DeYarmond Edison

“Epoch”
Unreleased
2006
iTunes

Right now Justin Vernon is in the eye of the storm. In July he self-released the album For Emma, Forever Ago under the nom de plume Bon Iver (French for “good winter.”) It was the culmination of four months time spent writing and recording in isolation last winter in his father’s hunting cabin in the woods of northwestern Wisconsin and represented a break away from his musical past with folk-rock group DeYarmond Edison (a band that first rose to acclaim on the local music scene in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, before moving to Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2005). A simply stunning album featuring evocatively poetic lyrics (“This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization/ It’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away”) about doubt and dissolution delivered largely in a spine tingling falsetto, For Emma, Forever Ago was clearly a new creative highwater mark for Vernon. But eccentric singer/songwriter albums featuring creepy vocal overdubs and unexpected horn fragment blasts do not hit albums typically make.

Here’s where things get interesting… somehow, some way, For Emma became an Internet sensation. Blog buzz began to build almost immediately and in the last few weeks the press avalanche has hit full on, with glowing reviews in arbiters of taste both indie (Pitchfork) and institutional (The New York Times). Vernon’s initial run of self-released albums is now completely out of print and he has signed a multi-album deal with indie label Jagjaguwar, which will put out a nationwide re-release of For Emma in February 2008. Anyone remotely aware of the Eau Claire scene can attest that this is not some fresh faced kid who “got lucky.” Vernon is a humble and exceptionally talented guy, and he was nice enough to take time out recently from his busy schedule to chat with Reveille whilst driving back into the United States from Canada.

Reveille: I imagine it’s a pretty crazy time for you with all that’s been happening press-wise. This is the first time I’ve seen the whole blog buzz thing happen with an artist and gotten the chance to talk with them in the midst of it. I’m wondering how you deal with it, do you just sort of block all the attention out and try to stay focused on what’s right in front of you or do you allow yourself to enjoy the moment at all?

Justin Vernon: I don’t block it out — when people say nice things you feel nice. But for the most part, I think for my whole life in a weird way, I’ve been waiting for this exact sort of juncture. I feel like I’ve waited for it for so long that I’m kind of ready for it. I’m taking it all in stride and it’s all making sense to me. I’m still totally floored and touched by everything that’s happened. I think if I were to be truly honest I don’t really understand what’s happening. The last couple of days I’ve been sitting here talking on the phone with the heads of labels that have done amazing things. I’m kind of amazed at how comfortable it feels though.

Reveille: What’s always funny to me about these “overnight” internet driven music sensations is that in reality the musician in question has usually been around for awhile. I was looking at your website earlier and the truth of it is that you’ve been working on music pretty much full-on for the last four years as both a performer and producer. So what to the outside eye might look like overnight success probably feels quite a bit different to you.

Vernon: That’s true and that’s a good way to look at it. I’m really humbled by everything and am keeping things in perspective. Things like that Pitchfork review certainly mean a lot but I’m not ever going to grow an ego bigger than I can handle. There are people I went to school with who do music and are a little bit older than me, a lot of those guys from Mel Gibson & the Pants, I mean I’m still in awe of them. I’m playing with Digitata on Friday and I’m not going to be thinking about my press I’m going to be thinking about how I feel humbled in their presence and have looked up to those guys for years. They’re still bigger than life to me. In that way I’m happy that I know my place and feel comfortable in it.

Reveille: The reviews being written make quite a bit out of the fact that you holed up in a rural Wisconsin cabin for four months during the winter time to write and record the album. Certainly every album is informed by a sense of place, but this one more so than most. Do you think you could have made this kind of album had you not sought out that kind of extreme isolation?

Vernon: I don’t think there’s any way I could have done it elsewhere. It’s been painted in the reviews of the record as this magical four months of hunkering down and writing a record. In reality I headed out to the cabin because I just didn’t know what to do next in my life. Once I got there, though, it just felt like all the blocks that I had put in my brain and heart in terms of musical expression started to loosen. They had been there for so long and the only thing that was able to loosen them up, and loosen me up, was having that much space. Not just the physical space, but also the emotional space, just being away from bandmates and old friends who know you so well. It was the first time I could really hear myself. I had my finger on the pulse of what was happening as it happened. Having the time and space allowed me to listen to my inner voice. When you’re in a city and constantly playing shows and are worried about how your band’s doing it’s too easy to get distracted.

Reveille: So as someone who was born and raised and went to college in Eau Claire I’m hoping you could talk to me about the scene there. I wasn’t really aware of it until a few years ago, but it’s really a pretty vibrant local music community. How do you think growing up in Eau Claire shaped you as a musician?

Vernon: That’s a question with like twenty years of different answers because I spent so much time there and so much of that time being musical. I’ll say two things to be fair. One, I’d rather be from no other place. Two, Eau Claire has never gotten its full due in terms of the talent that has been there. There’s sort of a brain drain in that people have to leave to really accomplish anything. I had to leave to get out of the grasp of its localness. When I decided to move Minneapolis never felt like an option to me because it felt like an extension of the Eau Claire scene because they were so connected. It was the scene that was on the map next door. I wanted to go and disturb some shit elsewhere so that’s why I ended up moving to Raleigh. The scene there is super special though and I don’t know if it’s ever been understood or will be and maybe that’s OK. At this point I can s
tay I’ve been around the world playing music and I’ve never seen such a pool, the sheer quantity of high end musicians in a place that small. With a town like Eau Claire, it’s a town of 60,000 so it’s big enough to produce amazing stuff and have fifty cool kids come out to the shows but it’s not big enough to propel anyone to the next level.

Reveille: One of the things that I think really sets For Emma, Forever Ago apart is your willingness to throw unexpected sounds into the mix. Whether it’s the horn parts or some of the stacks of vocal layers or just a random bit of rattling percussion you seemed pretty willing to throw atypical sounds in. I think that’s part of why it’s getting such a big response. Did you know from the get go that the songs were going to have those kinds of embellishments?

Vernon: I didn’t really have a lot of tools to work with. I had one guitar, a baritone guitar that I used for the bass parts, a bass drum, a snare drum, a horn, my reverb pedals, that was pretty much it. But I think what allowed me to take it to that other place with the songs was again the allotted space that I had to work on the record, physical and mental. I had an opportunity to really just hear what I wanted and then to express it. The second track that has the big choir thing at the beginning, that’s because I’ve always wanted to do some spooky boys choir beautiful shit on one of my songs. It wasn’t like I wrote it down, I just sat down in front of the mic and sang a bunch of times in a row and then layered it and intensely edited. I would just sing a melody for like eight seconds, stop recording, and then sing on top of it over and over and then I would extend the melody the fourth of fifth time and go back on top of that. It was a whole new idea creatively for me because it wasn’t so linear. It wasn’t, “Let’s write four chords to a verse and two chords to a chorus and call it good,” which is what I grew up doing. I like a lot of different kinds of music and get inspired by different colors and moods, I allowed myself to use those influences for the first time on this record.

Reveille: The lyrics on this record are also something that really stands out to me. In songs like “re: Stacks” you manage to do a lot of heavy emotional lifting without using very many words. What was your lyric writing process for the album?

Vernon: I’ve always found deeper and more expressive lyrical meaning in sort of subconscious stuff. I’m a relatively simple person and I’m a little bit of an imitator, if I listen to Springsteen for two weeks I’ll end up trying to write like him. So throughout high school, college, I was always writing lyrics and some of my favorites would be those that told a story more directly. But even what I thought was my best stuff I would compare against something else and feel like, ‘oh this is B- Dylan or B- Neil Young.’ With this record I just started playing the guitar and humming melodies and sounds that eventually turned into words. I didn’t even really know where it was going. I was going back and finding amazing things that meant something to me using that process. I was able to access deeper, darker and even happier shit just by this sort of subconscious way of doing it. I think it’s enabled me to get at something that’s not only more interesting to the listener but that I can also get lost in deeper as well. It’s definitely different than sitting down and writing a song with an agenda like, ‘this song is going to be about cocaine’ or whatever.

Reveille: Obviously a lot has already happened for you just in the four months since you self-released the album. But looking ahead do you have any specific goals for the next year? With so much already happening what would be success in your eyes for this record?

Vernon: I just want to tour and play for people and get the record out there more for people to enjoy it. I’m just happy for the opportunity. I believe enough in the music and I recognize that the record is enigmatic and special in a strange way, I can’t take full credit for it and I was the only one there. Who knows what will happen next? I’m going to start recording again in January and I already have twenty little song snippets ready to go on my laptop. I might decide to completely erase those and start from scratch on day one, we’ll see. I’m going to self-record again but I’ll be updating the tools a bit.