For his fourth solo album, "American Interior," Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys went the extra mile. Or more accurately, the extra 1,800 miles.
Following in the footsteps of his distant relative, 18th-century Welsh explorer John Evans, Rhys precisely retraced the long journey taken by the 22-year-old Evans in 1792 when, spurred on by a British establishment myth, he travelled to America to unearth a Welsh-speaking Native American tribe called the Madogwys.
"I'd read books before the tour but nothing could have prepared me for the incredible distances and the realization that this journey was truly insane," Rhys says. "Just the scale of it was terrifying. I do admire his perseverance and his refusal to accept possibilities."