In 2006, Justin Vernon went into a cabin in the woods in Northern Wisconsin, and he came out with more than an album. He’d created an archetype.
Bon Iver’s cold Wisconsin sadness, with his yearning falsetto, pushed Vernon into the spotlight as indie music’s favorite sad boy. Since then, he has reinvented himself. With 22, A Million he seemed to reinvent music for a second. Still, the sadness remained — until this new album, SABLE, fABLE.
Justin Vernon fell in love, and it changed everything.
In our conversation, he describes the weight of the expectation that Bon Iver has given him, shirking it off and, now, maybe even ending Bon Iver all together. We cover that and his love for Bonnie Raitt, mentorship of Dijon and thoughtful reflection on what it means to love Wisconsin.
Justin Barney: I love SABLE fABLE. It’s such a fun record.
Bon Iver: Yeah, man. For once, we’re having fun over here.
Justin Barney: So this record ends with a goodbye, but I also feel like it starts with one. The first four songs are the SABLE EP that you released last year. The last song on that is “AWARDS SEASON.” In that song you sing, “The Spaniard / and the song that I have pandered to / is always handing me the anvil / saying, that’s for you.” What’s is “the anvil?” Feels important.
Bon Iver: It’s the weight. It’s the weight of being the guy from Bon Iver for all these years. I took it on because it was an opportunity to express truth, to be in service of song and my dream and everything. But it was surprisingly hard. It was really, really sad to be doing the thing that I love the most in the world, and to be completely unwell. That song really does encapsulate so much of the SABLE chapter of SABLE, fABLE in that way. And The Spaniard is the sad guy singing “Boots of Spanish Leather” by Bob Dylan, the saddest song of all time. He’s just sitting across from me and saying like, “Here. Keep being sad, homie. It will turn out good.” So I was really, like, investigating that … part of my life in that.
Justin Barney: Why do you think that part of you is sad?
Bon Iver: I think sadness is one of the easier emotions to access. And I think I just feel a lot of feelings. I always have. When I studied religion and stuff, I was always curious of what made people connect to the spiritual, to the sacred things in being a human being. Anguish and sadness was one of those things that connected people. Then, maybe, I got stuck on that sadness thing a little much. Or I just needed to work through a lot of it to sort of find the next step, which is to really self-love and to look up.
Justin Barney: For a lot of people, we feel that once we get this thing that we want, then the sadness will go away. You got that. Your album became popular, and it was critically acclaimed. That’s all of it as a musician. Did that not make you happy?
Bon Iver: At first, I thought it was just so ridiculous. My dream growing up was just like: “I’ll just tour the Midwest and sell CDs out of the trunk of my Chevy Blazer or whatever, and I’ll be happy. I’ll have a wife and kids.” It just exploded to such a weird degree. That, still, is very surprising to me. I don’t think I’m, like, not talented or worthy or something, but like, I was generally just sort of laughing about it. The second record was sort of me being like, “Whatever.” Like, I’m free, playing with house money. After a while, the sort of thing that happens is that it’s expected of you. It becomes part of your identity; then it becomes your entire identity. Then it’s really hard to shed it and to be a true person first. I think I was Bon Iver for too long.
On falling in love
Justin Barney: You talk about playing Ricky Lee in “AWARD SEASON.” Can you tell me the story there? Did it happen in real life?
Bon Iver: Yeah, that’s a very real story. Without putting the person on blast, the person came into my life and that changed everything. It really was this marked period. That’s why it ends SABLE because the whole song is really about: “You can live again. You can be remade.” Playing Ricky Lee was just this memory, you know, showing this person, Ricky Lee Jones, one of my biggest inspirations and musical teachers throughout my life. That’s a really, really specific memory. The record I was really on when we were hanging out was The Magazine. It’s actually my favorite Ricky Lee record. “Jukebox Fury” was probably the song that we were playing the most.
Justin Barney: Why do you like Ricky Lee?
Bon Iver: Oh, man. She uses her voice like a horn section. She does all her own arrangements, and it’s just dripping with soul. She’s just got the juice, man. There’s no one like her. Criminally underrated.
Justin Barney: FABLE comes in, and FABLE is joyous. “Everything Is Peaceful Love” — it’s a Ross Gay poem. It is a catalogue of unabashed gratitude.
Bon Iver: Yep. Exactly. It’s that feeling that you can’t contain your joy. That feeling of new love and being changed by another person that really just makes the world go round, you know? Somebody comes into your life, and it changes everything. They see you in a way that your old friends or family don’t see you, and it gives you a new chance. There’s a new chance there, in that renewal.
On Bonnie Raitt’s guitar playing and mentoring Dijon
Justin Barney: You make a slide guitar sound joyful in “Day One.”
Bon Iver: That was the plan. I love playing slide. I think Bonnie Raitt is the most underrated guitar player, my favorite guitar player. And I just try to sound like her, man. I really just try to play the solos that she hasn’t played yet. I’m just trying to be in whatever emotional space that she creates with her voice and her guitar playing. I’m just trying to copy it, man. Straight up.
Justin Barney: “Day One” features Dijon, who is one of my stone-cold favorites.
Bon Iver: He’s my favorite artist in the world.
Justin Barney: What does his energy bring to you when you’re making music together?
Bon Iver: I mean, I’m not going to lie; I was just wanting to get Dijon on my record any way possible. I wanted Dijon’s timbre.
You know, Dijon and I have become really good friends. The stuff that I was struggling with early in my career is some stuff that he’s talked to me about.
The song’s very much about learning and how we get through things, how we understand, why it is the way we are. I think there was enough asking questions and saying statements that I wanted there to be a three-way kind of conversation. And that’s what we got out of it.
Justin Barney: I love Dijon, and I was like right there at the beginning. And I was like, “I need to interview this guy.” And then he was unreachable.
Bon Iver: I won’t speak for the man, but I think it can be a distraction — especially when you’re trying to be an artist. Getting attention can throw you off the scent. I understand why he doesn’t want to overexpose. He wants to cook the right song up. I think he’s just probably just being conservative. I was like that too. I didn’t talk to people for a long time. I’m just a little more accepting, a little older now.
Justin Barney: Yeah, that’s got to be a growing pain: Suddenly, everybody wants a piece of you.
Bon Iver: And I wanted to give as much as possible. I did not learn that you have to reserve something for yourself and that being generous can also take form as an egotistical thing. Not that ego is an inherently a negative word. It’s not. We all have one. But showing up and being everywhere for everybody made me feel really good. But it wasn’t always truthful. It took me many years to realize it tired me out, and I had to really kind of figure that out.
On Danielle Haim
Justin Barney: I want to talk about, “I’ll Be There.” Danielle Haim seems like a very integral person to this record.
Bon Iver: Yes, very much. Very much so.
Justin Barney: I heard the album kind of like kicked off with her.
Bon Iver: Jim-E Stack and I made “Everything Is Peaceful Love” in 2019, but then, at some point in 2020, I think — my years are all wrong ’cause I was by myself in the woods. But Women in Music Pt. III, the third HAIM album came out. I had met the gals over the course of many years. Actually, I met Danielle when she was playing in Jenny’s band (Jen Wasner) when she was 19. When we played a show with Jenny, young Ethan Gruska was the merch guy, and he lost all the money that night. I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell anyone that story, but it’s hilarious.
So I’d known Danielle for 16 years technically. That third record came out, and I was just blown away. It was like my favorite music. It was like the biggest music to hit me in many years. Fast forward a couple years, you know, she’s friends with Jim-E, and I was starting to work with Jim-E quite a bit. He just asked, “Would you ever be into making music with Danielle Haim?” I was like, “Yeah, right now. Like, when can you guys come?”
They flew out, and I remember it was Feb. 2, 2022 — 2/2/22. And we all got snowed in for four days. That’s when we made, “If Only I Could Wait.” That’s when we started, “I’ll Be There.” “Walk Home” was around the same time. So it was really just like, “OK, now we’re starting to put pieces together that’s a record.” And HAIM are just inspirations to me. They’re my favorite American band.
Justin Barney: Danielle’s on multiple songs. What’s your dynamic together?
Bon Iver: Oh, it’s easy. Her, like, musicality, her drum feel, it’s everything I don’t have. She’s got this deep pocket and this understanding. She grew up listening to The Police and Earth, Wind, and Fire. I just never could play any of that stuff. I wasn’t funky enough, you know? I’ve got like a soul thing and an introspection thing going on, but that’s what hit me so hard about her music and why it was a successful collaboration in so many ways. We got to become very close throughout the process as well. But just musically, she has everything I don’t got.
Justin Barney: At the beginning, you had said that sadness is an easy emotion to access, and I love sad songs. I think as men from Wisconsin, music allows us to access our emotions in a way that we normally aren’t allowed to do.
Bon Iver: Yes.
Justin Barney: And I think singing sad songs allows us to do that. I also think it might be harder to write a joyful song.
Bon Iver: It was a lot harder. It took a lot longer. And honestly, man, there are pieces of music on FABLE that I didn’t even generate the initial chords or anything.That was the first time I’ve ever really done something where I just took whole pieces of somebody else’s stuff or just a whole idea that somebody had brought. And I was just like, “I’ll write lyrics on top of this.” I needed to do that to find that new gear. My chords are going to sound like my chords, and they’re always going to be doing these same kind of circles around minor, the six chords, you know? The only way I could access these new feelings is to get out of my own.
Justin Barney: What’s a song you did that on?
Bon Iver: “There’s A Rhythmn” is probably my favorite example. Eli Taplin and Sean Carey — S. Carey, my dear man, my band mate forever — they were just doing a writing session, and Sean’s just like, “I think you would like this idea that we did.” So I basically just took it and wrote lyrics to it. And that’s what you get. We added a lot of stuff, but that’s it. “There’s A Rhythmn” is my favorite song I think I’ve ever wrote. It just tells the whole story of where I’ve been and where I’m headed.
Justin Barney: In “There’s A Rhythmn,” you say, “I’ve had one home that I’ve known. Maybe it’s time to go.” As a Wisconsinite, I feel that, and it’s still hard to hear. Why has it been important for you to stay in Wisconsin for as long as you have?
Bon Iver: Well, I’ve been spending more and more time in Los Angeles. It’s been good because I think it’s gotten me to disconnect with the identity. From when I was a kid, I was like, “I love Eau Claire. I love it here. I never want to leave. This is who I am.” And over the course of many, many years — and then the Bon Iver thing happening — it started to feel a little like I wasn’t growing, the town wasn’t growing, or like, I couldn’t experience the town like my friends. It was hard to meet new friends without anybody knowing who I was. So going to Los Angeles and just being kind of more anonymous out there, you know, it’s not like I’m a household name where people know me on the streets there. And so I think it’s made me deeply fall in love with Eau Claire again. Yeah, I think it’s the most I’ve ever loved Eau Claire is right now.
Justin Barney: How does it make you love it? In what way?
Bon Iver: I think just having a chance. There’s that line, and there’s a rhythm that like “There’s another chance to show / no need to crow no more.” You don’t have to hang around Wisconsin. Just because you love it doesn’t mean you owe it something or that you should stay somewhere and not grow or not try new things. I think that’s what that’s all about. It’s about taking a chance and stepping outside your comfort zone. I’m extremely privileged to be able to go back and forth between this beautiful city of Los Angeles and then come back to my home. No matter what happens in my life, I’ve set up this studio, April Base, to be my big root. It’s two miles from where I grew up. This is home — always going to be.
Justin Barney: One more question: You end with “Au Revoir.” Is this the end of Bon Iver?
Bon Iver: It’s the end of something. It’s the end of this era. It’s the end of this chapter.
And I’m really not taking you for a ride. I really don’t know what’s next. It’s the first time that I’ve not been actively working on songs that for the Bon Iver project since it started, and choosing to not immediately take the band out on tour was the single hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life. It makes me quite emotional because the best thing I ever accomplished is putting those people together. I miss it very much, but at the same time, I’m kind of serving this space of being present right now. And I think whatever does happen next is going to be better because I’m taking this time.
The “Au Revoir” thing is, like, there’s a great translation of it. It’s actually like, “We’ll see you next time.”