Welcome to Bon Iver, Wisconsin

This is such a ridiculous interview and I absolutely love it. I'm happy that Justin appears to be happy again. It did seem like there was a huge weight on him between BI,BI and 22AM.

It's also weird since I live in Eau Claire and I know that view his practice space has and I live just blocks away. The places they meet up at are the ones that I frequent too.

I was actually in the Oxbow once right after its grand opening and I realized that it wasn't likely I was going to be able to eat any time soon, so I decided to head to a different place. Ten minutes after, Justin came on stage and performed 22AM as a secret show. That was rough to find out about the next day.

i,i is really good. I'm planning a trip to Colorado the week that they're playing Red Rocks, so I plan on paying some obscene prices to see them play there.

 

great article, can't wait for this arena tour.
if you haven't watched this yet you probably should

 

What are your thoughts on Eau Claire as a town? It's interesting how he romanticizes it. I have a much much different relationship with my midwestern hometown.

 

I ended up writing more than you probably wanted, but here's my take:

I've always lived in Wisconsin, but I moved to Eau Claire eight years ago. Growing up I lived in two small towns ~5k population and then traveled around the state a bit, took a year pit stop in Milwaukee, which was the highest pop city I've ever lived in, and settled in La Crosse for a few years until I was offered a position in Eau Claire. When I was moving to Eau Claire, the only thing I knew about it was that Justin Vernon was from here and currently lived here and brought his band here. I actually moved up the month that BI,BI released.

As a music lover, Eau Claire has been pretty great. Locally that's mostly due to Justin, but there's a lot of great local bands as well. Within the city, I've seen Bon Iver, Volcano Choir, and a secret Shouting Matches show-- followed by all four years of the Eaux Claires festival and all three Oxbeaux which together hosted an incredible amount of great bands. Locally there's Blues in the Park every Tuesday and the Sounds Like Summer concert series every Thursday for three months of the summer and both are free to attend. There's another new venue, TheMetro opened up a couple years ago that holds up to 1k, but unfortunately most bands that pass through are not my style, mostly radio-friendly rock bands that were popular a decade ago. There has been some unique cases though like Marijuana Deathsquads, Shredders, and Har Mar Superstar. Another location, The Pablo Center of the Arts, recently opened downtown as well, and they have been bringing some great acts in. I've seen The Tallest Man on Earth and Francis and the Lights here so far, and have tickets for Vernon/TU Dance in Nov. This is the building that houses Justin's new practice space that you see in the article.

A lot of the great stuff I love about this city didn't exist when I moved here and a lot of it was just starting to form, and Justin has actually had his hands in a lot of it. If he didn't see something to romanticize here, maybe I wouldn't have either. I don't want to give him all the credit as there are a lot of others in the community that have worked to make it what it is, but had his influence not existed on this city, I would likely have a much, much different perspective of it. I was bummed when they listed Eaux Claires as overrated on the city polls because it has been such a great event in my eyes and just in the eight years I have been here, I have seen a huge amount of growth that other people apparently don't see. I'm glad Justin mentioned it in the article and stated he was still going to keep working on it for the people that did notice. I am bummed about what happened to Eaux Claires and I hope what we see in 2020 can be considered equivalent to it. It was "post-poned" and didn't exist this year, but next year they plan to reinvent it by having it exist in some aspect downtown Eau Claire. I loved every year that I have attended despite some of the negative press from last year. If you look at that band list, I would imagine a lot of people on Chorus.FM would be ecstatic with the lineup. It also provided so many unique features and collaborations you won't see at any other festival. There's plenty of people that don't even know who Justin Vernon or Bon Iver is and it blows my mind. Just the other day I was talking to a colleague who told me they didn't know who he was and they were like, "Oh, Skinny Love! I love that song." Usually they just don't care in general and I guess that's fine too.

There's still plenty that this city needs and if I wasn't a huge music fan in the genres I am, I would probably be underwhelmed. I think overall the food here is pretty garbage. There's some good places, but I swear there's a new boring generic American pub and grill opening up every month. Apparently that's what the population wants. There's just so much fantastic food just out of reach from this city, but we're slowly starting to see more unique places. Luckily I love to cook and the grocery store that opened four years ago offers 95% of the things I look for.

Minneapolis is close, but far, about 80 minutes to downtown, so not an easy weekday venture, but I've made quite a few jaunts to the cities to see some of my favorite bands on a weekday and then made it into work the next morning at 7:30AM on low sleep.

Overall I think Eau Claire is continuing to improve year after year. It's the best city I have ever lived in and despite my complete distaste for the winter here, I will continue to live here for the foreseeable future. Had I not had family tying me to Wisconsin, I probably would have left long before I would have found this city though.

 

Last I checked tickets at RR are over $150 for the GA in the very back of the venue just FYI. Anything closer to the stage is hitting like 250+. Hopefull you can swing it and make it out here though, it's the best venue

 

Yeah, its crazy. Honestly attending a show at Red Rocks has basically been on my bucket list for the last decade so I'm going to make it happen. I haven't bought the tickets yet... we were considering just waiting til the day of to see if they drop heavily or maybe I can buy tickets outside... I don't know. That's more than I spent on three days of Riot Fest (and two days of Eaux Claires).

 

That's an incredible write-up lol thank you. I grew up in a town of 1000 people but now live in Seattle, which is just more crowded by the day. How are the winters there? One thing I hated about the Midwest was the brutal summer.

 

This last season was the worst of the worst. Eau Claire had new set record of 54" of snow in February, the most since like 1920 and over 100" over the whole season which went on forever, a total of 50 days of snow over six months. I couldn't get out of my garage for four days due to how its setup, down a long narrow driveway behind my house. There just simply wasn't any place to put it. We also had some record cold weather with it hitting negative thirty for a week. I don't know what was worse honestly. I'm not a fan of the cold or the snow so I have no place being here. The summers can get pretty intense too but luckily this year has been pretty good.

A group of my friends sold most of their possessions and split off to the Portland/Seattle/Bellevue areas a decade ago and parts of me wish I would have got in that van with them. They're still out there and enjoying their lives as far as I'm aware, so I'm glad they made the trek.