Buzz Magazine May 2014 | Page 10

upfront

GRUFF RHYS’

AMERICAN ADVENTURE
The musical and marvellous Gruff Rhys tells
Rhodri Jones why he decided to create a film,
album, app and tour about walking in his
ancestors’ footsteps. pic: © MARK JAMES

E

mbedded deep in the American
consciousness is the idea of the frontier.
The taming of the Wild West and the birth
of the nation are part of American identity
and it’s not for nothing that Captain Kirk and his
Star Trek crew explored “Space, the final frontier”.
While you may have heard of Buffalo Bill, General
Custer and Dodge City, you now need to make room
for the forgotten tale of one of the most astonishing
characters of the frontier myth.
John Evans may have been born an impoverished
farmer in North Wales and he might have died a
pauper’s death in New Orleans. In between those two
events, however, lies the tale of a trailblazer whose
actions helped to change the course of an entire
country. Now updating his story for the 21st century
is arguably Wales’ most inventive and exciting
creative talent, and Evans’ descendant, Gruff Rhys.
It’s not surprising that such a character might
appeal to Rhys. Fresh from his exploits singing
about and dramatizing the life of the militant activist
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, and a previous film, the
psychedelic western musical Seperado! which
documented Rhys’ journey to find
a long lost cousin in Patagonia, comes his latest
multi-media release on another intriguing character.
“I see him a bit like Jimi Hendrix,” Rhys tells me
about Evans. “Live fast, die young. There are some
parallels with the musician’s life; between the ages
of 22 and 29 he was on the road continuously, and in
the end it killed him.”
The project started not because Rhys saw any
personal parallels with Evans, but because his father
claimed that the explorer was a distant relative:
“Whereas an album was recorded for Seperado! but
wasn’t released at the same time as the film, this
time I wanted to tie them together,” he says. The
result is American Interior, an album of material
written as part of an investigative concert tour,
following the path of Evans’s journey, and a film
documenting it.
While Dylan Goch, who also directed Seperado, was
editing the film Rhys realised that “I needed to write
a more detailed, contemporary history [of Evans’
exploits].”
Writing an album, a film and a book led to an app,
“to tie the project together.”
“Most people eat their culture from a phone,” he says
practically, “and the app will allow them to explore it
all in a different way.”
Despite one song on the album, 100 Unread
Messages, which obviously charts Evans’s journey
and experiences in America, the songs stand on their

BUZZ 10

own. Rhys’s creative output is quite
extraordinary, as is the quality of
his work. Even though the title
is American Interior, there is
little of the Americana influence
on the sound of the album. The
title song gives a good indication
of where the album is heading
with its piano-led opening, and
showcasing the
type of beautiful and playful pop
sensibility that has been Rhys’
trademark from his early days in
the Welsh language band Ffa Coffi
Pawb, on to Super Furry Animals
and through to Neon Neon and his
own material.
Rhys admits that none of this would have
happened without storytelling and myth.
Both of those elements are vital parts of
Welsh culture, stretching back to tales like the
Mabinogion, a lineage that Rhys himself seems
to be part of. Another of those myths and legends is
that, long before Columbus, it was a Welshman named
Madoc who was the first to ‘discover’ America.
“It was a revolutionary period. In the 1790s the
Americans were fighting for independence, the
French were getting rid of their royal family and
there was a small window where people were talking
openly about revolution. A radical generation had to
leave Wales or face prison. John Evans was a follower
of Iolo Morgannwg and they put their hope in a myth.
They started searching for The Madogwy, a Native
American tribe descended from Madoc, in a bid to set
up a sort of Welsh utopia and start all over again.”
Rhys says the characters he’s looked at, from John
DeLorean, Feltrinelli, and now Evans, “all looked at
the world as a whole rather than being introverted.”
That parochialism that is so typical of the Welsh is
not something that Evans nor Rhys would share.
In fact, the singer again finds parallels with more
contemporary sources as he begins to talk about the
punk attitude that is still an inspiration.
“When I was growing up, Welsh gigs always ended
with the audience singing Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau.
Someone like Anhrefn, a Welsh punk band from the 80s,
changed all that. I was once kicked out of a Heather
Jones gig at Clwb Ifor Bach for not standing up for the
Welsh anthem because Anrhefn refused to stand for any
anthem. They were extroverted rather than introverted,
completely confident in their own culture as well as
making room for all other cultures.”
Looking outwards rather than inwards is certainly