Piet Levy, and Laura Schulte

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

One of the most anticipated musical projects of the year carries the message: “Friendship is for safekeeping.”

It adorns the cover art and penetrates the 10 songs within Bon Iver’s “22, A Million,” which is set for release on Friday. It also reflects the mindset of Eau Claire native Justin Vernon, the Grammy Award-winning band’s founder, frontman and visionary.

Beloved in the indie folk rock scene and with a growing following, Vernon could have justified heading to one coast or the other. Instead, he has anchored himself in the Wisconsin Northwoods. And in putting together Bon Iver's first album in five years, Vernon relied on his friends — fellow Wisconsin musicians — for inspiration, discipline and expertise in crafting his work.

Without their crucial guidance and support, the album may have never come to fruition.



"As he has grown more and more successful and more and more people have responded to his music, he has kept his core tighter and tighter, with people who have known him longer than he's known success," said former bandmate and Eau Claire native Brad Cook, who suggested the album's final track sequence. "When he's in a good place, or a weird place, or needs someone to talk to, we're here for him."

After the critical interest in the band's inaugural album, "For Emma, Forever Ago," and the international acclaim following "Bon Iver, Bon Iver," Vernon found himself at a crossroads three years ago. Months of touring, with seldom a moment of time, space or inspiration to make new music, had taken its toll.

He focused his creative energy elsewhere, appearing on Kanye West's "Yeezus" album; produced albums for the Blind Boys of Alabama and the Staves; and launching the Eaux Claires festival in his hometown. There were new shows and albums with the Shouting Matches and Volcano Choir, two bands Vernon formed before Bon Iver with his Wisconsin friends.

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“I can put myself into Bon Iver,” Vernon told the Journal Sentinel in 2013. “It’s a thing about self- and mental discovery, and those are all important things. But it’s not 148-shows-over-a-year-and-a-half important, though. It’s a machine, and it’s money, and you just get put on this indie rock cart, and it’s embarrassing. I’m not trying to score again. I’m trying to prove to myself it’s about the music you make.”

In December 2014, Vernon invited some friends for the first of many jam sessions at April Base, his studio in Falls Creek.

"He was totally lost," said Eau Claire artist Sean Carey, who plays drums and keyboards in Bon Iver, and appears on three tracks on "22, A Million." "I don't think the songs were coming out of him like they usually do. But I don't think he wanted them to either. He wanted to form the songwriting from a completely different angle."

Thirty musicians are credited on "22, A Million." Not everyone who worked with Vernon made the cut. Many jams flopped and demos were scrapped, Carey said.

"There was zero direction," Carey said. "I remember my forearms just killing me because I was playing this one thing for 20 minutes on the keyboards. And then Justin would be like, 'Sean, sing something.'...That was way different than the last record where it was more just him writing the songs and having people come in and play on them."

From the sessions, some lasting as long as 10 hours, songs slowly took form.

Wisconsin contributors are all over the final product.

During his 10 full days of improvisations, Carey came up with a melody that resulted in "21 M♢♢N WATER," where he gets a writing credit. "I just found those chords on the synthesizer and started singing those lyrics, and what came out the first time is pretty much what stuck," Carey said. He also plays drums on "666 ʇ"and the album's cinematic, cathartic climax "8 (circle)."

Ben Lester, an Eau Claire musician who was Bon Iver's stage manager early in its career, is credited as a writer on the aggressive album standout "10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⊠ ⊠."

Andrew Fitzpatrick, a bandmate in Choir and now Bon Iver, landed on four tracks. "I'd be going around with a field recorder, and a bee would fly by, and I'd turn that into a percussive sound," said Fitzpatrick, who lived at April Base for seven months, working on the album almost daily.

"We'd capture the sound of water splashing and put the right filter on it and pitch it a certain way to make it sound really cool."

Vernon also sent a rough draft of "Million" track "33 'GOD'" to Chris Rosenau, his Choir bandmate in Milwaukee, who added electric and acoustic guitar parts, made some chord changes, and diced up a vocal line, turning it into a bridge.

At one point, there was so much music to weed through — as many as 40 sax tracks and 30 vocal tracks in a single section — Vernon was overwhelmed.

“I almost did actually quit on it, not in a sad way, probably in January this year," Vernon said at a press conference in Eau Claire this month. "I kind of hung it up, hung the album up because it had become kind of convoluted. You know, there’s a lot of stuff going on. It’s very dense and I was sort of tired of it and tired of myself, like, 'Why are you trying so hard?'"

He called on Ryan Olson, a friend since his UW-Eau Claire days, and tapped Chippewa Falls native Zach Hanson, a personal friend and sound engineer, for help.

"Some of the stuff was a mess and some of the songs weren't songs, just one big jam," Hanson said. "We basically started fresh on the mixes. I had to tell myself to not overthink it, which is what everyone had been doing, and Justin had been doing, to that point. I just needed to focus on the sonics of things, and basically keep things as simple as possible."

Vernon trusts Olson's ear, and relied upon him to reinforce his uncertainties. Olson listed what needed to be done song by song to finish the album.

"And he sat next to me and virtually held my hand through the process of finishing the album," Vernon said of Olson. "To me personally, that's like my favorite part of it, the album. The last six months of just coming and picking his friend up, you know."

Vernon includes Wisconsin musicians Jon Mueller and Thomas Wincek from Volcano Choir in his list of thanks. Author and neighbor Michael Perry, along with Cook, are credited as well.

"I used to feel like when I was younger I used to get this 'aha' moment and ‘This is everything I live for! I just made this song and it works really good!’ " Vernon said. "And this one was so much more of like a chainsaw sculpture or something. Really having to chip away and add pieces and taking literally moments out of an improvisation or something."

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