Gruff Rhys – American Interior Screening + Q&A

In 2012 Gruff Rhys embarked on a solo ‘investigative concert tour’ through the heart of America following the route taken by his distant relative John Evans.

Every night he presented songs augmented by a powerpoint presentation that detailed his relative’s unbelievable history, along with any new piece of information that had come his way during the day.

He was ultimately looking for Evans’s lost unmarked grave. Along with many major cities, the tour took him to play shows at the Mandan and Omaha tribe reservations, a Missouri vineyard, villages that no longer exist and lay at the bottom of the Mississippi river and a New Orleans bordello.

What transpired from that ‘investigative concert tour’ was a 2014 album, American Interior, plus a book, film and exhaustive tour of the same name.

‘Revisiting American Interior 11 years later, feels very prescient. In following the unusual story of explorer John Evans (1770 1799) it becomes clear that faked narratives can have profound and unpredictable consequences in real life.

His barely believable journey of verification in searching through continental scale wilderness for a [fictitious] Welsh speaking tribe believed to be living on the Great Plains of North America (an ancient folk tale perpetuated by the Elizabethan court following the subjugation of Wales, to make colonial claims on behalf of the British on the Americas) had a dramatic political effect on the fledgling USA and a devastating impact on himself and some of those who helped him on his way.’ – Gruff Rhys