Goofball History, Great Music: Gruff Rhys at Schubas

Goofball History, Great Music: Gruff Rhys at Schubas

Former Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys is shy. He's unassuming. He has a quiet voice with a Welsh accent. He is not an authority figure.

This is why his entrance on the Schubas stage is funny.

“My name is Gruff, I'm in charge of your safety tonight,” he says to the crowd's delight.

He tells us he has a “safety demo” to play before the show can start. There's a large screen with a projector set up behind him. Soon a PBS-style travel show begins, talking about some crazy theories about Rhys's homeland and the folklore about their “accomplishments.”

The myth goes something like this: long before Columbus and things that rhyme with 1492, a Welsh prince named Madoc sailed the ocean blue. He and his followers made their way into the American interior, where they eventually became assimilated into American Indian tribes, leading to some of the most prosperous times for Plains Indians. In the late 1700s, following the American Revolution, a Welshman named John Evans went in search of Madoc's people and he led a wacky adventurous life. This part is true. Rhys is fascinated by it, so he built his new album and tour, appropriately entitled American Interior,around what amounts to a hilarious, Monty Python-style vacation slide show.

That slide show is something else. Rhys has commissioned the construction of a John Evans puppet to act as our visual guide through the American interior, and Rhys and his crew have spent their time here in the States taking pictures of this bemused looking felt doll in famous American locales. Sometimes he narrowly avoids being eaten by alligators. At others he is being arrested by a modern St. Louis police officer, framed and shot like an episode of Cops.

The neat trick Rhys pulls off is that, despite the inherent silliness of the slideshow and puppet, his songs depicting the same events have a deep melancholy. Evans was a bewitching man with an insane dream, chasing the ghosts of a myth. He talked his way out of an assassination attempt, and even, according to Rhys – what do you think I am, some kind of historian who fact checks? – Evans accidentally annexed a third of the United States that had been under Spanish control. His picaresque journey across America is embedded in our DNA, informing what we'd later call Manifest Destiny and our expansion to the Pacific. In fact, Evans's maps and plans were even used by Lewis and Clark on the early part of their expedition.

But Evans is also a uproariously misguided individual. It was goofy, even as far back as the 1790s, to assume there was a secret high society of white Native Americans who spoke Welsh, and to continue the search even after contracting Malaria. Per Rhys, he had a wildly optimistic view of humanity, going so far as to ask politely that a fort of soldiers abandon their fort because the territory didn't belong to them. And it worked!

Rhys has a loving sympathy for this unique eccentric, and his passion is contagious. We are all prone, anxiously awaiting the next bit of bizarro history, and moved to dancing by the skiffle-indebted songs. An hour and a half into the performance, he gets to Evans's death at age 29, and quips, “Now I'm ready to start the show.”

We laugh, thinking it's really the end of the concert, but he goes into some non-Evans songs, a couple Super Furry Animals numbers, and even ends on a request from the crowd.

Gruff Rhys's new solo album, American Interior, is available now. He is on North American tour through the end of month.

The Lemonheads at Oaktoberbest

The Lemonheads at Oaktoberbest

Indecision ruled Saturday night. I got to Oaktoberfest in Oak Park around 7:30 p.m. and discovered The Lemonheads' sound guys to be unsure of everything. It continued unabated until the band left the stage a few hours later.

Side note: A trip from the end of the Red Line to the end of the Green Line takes a long time and exponentially increases the odds of peculiar co-passengers. I had one middle aged drunk man fall on top of me because the train took a slight turn. “Oh, nice to meet you,” he said as he slumped beside me, where he struggled against the impending passing out.

Back to the main event: Indecision. Woof. The crowd was massive and seemingly wanted to ebb and flow in every direction at once. Getting around was not the easiest thing.

The cranky sound guy provided a meta narration to it all. “No, a little higher here. Check, check one. Here, here.”

Nothing was to his standards and the crowd responded.

I wanted a beer, but the line was about thirty deep and 100 wide at what I think was the only beer vending section of the beer-themed event. After waiting several minutes and moving up a couple feet, a sign came into focus. “No beer purchases without 21-and-over wristband.” “Where do I get that?” I asked myself.

So I gave up. Beer was off the table. The food tents looked much more sparsely populated.

I walked past the normal options. Burgers, hot dogs, tacos. I wanted something a little stranger, but not, like, cow tongue strange. But I was hungry, so it needed to be fast. My head swiveled along the line of food tents. “I don't know, I don't know,” I muttered to myself. So I went with the most out-of-the-ordinary thing I could think of that was within 20 feet of me: a cup of spicy Venezuelan chili and a bottle of water.

Now the sound check guy was audibly groaning as he couldn't figure out the right microphone configuration for the drums.

I found a spot about 50 feet from the stage where I was able to eat my food. It was physically hot, and the double styrofoam cups solution the restaurant provided was still a bit inadequate. Instead of finding a table – the ones that weren't wet from the day's earlier rains were filled with people talking loudly about drug addict ex-boyfriends – I chowed down rapidly. I downed the near-pint of hot and spicy chili in about five minutes and chugged my water bottle, desperately in need of relief.

But that relief didn't come in the form of more water, for another inebriated man fell into me.

“Woah, I'm drunk!” he said to his embarrassed wife as she shuffled them away from the creepy guy drinking chili remnants from a styrofoam cup.

The Lemonheads were finally about to hit the stage. The crowd of graying Gen Xers and their indifferent children gave a polite introduction to Evan Dando and company.

It's a shame this wasn't a rapturous applause because this band has made some of the best fuzzy pop music I've ever heard. I've been obsessed with them for a decade, when they were already rock elder statesmen. My older sister has long teased me for having a particular pop culture taste set – “Rob bands” – but looking at all the people 15 or more years my senior ready to relive their glory days made me think that my personal ownership of this band's music wasn't true.

The first thing I thought was, “Man, Evan Dando got old.” Obviously that's what happens to people, but when I had never felt the need to check up on him, I had in my mind the 1990s-vintage videos of him looking like a model with long hair. Now he looks like a longshoreman, with a gruff weeklong beard, shorter-but-still-long hair, a beanie, and a windbreaker with the ABC network logo emblazoned on it for some reason.

The band launched into a rollicking, distortion-heavy set. While their sonic output on record is more balanced between lightly fuzzy guitar pop, '60s-inflected garage, and Alt. Country, that changes when they go live. The pedals make the guitars raucous. Punky little love songs like “Allison's Starting to Happen” become giant barnstormers. Dando's usually syrupy vocals become a shredded melange that don't always hit the high notes in pleasant ways. Sometimes, in fact, it seems he purposely makes wacky, nails-on-chalkboard mouth sounds just because it seems fun to him.

His between-song banter confirms his “just having fun for myself and nobody else” attitude. “Usually these things suck but this is kinda fun!” he said early on, before later telling strange, often non sequitur jokes from the stage, including one about how we celebrate births and mourn at funerals because we aren't involved. Then there was something about ducks and microwaves. Some didn't make much sense to the non-initiated (re: anyone not in Dando's brain), but this was his show and he wanted to make it fun for himself.

Dando's banter and constant tinkering with his guitar levels between songs – “Which one are we doing next?” was a regular question posed to the other band members, who had to often think on their feet to let him make up his mind about what to do next – made me think he must be a major annoyance to his bandmates. They seem like Ur-professionals who want to put on a great show and he's the twitchy goofball they need to wrangle into a productive night.

They did wrangle him well enough, because once they began playing the songs, he was magnetic. Mournful classics like“My Drug Buddy” became a celebration of a time and place that can now be looked upon with nostalgic eyes now that the problems described within have left Dando relatively unscathed.

For a five-song interval, the bassist and drummer disembarked from the stage to allow Dando and the other guitarist to perform the band's electric folk output, most notably their masterpiece – it's my favorite, at least – “The Outdoor Type.”

For a short while, the full band returned, ran through “Rudderless,” then left Dando alone for “one more song” that became four. He didn't know where he was going, but he seemed to enjoy himself, and I got to see a great fuzz-pop band that has meant much to me since my formative years.

Hideout Block Party & A.V. Fest

Hideout Block Party & A.V. Fest

I will always remember my first car. It was a 1968, fire-engine red, Cadillac hearse that my grandfather bought me. It only got 6 miles to the gallon, so I mainly drove it from home to school and back. Nonetheless, I have wonderful memories of cruising in my car in the fall, listing to Death Cab for Cutie's album, Plans, play from my makeshift CD player/portable boom box, sitting on the passenger-side floor. To this day, I feel a twinge of nostalgia when the leaves begin to change.



On Friday, September 5th, Death Cab for Cutie headlined the Hideout Block Party and A.V. Fest, here in Chicago, IL. This two day music festival also featured artists like The Handsome Family, The War on Drugs, Valerie June, and Hamilton Leithauser.





Singer and songwriter, Valerie June, who graced the stage the Saturday of the fest, sat down with us to talk about making music and embracing times of silence.

Halfstack Magazine: Your music seems to dabble in a few different genres. How would you best describe your style of music?

Valerie June: I call it Organic Moonshine Roots Music. It's just American music in its southern most forms. An American artist that comes to mind when you use the word dabble is Tom Waits. What a dabbler!

HS: What inspires you most when writing music?

VJ: I'm greatly inspired by silence. Silence makes me want to make music!

HS:  How did you get involved with this year's Hideout Block Party and Onion A.V. Fest?

VJ:  I reckon it was my Chicago based booking agency, Billions Corporation, ultimately.  But, I was performing a couple years ago at The Hideout with a band called The Wandering.  After sound check, we went upstairs and I was fascinated by Mavis Staples' throne.  They told me she sat in it at the Hideout Block Party.  I secretly planted a wish in that moment to perform for the block party one day!

HS:  Are there any other artists this weekend you are excited to see perform?

VJ: The Funky Meters!

HS:  You have collaborated with other artists, such as Old Crow Medicine show in the past.  What is your favorite thing about collaborating with other musicians?
 
VJ:  I love learning how other songwriters receive or write tunes.  It's magical!

HS:  If you could work with any musician that you haven’t yet, dead or alive, who would you aspire to make music with?
 VJ:  Now, I can't tell ya all my secrets!  I have a list, but I learned early on in the wishing game that those things you deeply want that seem beyond your reach, you should treat delicately and rarely speak of while they are in the incubator.

HS:  Your latest album, “Pushin’ Against A Stone’ featured a few other artists.  Who worked on the album with you?
 VJ:  Dan Auerbach [of The Black Keys] and Booker T. Jones.

HS:  You were nominated for a Blues Music Award this year for your album, ‘Pushin’ Against A Stone’.  Can you tell us a little bit about that great achievement?
 VJ: Wow!  I'm honored, but I can't really say much besides HUGE THANKS.

HS:  Other than writing and performing music, what other ways do you enjoy spending your time?
 VJ:  Walking, yoga, meditating, baths; I'm pretty up, so I tend to seek calming adventures!

HS:  What can we look forward to next from Valerie June?
 VJ:  I'm working with the Goddess on the future.  It will be as she wishes to see!'

Make sure you check out the full editorial gallery in the Fall issue of Halfstack HERE!