We’re on the map. Local singer-songwriter and 1999 Memorial High School graduate Justin Vernon hit pay dirt with his Bon Iver (pronounced bone-eee-vair) debut, For Emma, Forever Ago. With a landslide of critical acclaim, international tours, late-night talk shows, and splashy magazine spreads, Bon Iver is a homegrown success story that’s just beginning to unfold. From his days in local bands Mount Vernon and DeYarmond Edison, Justin’s roots here run deep, and he’s championing the Chippewa Valley with every climbing step.

    Every time I interview Justin Vernon, we both have the same flashback. In 1999, I was excited to be interviewing a band for the first time, to take the step beyond concert reviews and explore the mysterious inner workings and group dynamics of musicians. It was my way of getting closer to the music I loved – kind of like the way I tried working my way to the front row at my first concert. This was the kind of article I had in mind ever since I joined my junior high school newspaper. Even though Mount Vernon was “only” a local high school band, it was a popular draw for adults like myself at The Metro (even though none of the nine members, including Justin, were old enough to enter the place as patrons). With ten of us crowded in the Vernon family living room, I hit the “record” button and tried to lower expectations with a disclaimer. “I’ll be completely honest,” I confessed. “I don’t really know how to do this. I’ve never interviewed a band before.”

    They all laughed and shouted: “We’ve never been interviewed before!”

    So there was a lot of grinning going on. I was a 28-year-old South Middle School English teacher moonlighting as a journalist; they were high school seniors moonlighting in a band. All of us were treading excitedly into the modest dream of making the local paper.

    Now with worldwide critical acclaim on his debut CD with his Bon Iver creation and the cross-continental tours, I almost didn’t expect Justin to have time to talk to a local rag anymore. I was assured – through his manager this time – that he was excited. It took awhile to set up a time, but we worked out a meeting for late October at Racy D’Lenes Coffee Shop.

    Justin showed up looking scruffy and happy – different than the road-bleary/interview-weary touring musician I was expecting. Over an hour-long chat, we discussed touring life, his past in Eau Claire, the search for his artistic path, the fine lines involved with licensing his music, and future plans. It was our fifth formal interview, and they’ve all had the same ease about them. Showing no signs of interview-fatigue, Justin still likes to talk about music and wrestle with questions. As much as I’ve enjoyed watching him grow as an artist and receive so many accolades, I was relieved to find him still the same.

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ON THE ROAD
    Since the international critical break-through of For Emma: Forever Ago, Justin’s life has been a whirlwind of tours, interviews, offers…a dream come true, and then some. Music mythology would suggest that at this point the dark side of success would spill over and Justin would figure out that the touring life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Turns out, it actually is – if taken in moderation. “It’s fun,” Justin says. “My only complaint is that I get tired. So far that tired has never taken over a show where I just hate being up there. I’ve been homesick, but I’ve never wanted to be somewhere else.”

    “I’ve been smart enough to say no to as many things as I’ve said yes to because I could be on tour for the next year,” he adds. “But I’m taking half the year off next year…so it’s just a thing that I get to enjoy. A few months back I made a conscious decision to enjoy this while I’m in it because when I was a kid this is what you dream about…and it’s weird how many of the things I’ve hoped for are happening. Now that they’re here I don’t want to squander them, but I don’t want to enjoy them so much that I burn out.”

There’s been plenty to enjoy. Certainly, two of his most visible highlights were performing on British talk show “Later with Jools Holland” and on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” A gig on David Letterman is coming up on December 11. It’s a lot of pressure – one song with a national audience. Previous experiences, however, temper that pressure.

“I never get that nervous about playing,” Justin says. “I get nervous about technical things, but the people around me make me relaxed about all that. Doing Jools Holland helped do Conan, and Conan is going to help do Letterman…it just makes it easier.”

Perspective helps, too. “Maybe there’s a hundred-thousand people watching this right now,” Justin remembers thinking at the time, “but there’s a billion people that aren’t watching it right now.”

GIVE AND TAKE
    Now that the rest of the world has caught on, calls are coming from all over the entertainment industry, offering Justin deals to use his songs in their shows, films, and commercials. So far, Bon Iver songs have popped up on episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “House,” “Chuck,” and “One Tree Hill.” He’s also on the verge of a deal to write the score for an upcoming film, but details can’t be revealed just yet.

“I wonder when it’s going to subside, but everyday I get a new piece of news that’s so exciting and I’m just thrilled,” Justin says, reflecting on the touchstone moments both big and small. “Maybe it’s just a thought or someone emails you, or someone tells you a story about this or that. That’s been real inspiring. And I’m making sure that I’m not listening to that so much that I’m making that what it’s about…but it certainly helps to know that things are growing.”

Vernon’s label gets the offers along with a publishing company in New York, but it all filters through Vernon and his manager, local music biz guru Kyle Frenette. It’s up to them to decide whether or not to put a song in a movie, television show, or commercial. They view the clips and make the call based on what’s best for the music. “There’s a bunch of stuff we turned down …things that wouldn’t be representative,” Justin says.

For instance, Seth Rogan (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up) wanted to use “Re: Stacks” in his next film. “They sent the scene and it seemed very heartwarming and they offered gobs of money,” Justin says. “It was kind of hard to say no to because of how much respect I have for the guy, but I didn’t think that song should be used in that arena where I think it could be misunderstood.”

Funny thing is, Justin gave Honda the green light to use “For Emma” in a commercial running in Florida. “I said yes because it was appropriate and it wouldn’t take away from the song,” he says. The song wasn’t the centerpiece; it was simply in the background. And the commercial, featuring a girl walking down the street with a red balloon, Justin said, was “artistic” and “cool.”  

“The Seth Rogan film might take that song ‘Stacks’ and put it in this high sort of scope or focus,” he says. “It would almost take that song and pin it to this moment in time that is this big movie. I just don’t want the songs to ever be put on anything and stay there and have to be stuck.”

Television programs, movies, commercials…what’s the difference? “It’s just a balance thing,” Justin acknowledges. “You just have to kind of go with your gut. You don’t say yes to every Starbucks compilation that they ask you to do…and they want to put ‘Skinny Love’ on it. You don’t want them to get all of you in one glance. Then what do they need you for after that? It’s not that I think strategically like that, but it’s smart not to give everything.”

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“WE’RE FROM EAU CLAIRE, WISCONSIN”
    Many local fans, while happy with all the attention, snicker at the national press’s fascination with Justin’s northern Wisconsin roots. Yes, he recorded the album in his father’s hunting cabin while staying there for the winter. Yes, he ate venison. Yes, he chopped wood. But some writers have made it sound like he was scrounging the woods for food like a savage beast. It was Dunn County, not Siberia.   

Vernon did contribute to the image with the beard and flannel look, and people latched on to the story of the secluded tortured soul recording a masterpiece in the middle of nowhere (that’s us: nowhere). Yet, the story hooks people, and getting noticed in the music industry is no small accomplishment. 

Justin even joked about the Wisconsin-woodsman-musician shtick. “I don’t want to start selling blaze orange hats with ‘Bon Iver’ on them,” he says with a smirk of his own. And rather than a “blanket naked harkening” of Eau Claire and Wisconsin, Vernon hopes to spread awareness of the cultural vitality of the places, people, and music in our neck of the woods, so to speak. “That’s what I care about,” he says. “We get up on stage, and I say, ‘We’re from Eau Claire, Wisconsin’ every night. That’s something I’m very proud of. So if they’re pushing the Wisconsin thing I’m all about it, because that’s what it is; that’s what Bon Iver is to me.”

Defining Bon Iver is no easy task. The name itself – purposely misspelled French for “Good Winter” – comes from an Alaskan greeting used after the first snowfall of the season. That’s the easy part. “Who” Bon Iver is gets trickier. Justin referred to it as a squad. It’s not just the band – it’s the sound guy, the tour manager, the attorney, the accountant, the people at the label, the tour manager in Europe, etc. (The way things keep expanding, I may have accidentally joined Bon Iver by writing this article.) Justin’s even gone to the extent of saying the next promo photo session needs to include the whole crew. This all-inclusive philosophy is more than just backslapping after some success. Even back in the Mount Vernon days, the sound guy eventually became an official member of the band, included in the promotional photos.

And looking at the Bon Iver roster, it’s remarkable how many of them are from the Chippewa Valley. Guitar player Mike Noyce was Justin’s guitar student in high school; he put college on hold to tour with Bon Iver. Drummer Sean Carey had been playing drums in UWEC’s Jazz I as well as in jazz groups at Shanghai Bistro when Justin called with the offer. Nate Vernon, Justin’s brother, holds tour manager duties. Bon Iver T-shirts are printed in downtown Eau Claire at Melting Pot Prints. 

Justin’s manager, Kyle Frenette, is a 2006 graduate of Chippewa Falls High School. Interestingly, Kyle’s been on a parallel mission with Justin since he’s been old enough to hold a job. Throughout high school, he built an impressive resume: event coordinator at the Heyde Center for the Arts, promotional manager at Higher Grounds coffee house, and contributor/distributor for Volume One. In his spare time, Kyle played in the indie-rock band Elliston. After earning his associate degree in music business, he came back home and started Amble Down Records – his own label to promote and highlight the music of the Chippewa Valley.  

Kyle first heard Bon Iver when For Emma was a pre-release online stream. “After two listens I was just...floored,” he said during a recent phone conversation. “It’s very rare that music does that to me. I sat back in my chair and said this is unbelievable.”

He approached Justin about promotion and distribution. Though Kyle wasn’t a big name in the industry, the two shared the same vision. After hiring Kyle as his manager, they went on to sign with Jagjaguwar (an Indiana-based record label). With his involvement with Bon Iver and Amble Down Records, Kyle senses a surge in the local scene. As often happens in the music world, Eau Claire is now getting more attention since the emergence of one of its bands. The blogosphere is highlighting Amble Down bands (The Wars of 1812, Cranes and Crows, The Gentle Guest, and Meridene). The Gentle Guest is in the midst of a successful East Coast tour. Two other Eau Claire bands, Laarks and The Daredevil Christopher Wright, are also considering signing with Amble Down. Rather than a place to start, Eau Claire has the potential to become a place to be – all ripple effects of the Bon Iver cannonball splash.

“Anytime I have a new release and send an email out to blogs,” Kyle says, “8 or 9 out of 10 will say ‘Eau Claire, Wisconsin, home of Bon Iver….’ There’s no getting away from it, and I see it as a good thing. It’s definitely bringing a lot of attention to this area. I think it’s deserved. I think we’re really on the brink of something great. We’ve got a lot of time ahead of us, so I’m really hopeful.”

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A ROAD LESS TRAVELED
    Justin had to leave here, though, to eventually reach his artistic breakthrough by coming back. With DeYarmond Edison, a crescendo-packed, power-folk band with three other members of Mount Vernon, Justin played to an enthusiastic and ever-growing fan base in Eau Claire for five years. After recording their second CD, they decided to take their shot. The band relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina, hoping a bigger music scene would help them get noticed nationally. And it worked…in a very roundabout way.

While the move to Raleigh was successful for the rest of the band, both musically and personally, Justin felt he had lost his own songwriting path, and to an extent, himself. Nothing was working anymore; for him the music stopped moving forward. After a year, the natural thing for the band to do was separate, and they did so mutually, after 10 years together in DeYarmond Edison and Mount Vernon. In addition, Justin’s relationship with his girlfriend also tanked. While the remaining band members formed Megafaun, Justin packed up his loss and regret and moved home. His dad offered the family hunting cabin as a place he could spend the winter. It was a place Justin could set himself straight, do chores, and decompress by writing and recording. He was making songs for himself – and exorcising some personal demons – unaware that these songs would actually become a full-fledged release. It was the freedom from expectations and the north woods solitude that brought out the most original, honest, and cathartic work of his life.

    The first thing he did, in an act of skin shedding, was abandon his usual singing and writing styles. “The way I started writing for this album was more opaque and more based on subconscious stuff,” Justin says. “The way that songs used to come out was much more straight from my-heart-to-my-head-to-the-page. And in this case, I tried to sort of cloud the head part of it and ended up getting some stuff that was somehow more meaningful.”

The dense lyrics offer the listener something new with each listen – and that goes for the singer, too. “That’s what’s allowed me to continue to play the songs this year and not get sick of them…because they’re still mysterious to me, yet I know what they’re about,” he says. “And everyone kind of knows what they’re about, but everyone’s still not sure…so it just kind of worked out.”

Justin referred to the more traditional DeYarmond Edison songs as “too sturdy” and “painting the same picture every time.”  “I still get people who say ‘As Long as I Can Go’ is my favorite song,” he acknowledges. “And I’m not going to take anything away from that, but that song for sure is about one thing – and one thing that is beautiful and sacred. And it’s too big of a subject to roll in.” 

And while the DeYarmond material was more accessible on the first listen, a lot of the songs on For Emma don’t have traditional beats, verses, or choruses. Add in a different singing style and dense lyrics, and many of his old fans haven’t warmed to the changes. It’s funny how it worked. After being loved locally and ignored by the rest of the world, now he gets international praise while some locals are still stingy about the record:  “What’s with the falsetto?” “The lyrics don’t make a lick of sense.” “I want to like it, but I can’t.” “I saw him on Conan and I couldn’t understand a word he was singing.”

Justin sensed it coming. “I haven’t heard anyone complain yet, but I heard myself hearing them complain,” he admits. “It’s something that came into my head and then kind of dissipated because I was like, ‘I’m so happy with it I can’t stop.’ I can’t avoid this thing that came out of me as it did.”

Actually, Justin had a revelation when a close friend listened to a demo of the record and admitted he didn’t “get it.” “I realized I was doing something I was proud of when he said he didn’t get it, and it didn’t bother me,” Justin says. “Because I respect that guy and when I heard him say that and I didn’t go, ‘Oh man. What did I do wrong?’ I knew I was doing something that was satisfying me.”

And I’d like to say that I was on the forefront, calling Justin’s success early, but it was the opposite. For each of his previous releases, I figured some type of breakthrough or national recognition was only a lucky break away. I pushed the discs and live shows on friends. There’s no reason these guys can’t hit it big, I thought. From performances I saw, from the clubs to the classroom, there was an intangible quality that drew people in.

But when I listened to For Emma: Forever Ago, I dismissed it as an “off” record. Other than “Skinny Love,” I put it aside hoping he’d be back on track with his next one.

A couple people told me it was incredible and that I should “stay with it,” as if it was some kind of workout regimen. Because I respected the rest of Justin’s music so much, I kept giving the songs more chances. Still nothing. Then the national praise started flowing in, which was perplexing, to say the least. Music benchmark setter Pitchfork gave it an uncharacteristically high 8.1 rating – raising the antennas of independent music lovers everywhere. Mojo and Uncut magazines both gave it 5/5 star ratings. It was rated as one of the top 10 records of the year by NPR, and it was recently named #4 Record of the Year by Paste, only a couple of months after they put Justin on the cover. From cutting-edge blogs to Entertainment Weekly, everyone was buzzing about the CD recorded in a cabin by the deer hunter.

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Reading the unanimous critical praise, I couldn’t figure out what these strangers could hear that I was missing. Critics fawned over the record with words such as “wondrous” and “divine.” Paste compared Justin’s singing to “a sort of wolf pack harmony serenading the wide-eyed Wisconsin moon.” A blogger on musicomh.com marveled, “It’s rare to be so gushing about a debut album – yet after living with this album for a few weeks, you’ll be hard pressed to find any flaws.”

The way For Emma eventually grew on me, slowly over several months, reminded me of my college roommate’s music preferences. If he bought a CD and was put off on the first listen, he considered that a good sign. If he liked it right away, that meant it was too simple and would quickly fade.

It’s also interesting how national audiences had the advantage of not comparing For Emma to Justin’s past work. As a teacher, my eighth-grade students are the same. With no style-change adjustments, they pick up on it much more easily. I play music between class periods, and when I put on “Skinny Love” or “Lump Sum,” kids inquire about it more than any other music I’ve ever played in class. They want to know how to spell it, where to get it. “For Emma” and “Re: Stacks” also work as calming agents when the kids come in bouncing off the walls.

Funny that Vernon’s music can be used to relax middle school students, when in the past, Mount Vernon could pack a dance floor with kids pogo jumping all over the place. Will Justin’s music ever reverse the quieter path he’s been going down continually since the celebratory hootenanny of Mount Vernon?

“There’s more than one direction,” Justin counters. “There’s more than left and right on that linear path. And that’s what I sort of realized. It’s so much more wide open. I might have some clues about what the next record might sound like, but I’m not going to think too much about it until I actually have time to sit down and bury myself into a new space.”

ROOTS
    Somewhere back around 2001, knowing Justin from the interviews, I asked him if he’d come in and be a guest speaker in my English classes at South. Three years in a row, he gave up a day to play music and talk songwriting with the kids at his alma mater.

I’ve seen dozens of guest speakers. Some are ignored; others are politely acknowledged. But Justin could captivate the kids like a crackling campfire. Every kid. Every year. Mesmerized.

Justin talked a lot about getting inspiration from one’s surroundings, such as Camp Manitou, as well as his own middle school and high school experiences. A far cry from the social misfit status with which many songwriters recall their growing up years, Justin was a captain of the football team, basketball player, and singer in an enormously popular band. He was the kind of kid liked by both teachers and students – possessing the same cross-generational appeal of his band’s music. In talking to the kids, he stressed openness to people, places, and experiences, and channeling those into artistic expression.

The day after his visit, it was always easy to get kids to write; the inspiration was still in the room. It came back every time I played his music during writing time. To this day, I still put on DeYarmond Edison to help me when I need to get into deep concentration for my own writing. In fact, it’s playing in my headphones as I type this sentence.

Just before school started this year, I received an email from a former student settling indo her new life in college. She told me of her plans to be an engineer and how she was reminiscing about Eau Claire: 

•     One event in particular is standing out, and that was when you brought Justin Vernon to class. He shared his music with us, he played for us, and I believe I fell in love. Okay, not with Justin, but with his voice and the way he performed. From that day on...I listened to DeYarmond Edison continuously. Then Bon Iver. Yes, Bon Iver. I went to his first concert at the House of Rock last summer, sang along with the photocopied lyrics, and thought there couldn’t be anything better.
•     I’m glad to have his music in my life.... For Emma, Forever Ago will be associated with some pivotal and emotional times in my life. There is no way I can look back on some events and not begin to hum the melody to Wolves or Skinny Love. I will never forget the day, five years ago, when he sat in front of us in your classroom and played. He spills out his soul every time.

Those were some of my all-time favorite teaching days, and one moment stands out the most. At the end of a class period, a student approached Justin and asked for his autograph. Several of this boy’s friends played it cool and gave him smirks and eye-rolls that said he was taking it too far. As Justin good-naturedly signed the spiral notebook, the kid sheepishly defended himself to his friends. “Well,” he said, “you never know....

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THE ROAD AHEAD
    Justin’s final concert of 2008 will be a sold-out show at the State Theatre in downtown Eau Claire. Local music fans often gripe when a national act comes to town and draws a small crowd, but the Bon Iver show sold out in less than two weeks. In fact, a pair of tickets for the show recently sold on eBay for $177.50. This is a big deal – the first Bon Iver performance in Eau Claire since Hurricane Emma really started kicking up dust a year ago. In addition, his new EP, titled Blood Bank, will be available on vinyl at the show; CDs and downloads, on January 20th. There will even some new T-shirts done by Melting Pot Prints.

In January, Justin will tour in Australia. Then, finally, it will be time to record again, with a worldwide independent music fan base ready to devour the next release – the opposite environment he had when he unknowingly recorded his life-changing record in a hunting cabin. After a decade of musical progression, it will be especially exciting for local fans to experience the next step forward. In other words, no pressure.

“With this one I didn’t have any expectations, and no one else had any expectations of me either,” Justin says of recording For Emma. “I think it’s doing well because people recognize the short line between me and the songs and whatever path that is…I wanna stick to that.”

“I’m taking three months (to write and record), and if I need more I’ll take more,” he says nonchalantly. “I’m not going to put pressure on myself to finish it. It makes sense to put out a record next fall, business-wise, but I can’t worry about that stuff.”

Right now, he’s enjoying his new home in the countryside outside of Eau Claire, where he’s putting down roots for good. Eventually, there will be a recording studio and plenty of rooms – a haven for visiting bands, both local and national. It’s where he wants to be, aside from those inevitable world tours to exotic places like Paris, Amsterdam, and Glasgow – which are all great, to a point. “I love it,” Justin says. “There are all these places that are so special and so beautiful…but they aren’t my place.” Eau Claire is – with its familiar geography, good people, clear waters and cold winters. “It’s like my beginning. It’s my DNA. That’s Bon Iver.