrall to Pixies, Butthole Surfers, The Fall and The Velvet Underground as well as Dylan and Neil Young - she taught herself blues guitar and Appalachian folk from the books of Stefan Grossman and practiced the clawhammer banjo style until it became second nature. Then, at 16, she found a tutor in Cardiff who taught her the famous alternative thumb technique and also introduced her to the American Primitive work of Fahey. Raymond set about merging these Americana learnings with the pent-up energy of her teenage punk years and her fascination with folk horror classics such as The Wicker Man and The Blood on Satan’s Claw to create a sinuous, primeval and cascading British blues all her own.
Once she’d completed an MA and PhD in Astrophysics at Cardiff University and moved to Brighton to become an AI and video game programmer, Raymond 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.
“I’m not saying I’ve seen it toss chairs across the room but there’s definitely some presence to that guitar,” she says of an instrument used sparingly across her albums, alongside her Waterloo WL-14L, a Tricone National Resonator and other guest guitars. “You can feel it when you pick it up. It always seems to bestow such huge performances.”
Her 2018 debut album You Never Were Much of a Dancer - with its references to hangmen and sackcloth, ashes and blood – was steeped in noir Americana, but being asked to score the 1907 silent French horror film about a Satanic magician The Red Spectre shifted her folk-structured perspective towards classical movements and the European avant garde.
Recorded in her Brighton flat during lockdown in 2020 to the sounds of Moondog, Erik Satie and her neighbour’s washing machine, her second album, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain – a reference to the UFOs spotted over a mountain near her childhood home - lost itself in the misty Welsh landscapes of her youth, and entranced the world beyond. It garnered huge acclaim as pioneering a Welsh Primitive style and set Raymond apart as a unique fingerstyle talent. “It felt like I was emulating the specific guitarists I looked up to less, and had started to incorporate my own specific musical eccentricities,” she says.
Having toured Europe, the US and Canada with the likes of Michael Chapman, Michael Hurley, The Handsome Family, Lankum, Charlie Parr, Richard Dawson, Ryley Walker and Squid, and played major festivals including WOMAD, Green Man, End of the Road and Transmusicales in France, Raymond recorded her latest album Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark in similar fashion; exploring textures and following threads alone in her flat’s home studio, trying to get a sonic grip on a world spinning out of control. The album is a hybrid of the ancient and the futuristic where, in Raymond’s multi-dimensional finger-work, the arcane etchings of occult folk horror fuse with the unfathomable equations of the cosmos, the earthly meeting the stellar on some far-off event horizon.