SXSWORLD

2 2 S X S W O R L D / M A R C H M U S I C 2 0 1 4 n the summer of 2012, Super Furry Animals' frontman Gruff Rhys launched an "investigative concert tour" of the United States, which also doubled as the basis of his second film with director Dylan Goch: American Interior. eir first film, 2011's Separado (which also screened at SXSW), was a mystical, musical exploration of Welsh culture in South America, centering around Rhys's pursuit of a fabled "pancho-wearing, guitar- playing Patagonian uncle." Likewise, American Interior is the story of a distant relative: John Evans, who came to the United States in 1792 in search of a lost tribe of Welsh-speaking Native Americans and made a map of the Missouri River that was passed on to Lewis and Clark, before he died of malaria at 29. To be released simultaneously as a record, book and app, American Interior is filled with music, magic, unexpected discoveries and even PowerPoint slides. Rhys recently shared more information about the project. So who is John Evans, and why did you make a film about his journey? John Evans is a sort of distant relative, who had a tall story—a very tall story—I've grown up hearing from my Dad, and my brother and sister, and old aunts, and stuff. He's a kind of footnote in history, and I just wanted to verify whether these stories were true or not. He was looking for a tribe that was believed to be descended from the Welsh prince Madoc, who apparently discovered America in 1170. And so he walked across America looking for them. I decided to follow his journey, by way of an investigative concert tour. He had quite an incred- ible adventure, and lived with the Omaha and Mandan tribes when they were at the height of their civilizations. He must have experienced incredible things. Did you contact most of the people in the movie in advance, or did you just sort of show up and see who you found? In a lot of cities we wrote to people in advance, like [Lewis and Clark historian] Carolyn Gilman, and W. Raymond Wood [at the University of Missouri], who has written a lot about John Evans, and is an archae- ologist. I did a concert at Yale, where some of John Evans' maps ended up, and spoke to some professors about him, but we also spoke to people who lived on the Missouri River. I tried to go places that didn't even exist anymore. I would stand in fields and play songs. It really brought home the magnitude of his journey. He walked thousands of miles, often kind of unexplored. He must have been completely obsessed by his mission to find this lost tribe. In that sense it's quite a sad tale, really. Were you surprised by any parallels with the Native Americans you met? ere were fantastical stories about Welsh being spoken in the middle of America, in the Rocky Mountains, that's who John Evans was looking for, but these were probably spread by people who had never actually heard the Welsh language. ere are probably cultural coincidences that exist between all cultures and all languages. e Welsh people and the Mandan people both use circular boats when they are fishing, for example. Beautiful coincidences, but definitely coincidences. You brought along a little cartoon figure of John Evans, which I assume was made by your longtime artist collaborator and cover artist, Pete Fowler. Yeah, because there was no image of John Evans in existence, I went to see Pete, and he made some drawings, and we looked at photos of the family and people who come from John Evans' home village. A friend of ours called Louise Evans built John in felt, and then I had an avatar that I could take on tour and introduce to people as a visual aid. I think that really helped to break the ice, and make people realize that he was a weird guy … that he was a REAL guy. He seemed like quite a light-hearted character on tour, but when we reached New Orleans, of course, people assumed he was a voodoo fetish, and that kind of changed everything. Suddenly, he became all-powerful, in a way. He was controlling us. Was it important to you to make the record in America? I felt that it was important that the record was specific to the tour. I'd sort of toured with Bright Eyes years and years ago, so when I real- ized I was going to go through Omaha, I kind of hassled [producer] Mike Mogis to let me go make a record. And Kliph [Scurlock, of the Flaming Lips] happened to be on that stretch of the tour, so he came in and played drums on the record. ere were some weird parallels: like, John Evans travelled with a guy called General MacKay from St. Louis to what is now Omaha, and Kliph made the same journey with John Evans' avatar! n Gruff Rhys performs tonight (March 13) at St. David's Historic Sanctuary. Don't miss the final screening of American Interior tomorrow afternoon (March 14) at 4:15pm at the Alamo Ritz (E. 6th St). Welsh Rocker Looks for Mythical Ancestor in American Interior by Jason Cohen American Interior M A R K J A M E S

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