Besides our annual “Best Of” issues, this edition marks the first time we’ve featured a cover image that references content inside. The scruffy dude standing there in the tie and vest is local musician Justin Vernon, of recent Bon Iver fame, shot by one of our contributing photographers Drew Kaiser. We have a sizeable article written by Ken Szymanski, covering Vernon and the amazing couple of years he’s had penetrating the consciousness of the world of popular music.

But having a feature inside didn’t mean we had to also put Vernon on the cover, and whether we should or not was a question we wrestled with. Unlike almost every other publication out there, we’ve never had cover images relevant to anything inside, we simply feature local art for local art’s sake – since it’s one of the few places the general public around here can see it. But when asked over the years if we’d ever put a person or specific story on the cover, we always said if there was a local arts and culture story that was big enough, we probably would. Well, during the production of the article we realized that time had probably come. While hundreds of creative Chippewa Valley residents have seen all sorts of commercial and artistic success, it’s unlikely there’s ever been an entertainment story bigger than the story of Bon Iver. The success has come like a wild fire and with no signs of extinguishing any time soon. Critical acclaim, international tours, late-night talk shows, splashy magazine spreads – it’s all there.

Now, we fully expect some of you to groan about Volume One falling all over themselves to put our new local celebrity Justin Vernon on the cover, and we fully expect others of you to not know or care who Justin Vernon is and wish we’d have just had regular art. That’s all fine. For us, it was simply an opportunity to do something different, but with darn good cause for doing it.

The text above is the Dec. 4 issue's "Note from the Editor/Publisher," found on page 4.