It was an album that sounded like a Wisconsin winter, filled with loneliness and longing.

"For Emma, Forever Ago," Justin Vernon's debut fronting Bon Iver, stands as a landmark in his life and in indie music.

A young man from Eau Claire, broken by breakups with a band and a girlfriend, went to his father's hunting cabin to restore his soul and find his muse.

He emerged with an indie music masterpiece that was self-released in the summer of 2007, championed by bloggers and picked up by the Jagjaguwar label in February 2008.

To celebrate the work, and mark the 10th anniversary of the album's worldwide release, Vernon and his band will headline the BMO Harris Bradley Center on Feb. 17, presented by Pabst Theater Group and called "Bon Iver: For Emma, Ten Year."

"We just thought we'd take a moment to reflect on this 10 years of being a band or a project, whatever you want to call it," Vernon said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "Rather than doing a whole tour or something that felt kind of too much, we just decided to pick one home state show and what better place to do it in Milwaukee with our friends at the Pabst.

"We're going to get as many of the people that played on the record together and past touring band members and even some bands we used to play shows with back in the day," he said.

As tickets for the Milwaukee show go on sale this week, Vernon, 36, discussed his work, his career and the remarkable changes in his life that have come over the past 10 years.

"For Emma, Forever Ago" came from a specific period in his life and yielded a unique sound that was spare, haunting and set apart by his falsetto voice. The album will be reissued in a limited edition on CD and LP.

So what does he hear when he listens to the record now?

"It has changed," he said. "For a good four or five years, it sounded the same to me, it sounded very current to me. Now, it feels a little older. It doesn't sound bad. I'm not embarrassed or anything. But it's old. It's two or three phases ago now, which is quite strange to think. Time flies.

"I hear myself in there. I hear my old self in there, for sure. There's also a lot of memories that go along with just the record coming out, everything that happened with the record.

"Before that, life was really different," he said. "I think about how cool it was just basically to live in my dad's hunting cabin for a while. I actually think about that the most and how great it was."

Vernon said at the time he wrote the album he felt like he was "shedding skin."

"It certainly was a unique time," he said. "I'll never be there again, nor am I worried about trying to get back there."

In 2006, he retreated from North Carolina after a break with his band DeYarmond Edison and his then-girlfriend. He drove straight through to his hometown of Eau Claire and then on to his father's hunting cabin in Dunn County, where he spent the late fall and winter.

"I was definitely down and pretty confused," he said. "At 26, I was thinking about going back to school to be a music teacher. To me, that felt like giving up even though I was excited about that prospect. There was a lot of despair. I had anxiety and depression for longer than I kind of knew about and I didn't really understand it back then.

"It's different, I've been through hard times since then and hard times are different each time," he said. "It makes you stronger."

The album isn't about winter, "but it feels like that," he said. "Very achy. Kind of that isolation thing. There's something beautiful about that. When I made the record I didn't even have a name for the project."

At the time he was taken with the show "Northern Exposure," where characters said "bon hiver," French for good winter.

The name Bon Iver was born.

"Being a dude from Wisconsin, I think it has resonated with me every year we go through that, the earth around us dies off and gets to be reborn," he said.

If he had to pick his favorite Bon Iver song, he said, it would be "Flume," which begins with the strumming of a guitar and Vernon's voice and the lyric, "I am my mother's only one."

"It just happened one day," he said. He recorded and wrote it in two hours.

"Sort of like, whoa, where did that come from," he said. "I'm really thankful for that song not because of everything that happened. It's something that resonates in me to this day. It's kind of a cool feeling."

He self-released the album during an era where the music business was flailing, searching for a new economic model. He sold 500 CD copies and put the work on MySpace. Word of mouth built for the music and he landed a deal.

"I was from Wisconsin. I didn't know anything about records dying. I just wanted to get my CD out there," he said.

One of his first big shows was at the Pabst Theater in August, 2008. He marveled at the size of the crowd.

He has come a long way, winning two Grammy awards after his followup "Bon Iver, Bon Iver," and collaborating with Kanye West and others. Bon Iver's third album, "22, A Million," released last year, took Vernon's sound into a new, electronic direction.

His recording studio in Fall Creek is a home base for the band and an "outpost" for people who need a spot to create, he said.

"So many things still make me feel lucky about what goes down, what we get to do. I mean we, there's a whole crew of us that call Bon Iver our job," he said.

"Ten years seems like quite a short time when you think about the length of life. It's very strange to look back and to have gone through this whole process. Becoming a recognizable person in this world is a very curious thing to me."

And he has been credited for helping Eau Claire become a cultural hot spot for a new generation of creative people. His annual Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival, started in 2015, is a centerpiece of the revival.

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Asked if the festival will be held this year, Vernon said, "Yes sir, yes we are going to do it. We are working on it right now."

Vernon said he is very supportive of Eau Claire, splitting time between his home city and the Minneapolis area, where he also has family.

"I think everyone knows that I respect and love and care about Eau Claire," he said.

He said he's looking forward to the one-night show at the Bradley Center. Milwaukee-based bands and frequent Vernon collaborators Field Report and Collection of Colonies of Bees are also on the bill.

"It's just nice to make a loop," he said. "There will be some of the new band there, some of the old band. And it will just be a fun time."

Pre-sale tickets for Bon Iver's Bradley Center show are available beginning Tuesday at 10 a.m. for those registered with the Boniver.org fan club. Remaining tickets go on sale to the general public Friday at 10 a.m. There is a four ticket limit for each sale.

Tickets will be available online through Ticketmaster.com, by phone through Ticketmaster at (800-745-3000) and at the Bradley Center box office.