1 of 4
Photograph by Pierre Humbert
2 of 4
3 of 4
4 of 4
In 1996, Welsh musician Gruff Rhys and his band Super Furry Animals toured in a tank—which they painted bright bottle-blue and outfitted with a P.A. system. Then they sold it to Don Henley. That sort of prankstery joy runs through SFA's entire discography, as well as Rhys' solo work, including 2011's Hotel Shampoo, named for the tiny hotel Rhys built out of shampoo bottles he's collected over the past decade while on tour. (The album won the inagural Welsh Music Prize last fall.)
While it's often droll and psychedelic, Rhys' music never feels eccentric for its own sake, or a joke on the listener; it just radiates too much friendliness and sincerity for that. So when SFA released the minimalist record Mwng ("Mane") in 2000, with lyrics all in Welsh, it wasn't a stunt or a political statement—Rhys stated he was just bored of writing songs in English. That exploratory impulse has pushed Rhys beyond his own projects, too, resulting in collaborations with Neon Neon, Gorillaz, Dangermouse, Sparklehorse and Simian Mobile Disco. He also penned the soundtrack to the 2011 iOS game Whale Trail, which stars a whale named Willow who flies through he air, swallowing rainbow-colored bubbles while avoiding the clutches of a cartoon cthulu named Baron von Barry.
Rhys has also branched out beyond music to filmmaking: In 2009, he donned a poncho and a red Power Rangers helmet and traveled to South America to find his uncle, Welsh-Patagonian cowboy musician René Griffiths. Director Dylan Goch filmed the trip, and the result was 2010's Separado!, described as "a psychedelic western musical," something like "Star Trek meets Buena Vista Social Club."
That film is part one of a trilogy, and this August, Rhys is on an "investigative tour," of the United States, playing shows and gathering material for part two, American Interior, inspired by the life of another relation, cartographer and explorer John Evans. Born in Snowdonia, Wales, Evans authored the map of the Missouri River used by the Corps of Discovery. That'd be enough to land him an entry in the encyclopedia, but his story is far more dramatic than that. In 1792, the age of 22, he arrived in Baltimore with the mission of locating the Mandans, a tribe rumored to be Welsh speakers, descendants of a party that sailed with Prince Madog ab Owain Gwynedd in 1170. Evans headed west on foot with a little more than a dollar in his pocket. After wandering through the wilderness, wrestling with river monsters and recovering from a bad bout with malaria, he finally arrived in Spanish-controlled St. Louis in the spring of 1793, whereupon he was promptly thrown in jail for suspicion of being a spy. He then defected to Spain and was given a commission to find the headwaters of the Missouri River. During his travels, he located the Mandans and spent a winter with them, then returned to St. Louis in 1797. He died at the age of 29 in New Orleans, broke and delirious.
Louisiana will be the last stop on Rhys' 10-city tour—he's hoping he can find Evans' burial spot—and along the way, he'll document the things he sees and the people he meets with "film, the written word, photo-story, social media, and song." Because Evans spent so much time in St. Louis, Rhys is stopping here, too. He'll be at the Contemporary Art Museum-St. Louis this Sunday, August 12, and welcomes the public (especially if they information relating to river monsters, imaginary volcanoes in Missouri, or the location of the former Spanish prison) to come out and get interviewed as part of the film. He'll also be playing songs about his trip, material from his back catalog, and showing slides illustrating John Evans' life and travels.
We talked to Rhys early in July, long before he landed in the States, or even had a working title for the film. He explained the reasons Evans was seeking out Welsh Indians in the first place, the blurring between fact and myth, and how American Interior takes off where Separado! left off.
Note: this interview has been condensed and edited for publication.
I was completely shocked, being sort of a hardcore St. Louis history person—I’d never, ever, ever heard of John Evans. I Googled him and his story almost seems beyond the realm of possibility. Did you stumble on him when you were researching your uncle [René Griffiths] in Patagonia, for Separado!?
He’s from a different side of the family. I’m descended from his sister; my father was pretty obsessed with him… It’s such a crazy story. I’ve been enjoying catching up on these old family stories, trying to verify what’s true, and what’s mythological.
He was here for quite a stretch, right? Two years?
He kind of came and went, I think. But he was based there. He came to St. Louis, and was jailed by the Spanish, because he was British. And they said that he was, maybe being Welsh, kind of flexible—all the colonial powers were kind of the same. So he switched sides, and joined them. But St. Louis is very integral to the story, because he was jailed there. So I imagine a lot of the buildings from that era aren’t there anymore, but it would be interesting to find out what’s still around. He changed his name, too; he became Don Juan Evans. He had this total transformation.
How’d he end up in New Orleans? That was one piece of the story I couldn’t quite figure out. Though I guess if you are on the Mississippi, you wash up in New Orleans eventually.
He sailed up the Missouri for about two years, ’cause he was trying to look for a tribe of Welsh-speaking Native Americans. He believed that the Welsh Prince Madog had discovered the Americas, which turned out to be a myth, but he wasn’t to know of that. He thought the Mandan tribe was the most likely to be from Welsh descent. So he got to St. Louis, and then got himself on board a Spanish delegation that was heading upriver. And he ended up living with the Mandan tribe over the winter of 1796, 97. And he was able to prove there were no Welsh-speaking tribes in America by speaking with all the tribes along the way, and the tribes to the west that were trading with the Mandans. So he came back to St. Louis. He went down to New Orleans, to the Spanish capital, I suppose for new work. Because his dreams were kind of broken; he only came to America to look for the tribe. I suppose he had a broken heart. But he needed employment. So he headed down to New Orleans, to offer himself up to the Spanish government down there. The thing was, it was all over for him by that point.
Do you think it was that loss of meaning that did him in, in a way?
Yeah, I think that was a big part of it. And he was a Spanish subject. He couldn’t really head back East to here there were other Welsh people, around Pennsylvania and Ohio. So he was kind of stranded in Spanish territories. But he’d become a kind of expert cartographer along the way. So I suppose he was looking for employment as an explorer and a cartographer. He took about two years to get to St. Louis from the east coast, down the Ohio River, then the Mississippi, and he contacted malaria on the way. He was just kind of walking through the wild, without any clothes or anything [laughs], and so caught malaria before reaching St. Louis. He was taken in by some people for almost a year, and mostly got better. So he survived one bout with malaria, and then got to St. Louis and was jailed, and then went to live with the Mandan tribe for a while, and then went back to St. Louis, and then went to New Orleans to look for more exploring work, but probably contracted malaria again. So he died when he was 29. People thought he was an alcoholic, because he was completely delirious. People who are romantically inclined, there is one school of history that has him down as a very rock and roll, alcoholic explorer. [Laughs.] The truth is, he probably lost his faculties through disease.
What do you want to accomplish while you’re here in the U.S.? Watching the Separado! trailer, it seems like that trip was planned, but with a huge allowance for chance and serendipity.
GR: Yeah, I planned the tour along the route he took. So I’m following his trail. Since you can’t find out about everything from books, you really need to just get on the ground and just see what’s there. I definitely found that with making the last film. And I can’t wait, really, to get a feel for the distances involved, and how it was such a crazy journey 200 years ago. It would have been completely insane, really to be setting out along these distances by foot and boat. Almost kind of unimaginable.
John Evans drew the map of the Missouri River that the Corps of Discovery followed, right? And technology didn’t move that fast in the 18th century, so I suppose not much had changed by that point?
Yeah, probably they were taking the same route, I suppose, within about five or six years. He left a strange legacy after he died, because that’s when those maps became relevant. He made this crazy journey in the U.S. over five years, and left this trail of chaos behind him that he was unaware of…everywhere he went along the Missouri, he was putting up Spanish flags, and taking down the British flags. So he was annexing big chunks of America as he went [laughs.]
And the tour starts at Yale, with a look at the actual map!
Yeah! That’s going to be really exciting. And I’ll be playing a show at the Beineke Library, and we’ll get to see the maps. I’m going to be taking lots of photographs, and I’ll have a slideshow when I play my songs. I’ll be showing some photos and explaining what I’m trying to do.
So that’s what you’ll be doing at the Contemporary?
I’m a songwriter, basically. And I’m going to have a bunch of songs inspired by the story of the trip. And I’m bringing a projector so I can visually explain to people the story, and I’ll be playing a lot of songs that I enjoy playing.
And I guess in the process, poking around in each city to get material for the film? How long are you staying in each stop?
Well, I’ve left it fairly open; a couple of days between shows. I imagine things will turn up as I travel. And I’m leaving some days spare for chance, you know? And I’m also taking some trips to places where John Evans lived, or are significant for the story, and interviewing some people. It’s kind of a musical road trip, too, so I’m leaving my ears open for music, and characters.
So this is kind of a companion piece to Separado!?
Yeah, I haven’t quite got a title yet, but I have an idea for a trilogy, just based on how every family has crazy stories and folklore. My family has three pretty insane stories about ancestors and relatives that did some crazy things and then died [laughs]. People who have very little consequence for our lives at home, but who have these kind of myths that hung around the house. So I’m just going through a process of verifying the craziest ones. [Laughs.]
It seems like you have been able to verify a lot of the crazier parts of the story, though I guess the mythic part is part of what buoys the story up, too?
Yeah, he was following a myth himself, a myth that had been perpetuated about how Madog had discovered the Americas very early. At the time, Welsh culture was going through a period of repression. There was lots of poverty, and people genuinely thought that this tribe could save the Welsh people, by verifying a land claim...So there was a big push to discover this tribe. Driven by desperation, really. And it’s strange that it had some positive and negative repercussions, how this myth got mixed up with real, hard history in the end.
There’s no pictures of John Evans. He wasn’t from a privileged background, so there was no tradition of making a document of how people looked. So I’ve had to imagine what he would have looked like, how he would have dressed, so my friend has helped me create a miniature John Evans. [Laughs.] It’s like a John Evans avatar. It’s about three feet tall, and made out of felt. So I’m going to be bringing this avatar with me as a companion, so I can describe to people, and make the myth more real.
What were the imaginary volcanoes that John Evans saw? Living in St. Louis my first thought was that they were Mississippian Indian Mounds, but I wasn’t sure.
On some of the maps he made, he alluded to volcanoes in the state of Missouri. They were never found. [Laughs.] So maybe he had an active imagination, or maybe it was what you’re talking about.
Well, they tore them all down when they built the city. There’s a marker where the really big one was, on North Broadway. There’s only one left in St. Louis, Sugar Loaf Mound. But there are a lot of preserved ones over in Cahokia, in Illinois. So that might be worth a visit, I could see how someone might confuse them for volcanoes, if they’d never seen them before.
Well, I suppose these formations would have been extremely new for him. He was seeing a lot of new animals and things, like giant water reptiles. That what’s great about going somewhere and doing interviews, and going places, is you find out things that you find out things that you can’t find in academic books.
Gruff Rhys: An Investigative Concert happens August 12 at 8 p.m. (doors 7 p.m.) at the Contemporary Art Museum-St. Louis, 3750 Washington. The show is co-presented by KDHX 88.1 FM. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 day of show. For more information, call 314-535-4660 or go to camstl.org. After he leaves St. Louis, you can follow Rhys' later stops via Twitter.
