BEFORE BON IVER: DeYarmond Edison Will Get Its Due with Huge Box...

BEFORE BON IVER: DeYarmond Edison Will Get Its Due with Huge Box Set

Aug. 18 release features early 2000s work by Justin Vernon, Cook brothers, Westerlund

Tom Giffey | June 1, 2023

BACK IN THE DAY. DeYarmond Edison, circa 2000-something. Left to right: Joe Westerlund, Justin Vernon, Brad Cook, and Phil Cook. (Photo by D.L. Anderson)

Before the Grammys and the world tours, before the cross-country moves and the fabled recording sessions in hunting cabins, there were a handful of childhood friends in Eau Claire who had a band.

That band was DeYarmond Edison, a relatively short-lived early 2000s outfit that overflowed with talent and spanned genres, spawning not only Bon Iver but also Megafaun, Field Report, and more. Now, nearly two decades after going their separate ways, DeYarmond Edison is getting the full box-set treatment from indie record label Jagjaguwar.

The label announced today that it was set to release Epoch, “a massive and maximalist box set” that will include more than 80 songs across five LPs and four CDs as well as a 60,000-word, 114-page book about the band by executive producer and music journalist Grayson Haver Currin. The boxed set, as well as streaming and downloadable versions of the music, will be available to the public Aug. 18. (Scroll to the bottom for a complete track list.)

“The collection not only offers the definitive account of a short-lived group with an outsized impact, but reveals a universal tale of small-town transcendence, coming of age, and collective artistic ambition, even when it became too much to bear,” a media release declared.

You can listen to a couple of cuts, “As Long as I Can Go” and “Feel the Light,” online now, and check out a couple of lyric videos here:

The collection promises to delve deep into the story of the band, which primarily consisted of Justin Vernon, brothers Brad and Phil Cook, and Joe Westerlund – and, at one time, Chris Porterfield, Brian Moen, Dan Westerlund, and others. After cutting their musical teeth in Eau Claire’s nascent indie scene at the turn the millennium, DeYarmond Edison (minus Porterfield) set off for the bigger musical milieu of Raleigh, North Carolina. As Volume One wrote in its July 2005 issue, the quartet’s “uplifting, soulful roots band has made them big fish in Eau Claire’s Dells Pond-sized music scene. It won’t be that way when they move to Raleigh, North Carolina, in August.”

After spending only a year in Raleigh, the band split up – although, as Vernon later said, “I learned more in that year than I’ve learned in the decade since.” Vernon returned to Wisconsin, where he recorded what would become the first Bon Iver album, the sparse, wintry For Emma, Forever Ago. The Cooks and Westerlund stayed in the South and formed freak-folk band Megafaun, while Porterfield eventually found his way to the Milwaukee area and created his own band, Field Report.

For the past 17 or so years, DeYarmond Edison’s story has remained largely untold, and its music has been largely unavailable, save for rare CDs, obscure fan uploads, and a post-breakup EP released on MySpace (which included the collection’s title track, “Epoch”). However, somewhat under the radar, Volume One’s own Local Store in downtown Eau Claire carried albums for a number of years until they were slowly discovered and sold out. But now fans new and old alike are promised a collection of 83 tracks – many of them previously unreleased – spanning the band’s high school origins (remember Mount Vernon?) through its days in Raleigh.

An early incarnation of DeYarmond Edison, as pictured in the June 2004 issue of Volume One. (Photo by Mike Tuetenberg)

The collection includes late 1990s Mount Vernon tunes, DeYarmond Edison’s self-titled debut (recorded in the nude at a local church!), their second album (Silent Signs), an expanded version of the post-breakup EP (Epoch), recordings of the band from a North Carolina gallery residency and a concert at Menomonie’s historic Mabel Tainter Theater, the very first Megafaun rehearsals, Vernon’s pre-Bon Iver solo album (hazeltons), and a load of other “buried treasures.”

If the two tracks unveiled to journalists are any indication – the country-tinged “As Long as I Can Go” and the gospel shuffle of “Feel the Light” (both familiar to us ’round these parts, and the latter with its shout-out to Vernon’s beloved Chippewa Valley) – Epoch won’t just stir nostalgia in listeners: It will create a new generation of fans.

Keep an eye on VolumeOne.org for more information on the boxed set as the Aug. 18 release date approaches. You can also pre-order the album here and learn more on the Jagjaguwar website here. There's also a DeYarmond Edison email list, which you can learn about right here.

Epoch Box Set Tracklist

LP1 - All of Us Free

Mount Vernon - We Can Look Up
Mount Vernon - Morning
Phil Cook & Justin Vernon - Feel the Light
Justin Vernon - Breathe
DeYarmond Edison - The Lake
DeYarmond Edison - Dusty Road, So Kind
DeYarmond Edison - As Long as I Can Go
Justin Vernon - Right Down There in Your Tributary
DeYarmond Edison - The Orient

LP2 - Silent Signs

DeYarmond Edison - Lift
DeYarmond Edison - Silent Signs
DeYarmond Edison - Heroin(e)
DeYarmond Edison - Love Long Gone
DeYarmond Edison - First Impression
DeYarmond Edison - Bones
DeYarmond Edison - Heart for Hire
DeYarmond Edison - Dead Anchor
DeYarmond Edison - Ragstock
DeYarmond Edison - We
DeYarmond Edison - Dash
DeYarmond Edison - Time to Know

LP3 - Epoch, etc.

DeYarmond Edison - Song for a Lover (of Long Ago)
DeYarmond Edison - Epoch
DeYarmond Edison - Baby Done Got Your Number
DeYarmond Edison - Brief Scene
DeYarmond Edison - Where We Belong
DeYarmond Edison - Red Shoes
DeYarmond Edison - Heroin(e)

LP4 - hazeltons

Justin Vernon - hazelton
Justin Vernon - frail sail
Justin Vernon - game night
Justin Vernon - easy
Justin Vernon - liner
Justin Vernon - song for a lover (of long ago)
Justin Vernon - hannah, my ophelia

LP5 - Where We Belong

Justin Vernon - Look Down That Long, Lonesome Road
Justin Vernon - Handwriting on the Wall
Ticonderoga (feat. Justin Vernon) - Hands Up
Justin Vernon - Funeral Lights
Megafaun - Lazy Suicide (Edit)
Megafaun (feat. Justin Vernon) - Carolina Days
Megafaun (feat. Justin Vernon, Frazey Ford + Fight the Big Bull) - Trials, Troubles, Tribulations (Live from the Sydney Opera House, June 1, 2013)
Megafaun + Bon Iver - Worried Mind
DeYarmond Edison - Set Me Free

CD1 - That Was Then - North Carolina - The Bickett Gallery Residency

DeYarmond Edison - What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?
DeYarmond Edison - Step It Up and Go
DeYarmond Edison - Phil's Instrumental
DeYarmond Edison - Louis Collins
DeYarmond Edison - Old Dollar Mamie
DeYarmond Edison - Two Scenes
DeYarmond Edison - Sea Legs
DeYarmond Edison - Abel + Cain
DeYarmond Edison - Half Life
DeYarmond Edison - Afro Blue

CD2 - That Was Then - North Carolina - The Bickett Gallery Residency

DeYarmond Edison - Four Keyboard Phase in A
DeYarmond Edison - Cybernetic Meadow
DeYarmond Edison - Paul's Park
DeYarmond Edison - Justin's Phase Piece
DeYarmond Edison - Exercise in Abandonment
DeYarmond Edison - Bones
DeYarmond Edison - I Live The Life I Love (I Love The Life I Live)
DeYarmond Edison - My Beautiful Reward
DeYarmond Edison - A Satisfied Mind
DeYarmond Edison - Come and Go With Me (to That Land)

CD3 - That Was Then - Wisconsin - The Mabel Tainter Concert

DeYarmond Edison - Intro
DeYarmond Edison - I Been Drinking
DeYarmond Edison - Down on the Banks of the Ohio
DeYarmond Edison - Silent Signs
DeYarmond Edison - Please Find Me Here
DeYarmond Edison - Abel + Cain
DeYarmond Edison - We
DeYarmond Edison - Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
DeYarmond Edison - Afro Blue

CD4 - That Was Then - Wisconsin - The Mabel Tainter Concert

DeYarmond Edison - Intro
DeYarmond Edison - The Longest Train
DeYarmond Edison - No Depression in Heaven
DeYarmond Edison - Red Shoes
DeYarmond Edison - Song for a Lover (of Long Ago)
DeYarmond Edison - Ain't No More Cane
DeYarmond Edison - easy
DeYarmond Edison - All Tomorrow's Parties
DeYarmond Edison - A Satisfied Mind
DeYarmond Edison - Come and Go With Me (to That Land)