Pages tagged “bon iver”

It's almost too much, really. As anticipation builds for The Stand Ins, Okkervil River's follow-up to last year's The Stage Names, the Austin band has begun to fan its fans' desires by opening up a YouTube channel with covers of all the album's songs. Covers, that is, before the Sept. 9 official release of the originals—crazy.

Hometown: Eau Claire, Wisc.
Album: For Emma, Forever Ago
Why He's Worth Watching: Justin Vernon’s homespun album is full of intimate songcraft, and has already whipped up a veritable hurricane of blog buzz, not to mention perfect five-star ratings in major U.K. music rags Mojo and Uncut.
For Fans Of: Iron & Wine; Phosphorescent; Loney, Dear

Justin Vernon looks slightly out of place. The bearded songwriter who performs under the moniker Bon Iver (pronounced “bohn ee-VARE”) sits placidly on a black leather couch in an ultra-slick Manhattan photo studio. It’s dark in the back of the room and the screen of Vernon’s MacBook laptop throws a wan campfire glow on his face. If you didn’t know he was waiting patiently to have his picture taken for this magazine’s cover feature, you might mistake him for one of the photographer’s assistants. He’s in a hooded sweatshirt, ratty jeans and a T-shirt advertising some Wisconsin brewery, and has no plans to hit wardrobe. But his look serves as a reminder: It wasn’t cool that got him here; it was the cold.

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Summer has a way of feeling light, as if you can float along aimlessly as you please like a feather in the wind, or maybe a hummingbird. And there are few more pleasant soundtracks to summer than the soothing melancholies of Jeff Tweedy and Wilco.

For a guy who started out seeking isolation and hibernation in a cabin in Wisconsin, Justin Vernon seems to be loving the touring life these days. Not letting that lack of fanny-pack slow him down, he's planned another round of shows that bring him full circle around the country.

Having already toured with the likes of Iron & Wine, Collections of Colonies of Bees and Black Mountain, this tour finds him opening for Wilco and the New Pornographers, and headlining with Bowerbirds and A.A. Bondy, as well as heading back across the pond. In fact, this new slew of dates brings him all the way home to the good winter.

Bon Iver continues touring in support of the accidental first album born of Justin Vernon’s wintry isolation in his father’s hunting cabin in northern Wisconsin. All Vernon wanted to do was hibernate, like this bear. Instead he got an album.

Vernon experienced some bumps along the North American touring road involving the low-blow theft of a certain fannypack in Austin, Texas. Not one to be easily waylaid, Bon Iver continues on with it’s international leg of the tour with the following dates:

May
10 - Camber Sands, UK @ Pitchfork vs. ATP
12 - Glasgow, UK @ ABC*
13 - Manchester, UK @ Ritz*
14 - Sheffield, UK @ Leadmill*
15 - Brighton, UK @ The Great Escape
16 - London, UK @ Forum*
19 - London, UK @ Chess Club at Social
20 - London, UK @ Scala
22 - Den Haag, Netherlands @ Paard
23 - Ottersum, Netherlands @ Roepaen
24 - Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso, Upstairs
27 - Paris, France @ La Trabendo
29 - Gent, Belguim @ Vooruit
31 - Barcelona, Spain @ Primavera Sound

July
20 - Chicago, Ill. @ Pitchfork Music Fest

*with Iron & Wine

Related links:.
Bon Iver on MySpace
4 To Watch: Bon Iver: One Less Drifter in the Snow
Bon Iver on Virb.com

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Click above to watch "Wolves (Act I and II)" from Bon Iver's debut album For Emma, Forever Ago, out now on Jagjaguwar.

Related Links:
4 to Watch: Bon Iver
News: Bon Iver releases video, gets robbed, extends tour
Festivus: SXSW - Girl Fart, cheese graters & snow globes

We make no secret of it here at Paste. We love Bon Iver. And what Bon Iver loves is his fannypack.

Or used to love, we should say, since some jerk of a person stole it from him during one of his SXSW showcases this week. CMJ reports that Justin Vernon was robbed Thursday at the Parish Room in Austin, Texas, immediately preceding his set. He lost a handful of cash and quite a bit of I.D. and plastic. He was out of the room, watching Jens Lekman play before him. During NPR's live broadcast of that very performance, he asks on stage if anyone has seen the fannypack and politely asks for it back. "I wear a fannypack," he confesses, "and it's disappeared...It's got some documents in it, and I need it." You can listen to a stream of the show here.

To provide ambiance while we all mount a search, Vernon released his first video for the Bon Iver project a couple weeks back. It's a stark, wintery look at "Wolves (Act I and II)" from For Emma, Forever Ago, and it comes with a story like everything else Bon Iver touches. It seems Vernon's lyrics impact everyone, even those who direct his videos.

Vernon and Co. have extended their North American tour, after which they're scheduled to leave the country for some international dates in May. Hopefully they'll be able to restore their proper identification before then.

Fannypack-less Bon Iver dates (according to his MySpace):

April
1 - Rock Island, Ill. @ Huckleberry's Pizza Parlor
2 - Grinnell, Iowa @ Grinnell College
3 - Upland, Ind. @ Taylor University
4 - Indianapolis, Ind. @ The Vogue
5 - Iowa City, Iowa @ University of Iowa - Black
7 - Columbia, Mo. @ Mojo's
8 - St. Louis, Mo. @ St. Louis University - Biliken *
9 - Urbana, Ill. @ Canopy Club *
10 - Chicago, Ill. @ Lakeshore Theatre *
11 - Madison, Wisc. @ Orpheum Theatre - Stage Door *
12 - St. Paul, Minn. @ Turf Club *
13 - St. Paul, Minn. @ Turf Club (w/ The Wars of 1812)
14 - Duluth, Minn. @ Kirby Rafter (Duluth University)
14 - Fargo, N.D. @ Aquarium

* - w/ Collections of Colonies of Bees

Related links:
Bon Iver on Virb
JagJaguwar.com
Creature Fear: the Bon Iver Blog

Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.

Hometown: Eau Claire, Wis.
Fun fact: Justin Vernon, Bon Iver’s sole proprietor, recently produced albums for The Rosebuds and Land of Talk.
Why he's worth watching: His stunning breakthrough For Emma, Forever Ago was self-released in 2007 to scattered but rapturous praise—mostly on blogs—and was given a proper reissue by Jagjaguwar in February.
For fans of: Iron & Wine, M. Ward, TV on the Radio

Justin Vernon had a rough 2006. His longtime band, DeYarmond Edison, broke up soon after relocating from Wisconsin to North Carolina; then he was slammed with severe mononucleosis, and was bedridden for three months. Despite a feeble return to music—recording and distributing forgettable, one-off solo stuff at local shows—this self-described “shit ride” left him in fugue.

“I was ready to give up the idea of being a professional musician,” Vernon says. He finally sought refuge in his father’s hunting cabin, where for three months during the brutal Wisconsin winter he lived alone on stockpiled coffee, homemade soups and venison from deer he hunted himself. “The sound of your thoughts are pretty loud when you don’t open your mouth to say words to anyone for a long time.”

He began recording again, this time impulsively, unfettered and unfiltered. Between long tractor rides and firewood-chopping binges, he transcribed lyrics, put guitar parts to tape and looped his vocals into gauzy oblivion, channeling his mind’s clamorous racket into music. It was months after leaving the cabin that he realized he’d made an album—the spooky, subtly rich For Emma, Forever Ago. At once slow-burning and icy, like the onset of frostbite, only a few flourishes—a horn part here, a friend’s harmonies there—were added after Vernon’s return from his season in the North.

And thus the name: Bon Iver is a play on bon hiver, French for “good winter.” “It’s my new identity that I’ve stumbled across after a lot of years of searching and wondering what the hell I was doing,” Vernon says. “I want to be making records like this until I’m dead.”

Around this time two years ago, Justin Vernon was just emerging from the three months spent in his father’s hunting cabin up in northern Wisconsin, where he’d unknowingly recorded the first album of the rest of his life. Following the self-release of that record—For Emma, Forever Ago—under the name Bon Iver in 2007, Vernon’s wintery opus will be officially released via Jagjagjuwar this coming Tuesday (Feb. 19).

If "Skinny Love," Bon Iver’s track on Paste’s sampler 40, caught your ear—or if you’re just looking to redeem yourself for procuring For Emma by some less-than-legal means last year—you might want to consider pre-ordering the album. I know, I know, how 1999(/Radiohead), right? Well, just try telling that to the badass bear up there—the badass bear that appears on the badass poster that is yours (for free) when you (very much like a badass) pre-order this album. 1999? Pshfft!

As previously reported, the road edition of Bon Iver (Vernon plus some musician pals) kicked off just the other day, and will continue throughout much of February and March, including a stop at SXSW for the Jagjaguwar/Secretly Canadian/Dead Oceans showcase. (Also appearing: tourmates Black Mountain, Jens Lekman, Bodies of Water and more).

Check out Bon Iver and the rest of March's 4 to Watch artists in Paste issue 40, on newsstands now.

Related links:
Bon Iver on MySpace
Bon Iver's official Tumblr
Jagjaguwar announces 2008 SXSW Showcase

Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.

Bon Iver, otherwise known as Justin Vernon, recorded his debut, For Emma, Forever Ago, in his father's north Wisconsin cabin where he lived alone for three months in the dead of winter, and it reeks of the cold Midwest: low temperatures, foliage blanketed with snow, and solitude.

Already shortlisted as a contender for Best Album of 2008 (although technically it was released by Vernon in 2007 before he signed with indie label Jagjaguwar, a midwestern resident itself), For Emma, Forever Ago will be supported by an appropriately seasoned tour, which begins mid-February in Vernon's hometown of Eau Claire, Wis., and ends March 26, just six days after spring begins.

Jagjaguwar will formally release the debut album on Feb. 19, but the label has made available for download the first single, "Skinny Love," on its website for those who just can't wait three more weeks. And some exciting news for the uber-fan was annouced today via Bon Iver's MySpace page: the band members promise they'll be posting on their blog, which Vernon created back in December.

Watch Bon Iver, performing "Skinny Love" in Minnesota:

Upcoming Bon Iver tour dates, and the most confusing key ever:

February
10 - Eau Claire, Wis. @ The Nucleus
15 - Bloomington, Ind. @ Bear's Place !
18 - Chapel Hill, N.C. @ Local 506 +
19 - Washington, D.C. @ The Rock and Roll Hotel #
20 - Philadelphia, Pa. @ Johnny Brenda's #
22 - New York, N.Y. @ Bowery Ballroom #
23 - Brooklyn, N.Y. @ Glasslands #
24 - Boston, Mass. @ Middle East Upstairs #
25 - Portland, Maine @ The Space Gallery #
26 - Muncton, N.B. @ The Manhattan ^
27 - Halifax, N.S. @ The Marquee Club ^
29 - Montreal, Q.C. @ La Sala Rosa "

March
5 - Toronto, O.N. @ Lee's Palace "
6 - Cleveland, Ohio @ The Grog Shop ^
7 - Louisville, Ky. @ Headliners #
8 - Cincinnati, Ohio @ Southgate House #
9 - Knoxville, Tenn. @ The Pilot Light^
10 - Nashville, Tenn. @ Exit/In^
11 - Little Rock, Ark. @ Sticky Fingerz Chicken Shack^
18 - Tucson, Ariz. @ Plush*
19 - San Diego, Calif. @ Che Cafe*
20 - Los Angeles, Calif. @ The Echo*
21 - Santa Barbara, Calif. @ Muddy Waters*
22 - Visalia, Calif. @ Cellar Door*
23 - San Francisco, Calif. @ The Independent*
24 - Portland, Ore. @ Holocene*
25 - Vancouver, B.C. @ Media Club
26 - Seattle, Wash. @ Nectar

! - indicates w/ The Hollows
+ - indicates w/ Megafaun
" - indicates w/ Black Mountain + Quest for Fire
# - indicates w/ Black Mountain
^ - indicates w/ Black Mountain + Nordic Nomadic
* - indicates w/ Phosphorescent

Related links:
Bon Iver on Myspace
Jagjaguwar.com
YouTube: Bon Iver -Flume

Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.