DESSNER: It goes back the other way, because that night, the idea was for you to play new stuff. It was going to be a concert that was different; it wasn’t a Bon Iver concert. Although you did play one or two Bon Iver songs, it was mainly other stuff. We covered Sharon Van Etten’s “Love More.” You sang it and we played with you. The next day Sharon and I started communicating and I produced her record, Tramp. Other than The National stuff and Dark Was The Night, it was the first time I had produced a record and I feel like it came directly out of that experience, really getting close to her music. It’s exactly that kind of energy you’re describing of community, openness, and collaboration. That’s exactly what’s been going on in Eau Claire in your life since you were a kid, and that’s when we started to discover that that is what feeds us musically—these friendships, playing together, learning from each other, being inspired. That’s what I think is interesting about a music festival: you can try to create that.

VERNON: And like you were saying, I think one of the big things for us is this humble, but serious sense of always wanting to learn and get better. We want it to be different for the artists and I think about that. We want the people coming to the festival to be learning too. We have a wild history that will continue to grow in different ways, but the trust that you get from someone’s music—and then having that person also be a very trustworthy and understanding friend—is a big caveat to this whole thing. It’s a hard thing to market or understand, or really even share to a large group of people, but it’s really real for our friendship and our whole act of collaborating. It’s rooted in that.

DESSNER: We’re lucky that we’ve gotten to play all over the world. You get a sense of what works and what doesn’t, what feels good, and something you’d want to do again. We’ve been able to think a lot about that while creating this festival and we’re fortunate in that we can try to create something for the artist and the audience that’s different, but also comfortable and community-oriented. I feel like your community here is the same…it’s such an interesting festival because there are so many brilliant musicians who come from this area.

VERNON: Yeah, when I met you and your brother, it really reminded me of Brad and Phil Cook, who are my best friends and also musical partners and [have been my] mentors since I was in high school. There is a very rich musical history here but it’s never exactly been put on display or talked about. We’re not trying to make it a big hooray, like, “Look how cool Eau Claire is!” I just think it’s a way to signify or celebrate the attitude around here. You go to Minneapolis and you see probably the most diverse music scene that I’ve ever seen in the world, and no one is really hating on each other, but everything is extremely far out and way different from each other. That scene is very much like what we have here in Eau Claire. We’re trying to bring some of it back. It’s hard to be a professional musician in Eau Claire, but yet this strong root system is here—Sean Carey, my sister went to high school with Geoff Keezer who has become one of the best pianists in the world, and stuff like that.