A final flurry of Scandinavian festivals in September*, however, and Vernon was ready to step up his game even further. He booked four nights at the 6,000 capacity Radio City Music Hall, and announced an arena tour of Europe taking in such enormous halls as Berlin’s Arena Treptow, Madrid’s 15,000-seater Palacia Vistalegre, Dublin’s similarly sized O2 and, on November 8, that ultimate benchmark of rock success, Wembley Arena.
While playing such huge shows, essentially distancing and depersonalising himself from vast crowds after so many years of playing up-close shows to the whites of his audiences’ eyes, it was no wonder Justin wanted to reconnect with his fans on a far more intimate level while offstage. So he began allowing them access not just to his music but, at a safe distance, to his bodily person. Launching a competition called 99 Designs, he offered a cash prize for the fan who designed him the best tattoo based on the Northern Exposure TV show, the best design to be inked onto his left arm. “I named my band after an episode of Northern Exposure,” his competition directions explained alongside example illustrations. “In the episode a women transforms a gold rush village into a cultural place with one single dance in a tavern. They name the town after her, Cicely, Alaska. The art direction in the episode is unmistakably Mucha [Czech painter Alphonse Mucha] and I want to get a very large tattoo of this on my left arm. My favourite, hopefully what your illustrations will be based on, is the image I uploaded of Cicely with arms outstretched in mid-dance. You can’t see her with the flowing scarf in her hands, but it would be cool if we could involve that … It’s a TV show but it weirdly explained my life to me. Cicely is the metaphor for that.”24 The winning design, announced on September 26, was by Italian artist Giulio Rossi and depicted an art nouveau Cicely surrounded by flowers.
On the musical front meanwhile, in collaboration with Indaba Music in August Justin launched the Stems project, offering $1,000 prizes and spots on a forthcoming remix album for the fans who best reworked tracks from Bon Iver, Bon Iver from the original stems of the tracks – i.e. the individual instrument audio tracks, stripped away from the completed song, that each Bon Iver band member had been given in order to learn their parts for the live shows. Bon Iver, Bon Iver: Stems Project was exclusively released on Spotify in September, featuring the 16 best remixes from the likes of Teen Daze, Labstract and St. South alongside mixes by band members – Sean, Matt, Reggie Pace and even Dan Huiting tried their hand at remoulding their own music. The songs suddenly spawned all kinds of bizarre and outlandish offshoots – ‘Minnesota, WI’ becoming a warped Eighties pop hit in the hands of Daydreamer; ‘Holocene’ turned into a sweet, synthetic battle-droid waltz once fed through Stop The Car’s computers.
In the meantime, in his spare moments back at April Base Justin continued his steady stream of collaborations. While considering a new project with Megafaun and discussing ideas with the Blind Boys Of Alabama, he worked with Ryan Olson and Ryan’s old friend, intellectual Minneapolis rapper Astronautalis, aka Andy Bothwell, recording an entire album in a weekend in April, at one point firing through an eight-hour stint of jamming and freestyling. “By the time I got there, they had about eight pieces of music done, or roughed out into song form,” Bothwell said. “Then I just got down there and freestyled for eight hours over everything. When I work with Ryan, it’s the exact opposite of how I work on my own records. I just give him tons and tons of material. He takes it back to his house, and dangles a cigarette out of his mouth, and works for hours on end … What sparked this was that [Vernon] and I are obsessive and lose our minds working on albums. Stressing out over lyric choices, and getting one word right and worrying about it for weeks on end. Whereas, Ryan is this amazing personality who motivates people to enjoy the process of making music. You just do it, and if it doesn’t work, it’ll get cut out … There were several times during those three days where I couldn’t believe that a sound just fell perfectly into place. Often you get one of those when you make a record, or two of those, over the course of weeks and weeks and weeks. This process was exhilarating, and it drove us further. We were originally going to be down there for a day.”25
At pains to point out that the crew had sunk an entire bottle of Bushmills over the weekend, Bothwell described the concept. “A lot of my fans are like, ‘Oh, this is going to be amazing: Astronautalis rapping and Justin singing choruses.’ It’s not going to be that … Everyone’s fans respectively are going to expect certain things … I think everyone should abandon their expectations of what it’s going to be, because it’s probably going to be very far off.”26
As the arena tour wound to its close and the last shred of Bon Iver, Bon Iver was released into the wind on October 16 in the form of a single release for ‘Beth/Rest’, Vernon faced the coming winter ballooned with accomplishment but uncertain once more where this nebulous, runaway entity called Bon Iver would carry him next. Having billowed his tiny, intricate vision to the size of arena halls in major cities, could he so effortlessly conquer the rest of the world, become a global A-list act while expanding his musical palette into brave new sonic universes? Or, with fresh heartbreak in his belly, could he deflate the monster Bon Iver had become, bring his music back to that enclosed world of falsetto and acoustic, the listener an eavesdropper on a private world of exquisite anguish?
Or, having taken the band further than he ever imagined possible back in that cold, frosted cabin in the woods, could he simply close the book on Bon Iver, take it out into the wilderness and bury it in the snow?
“[I’m] winding it down,” he said in September 2012, echoing sentiments in various interviews throughout the year that Bon Iver’s days may be numbered, that he saw himself merely as the ‘curator’ of Bon Iver and that someone else might take over his leadership role in time. “I look at it like a faucet. I have to turn it off and walk away from it because so much of how that music comes together is subconscious or discovering. There’s so much attention on the band, it can be distracting at times … I’ve already got three projects of my own that I’m collaborating on, where I’m not the central songwriter or anything. That’s really important for me, to clear the cobwebs out. Because Bon Iver is really special to me and it’s central to who I am and what I’m trying to express with music [but] I really feel the need to walk away from it while I still care about it. And then if I come back to it – if at all – I’ll feel better about it and be renewed.”27
Was Justin serious about shutting Bon Iver down and moving on? Ed Horrox is uncertain, but knows that Vernon has plenty of other musical avenues yet to explore. “Obviously he loves making music and he loves collaborating, and there are lots of opportunities to do that. From what I can see he takes on as much as he can and probably more than he can. He’s consumed by music and that’s why he’s so good. It’s inspiring to see someone that passionate and committed about making music and playing with people and respecting other people’s talent. Since I’ve known him, to see that grow and to see that community of artists across different types of music – experimental music, hip-hop – to see the amount of projects he throws himself into, that’s the opportunity he sees. When we first met him he made it clear that he wanted that and that has happened. It’s not that he’s changed, it’s that he’s very busy and it’s great to see that.”
If Bon Iver, as a concept, has gotten outta La Grange though, we can be certain we haven’t heard the last from Justin Vernon, the shape-shifting, cross-cultural alt-folk icon and bearer of the heartache that throbbed throughout the world.
Happy death, Bon Iver.
* Engineer Brian Joseph also received a nomination for his work on ‘Holocene’.
* Rob Moose, Greg Leisz, Colin Stetson and CJ Camerieri all joined along with Reginald Pace on horns.
* The first track from Blake’s Enough Thunder EP and a bonus track on the deluxe edition of his eponymous debut album.
* ‘Hinnom, TX’, ‘Wash.’, ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’, ‘Babys’ and ‘Beth/Rest’.
* Bon Iver play
ed at Oyafestivalen in Oslo, Finland’s Flow and Sweden’s Way Out West before returning for the Ottowa Folk Festival on September 6.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to the many who’ve helped try to push this book in the right direction, most notably Isabel Atherton at Creative Authors, Ed Horrox, Nathan Beezer, Jack Lawrence-Brown, Stephen M Duesner, Sarah Lowe, Ruth Drake, Kaz Mercer, Tones Sampson, Jon Polk, Hannah Overton, Hanna Gorjaczkowska, Christina Rentz, Jim Johnstone, Annette Lee, my ever-patient editor David Barraclough and all at Omnibus Press. Special thanks to Jane Lancaster for allowing me my own solitary creative winter in my fourth floor ‘cabin’.
Notes
CHAPTER ONE
1. Mojo, Gabe Soria, Oct 2008
2. The Times, Phoebe Greenwood, April 12, 2008
3. ibid.
4. The Guardian, Laura Barton, May 14, 2008
5. WEAU.com, Jenny You, February 12, 2012
6. Wisconsin State Journal, Barry Adams, February 28, 2012
7. WEAU.com, Jenny You, February 12, 2012
8. ibid.
9. Indy Weekly, A New Residency, Grayson Currin, February 22, 200
10. Minneapolis City Pages, Succumbing To Bon Iver, Andrea Swensson, August 31, 2011
11. The Current, Andrea Swensson, September 23, 2012
12. The Current, The Local Show, September 23, 2012
13. Wisconsin State Journal, February 28, 2012, Barry Adams
14. New York Times, Jon Caramanica, June 3, 2011
15. The Guardian, Laura Barton, 14 May 2008
16. Pitchfork, February 14, 2008
17. Pitchfork, Grayson Currin, June 13, 2011
18. WEAU.com, Jenny You, February 12, 2012
19. ibid.
20. Pitchfork, February 14, 2008
21. Minneapolis City Pages, Succumbing To Bon Iver, Andrea Swensson, August 31, 2011
22. WEAU.com, Jenny You, February 12, 2012
23. www.uwec.edu, University Of Wisconsin Eau-Claire, Nancy Wesenberg, June 21 2010
24. Indy Weekly, A New Residency, Grayson Currin, February 22, 2006
25. ibid.
26. NPR World Café interview, Megafaun, November 9, 2011
CHAPTER TWO
1. The Current, The Local Show, September 23, 2012
2. WEAU.com, Jenny You, February 12, 2012
3. ibid.
4. Minneapolis City Pages, Succumbing To Bon Iver, Andrea Swensson, August 31, 2011
5. The Times, Phoebe Greenwood, April 12, 2008
CHAPTER THREE
1. Chicago Time Out, Brent DiCrescenzo, December 7, 2011
2. Dazed And Confused, July 28, 2011
3. The New York Times, Jon Caramanica, June 3, 2011
4. www.uwec.edu, University Of Wisconsin Eau-Claire, Nancy Wesenburg, June 21 2010
5. ibid.
6. ibid.
7. Wisconsin State Journal, On Wisconsin: In Eau-Claire Justin Vernon’s Roots Run Deep, Barry Adams, February 28, 2012
8. www.uwec.edu, University Of Wisconsin Eau-Claire, Nancy Wesenburg, June 21 2010
9. The Times, Phoebe Greenwood, 12 April, 2008
10. VolumeOne.org, Justin Vernon: Back Tracks, Ken Szymanski, December 4, 2008
11. Mojo, Gabe Soria interview with Justin Vernon, October 2008
12. Sunday World, How Heartache Helped Shape Folk Star’s Rise To Fame, Eddie Rowley, December 9, 2012
13. ibid.
14. Indy Week, A New Residency, Grayson Currin, February 22, 2006
15. ibid.
16. VolumeOne.org – Justin Vernon: Back Tracks, Ken Szymanski, December 4, 2008
17. Observer Music Monthly, Albums Of The Year, Gareth Grundy, 7 December, 2008
CHAPTER FOUR
1. Indy Week, A New Residency, Grayson Currin, February 22, 2006
2. ibid.
3. ibid.
4. CMJ, Chris Porterfield interview, Christine Werthman, June 18, 2012
5. ibid.
6. VolumeOne.org, Justin Vernon: Back Tracks, Ken Szymanski, December 4, 2008
7. ibid.
8. ibid.
9. New York Times, Jon Caramanica, June 3, 2011
10. The Guardian, Laura Barton, May 14, 2008
11. www.thankscaptainobvious.net, Captain Obvious, November 18, 2007
12. The Current, The Local Show, September 23, 2012
13. NPR Radio World Café, Megafaun interview, Nov 9, 2011
14. WEAU.com, Jenny You, February 12, 2012
15. The Current, The Local Show, September 23, 2012
16. Indy Week, A New Residency, Grayson Currin, February 22, 2006
17. ibid.
18. CMJ, Chris Porterfield interview, Christine Werthman, June 18, 2012
19. Indy Week, A New Residency, Grayson Currin, February 22, 2006
20. VolumeOne.org, Justin Vernon: Back Tracks, Ken Szymanski, December 4, 2008
21. ibid.
22. The AV Club, Steven Hyden, February 21, 2008
23. VolumeOne.org, Justin Vernon: Back Tracks, Ken Szymanski, December 4, 2008
24. Volume One, June 23, 2011
25. VolumeOne.org, Justin Vernon: Back Tracks, Ken Szymanski, December 4, 2008
26. ibid.
27. ibid.
28. The AV Club, Steven Hyden, Feb 21, 2008
CHAPTER FIVE
1. Volume One, June 23, 2011
2. Indy Week, A New Residency, Grayson Currin, February 22, 2006
3. ibid.
4. Pitchfork, Nilina Mason-Campbell, May 27, 2008
5. Laundro-Matinee, October 16, 2008
6. The Current, The Local Show, September 23, 2012
7. Indy Week, A New Residency, Grayson Currin, February 22, 2006
8. ibid.
9. ibid.
10. ibid.
11. Indy Week, Bon Iver’s Long Wager, Grayson Currin, July 27, 2011
12. Uncut, Alastair McKay, June 2011
13. The Times, Phoebe Greenwood, 12 April, 2008
14. The AV Club, Steven Hyden, February 21, 2008
15. Pitchfork, Nilina Mason-Campbell, May 27, 2008
16. WEAU.com, Jenny You, February 12, 2012
17. The Times, Phoebe Greenwood, April 12, 2008
18. Stool Pigeon, Bon Iver’s Got To Do What A Man’s Got To Do, Ann Lee, April 2008
19. Daily Telegraph, Benjamin Secher, May 17, 2008
20. Treble, Dustin Allen, November 2, 2008
21. NPR radio, World Café show, November 9, 2011
22. Pitchfork, Nilina Mason-Campbell, May 27, 2008
23. Daily Telegraph, Benjamin Secher, May 17, 2008
24. Drowned In Sound, DiScover: Bon Iver, Alex Denney, May 6, 2008
25. Daily Telegraph, Benjamin Secher, May 17, 2008
26. Pitchfork, Grayson Currin, June 13, 2011
27. New York Times, Jon Caramanica, June 3, 2011
28. ibid.
29. Pitchfork, February 14, 2008
30. Uncut, Alastair McKay, June 2011
31. The Times, Phoebe Greenwood, April 12, 2008
32. New York Times, Jon Caramanica, June 3, 2011
33. Pitchfork, Grayson Currin, June 13, 2011
34. ibid.
35. Source unknown
36. StarTribune, A Good Winter, Chris Riemenschneider, January 11, 2008
37. Treble, Dustin Allen, November 2, 2008
38. Creature Fear blog, November 17, 2006
39. La Blogotheque, Bon Iver’s Choices, Sskizo, May 21, 2008
40. Pitchfork, Grayson Currin, June 13, 2011
41. StarTribune, A Good Winter, Chris Riemenschneider, January 11, 2008
42. My Old Kentucky Blog, December 21, 2007
43. Indy Week, Bon Iver’s Long Wager, Grayson Currin, July 27, 2011
44. ibid.
45. Treble, Dustin Allen, November 2, 2008
46. Pitchfork, Grayson Currin, June 13, 2011
47. The Guardian, Laura Barton, June 9, 2011
48. Uncut, Ala
stair McKay, June 2011
49. Exclaim!, Chris Whibbs, March 2008
CHAPTER SIX
1. Pitchfork, June 13, 2011
2. Justin Vernon, Creature Fear blog
3. Mojo, Gabe Soria, October 2008
4. The AV Club, Steven Hyden, February 21, 2008
5. Mojo, Gabe Soria, October 2008
6. Daily Telegraph, Benjamin Secher, May 17, 2008
7. Stool Pigeon, Bon Iver’s Got To Do What A Man’s Got To Do, Ann Lee, April 2008
8. Treble, Dustin Allen, November 2, 2011
9. Laundro-Matinee, October 16, 2008
10. Captain Obvious, November 18, 2007
11. Drowned In Sound, DiScover: Bon Iver, Alex Denney, May 6, 2008
12. Mojo, Gabe Soria, October 2008
13. Daily Telegraph, Benjamin Secher, May 17, 2008
14. Ambledown.com biog
15. Uncut, Alastair McKay, June 2011
16. StarTribune, A Good Winter, Chris Riemenschneider, January 11, 2008
17. Captain Obvious, November 18, 2007
18. Weekend America, Songs In The Dead Of Winter, Angela Kim, January 26, 2008
19. Uncut, Alastair McKay, June 2011
20. The Times, Phoebe Greenwood, April 12, 2008
21. Mojo, Gabe Soria, October 2008
22. Daily Telegraph, Benjamin Secher, May 17, 2008
23. Mojo, Gabe Soria, October 2008
24. Daily Telegraph, Benjamin Secher, May 17, 2008
25. Creature Fear blog, Justin Vernon
26. New York Times, Jon Caramanica, June 3, 2011)
Bon Iver Page 28
