David Remnick: The musician Justin Vernon, who goes by Bon Iver, occupies a unique place in pop music. On his own records, he's a singer-songwriter, often in a very spare idiom, but he's probably better known as a collaborator with some of the biggest stars in pop music, notably Kanye west and Taylor Swift. Bon Iver is releasing his first new music in five years, starting with the song Speyside, and he came to the studio the other day to talk with our music critic, Amanda Petrusich. [MUSIC - Bon Iver: Speyside]

I know now that I can't make good

But how I wish I could

Amanda Petrusich: Bon Iver is the alias of Justin Vernon, a singer and songwriter from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He's about to release a three-song EP called Sable as Bon Iver, which by the way, is a French phrase meaning good winter, lifted from the television series Northern Exposure, a deeply formative work in Vernon's creative universe. His music is so important to me, but I actually find it incredibly difficult to characterize, in part because none of it really sounds the same. He's done the very bare-boned acoustic thing, like on Skinny Love.

He's experimented with distorting digital effects, like on 715 CR∑∑KS, but it all kind of feels the same. It's tender, transporting, human, angry, raw, and deeply beautiful. I can't think of another contemporary singer who does what Vernon does with his voice. There's just no distance in it. I last spoke to Justin at the New Yorker festival in 2019, and I am terrifically excited to sit down with him again. Hey.

Justin Vernon: How are you?

Amanda Petrusich: Justin, it's so, so good to see you.

Justin Vernon: It's great to see you, too, Amanda.

Amanda Petrusich: First new Bon Iver record in five years. Not a minute too soon. Man, we missed you. We need you. Very, very, very glad you're back.

Justin Vernon: Thank you. I'm glad to be back.

Amanda Petrusich: Five years is a very civilized pace, I think, and you've hardly been silent during that time. Do you feel any kind of internal or external pressure to produce a thing on a certain schedule?

Justin Vernon: Nope. Not at all. This one really came from personal necessity, I think. It was just time. Some of these songs have been bubbling for five years, since the last stuff came out, and it was just time. It's been coming together nicely.

Amanda Petrusich: Well, I wanted to ask you. I mean, Sable is just twelve minutes of music, but for me, it feels a lot bigger than that. I guess I wanted to ask you about the grouping of these three songs in particular into an EP. I know you mentioned they were written at different times. I mean, to me, I hear a very legible arc to it. It's like a closed circle almost. For me, it feels like the story is very relatable, to be honest. The story of a person trying and then a person failing, and then maybe a person kind of finding some peace with their limitations.

Justin Vernon: That feels right.

Amanda Petrusich: Do the three songs feel like one story, too?

Justin Vernon: Yes, I mean, they just feel like an equidistant triangle or just a triptych or whatever. It's three, and it couldn't be longer. These songs were just so related as a part of as a one, two, three. It kind of runs the gamut of from accepting anxiety to accepting guilt to accepting hope. Those three things in a row. There's not room for a prologue or an epilogue at that point. That's it. That's what everything is. On the topic of these songs being so kind of-- they're personal, of course, but the need to share them is very personal.

I think arriving at the ideas, and then when I felt that there was such truth in them, outside of myself, like beside me, there are these songs with truth that I've located or been the vehicle to, but they're true. I was like, these have to be shared.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes, the public piece of it is interesting. I used to be a cynic about things like weddings. It was like, "Why does it have to be a big, whatever, performative thing?" Then you realize that is the profundity of it, right?

Justin Vernon: Yes.

Amanda Petrusich: You're kind of putting this thing out there in front of everyone. The public piece of it is important. I mean, not just sitting on these songs, not just having them for yourself, sharing them. I mean, that's kind of the final step for you.

Justin Vernon: Yes. I mean, we're not living in caves, right? We wouldn't be wanting to, without death, there'd be no meaning for life. We put these things out in the public. I put them out in the public because I know there's truth in there that I want to share with everybody. I think where it gets slippery is the best word, is just when it's like, "Okay, then we need to see the person that sings the song." The song has seemed to be, lately, it's not enough. That's the part that gets me a little sensitive.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes, yes, of course.

Justin Vernon: But of course, we need to share this stuff with people. That's what art is, and that's why I believe in art and expression so much because it does seem to be the thing that carries cultures forward past their old haunts and problems, you know?

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. Oh my God. I mean, I think art can be incredibly instructive as well as a lifesaver. I mean, I'm certainly not the first person to suggest that, but yes, navigating that piece of it, the public piece of it, I feel like historically, you've been pretty careful, pretty mindful, even using the name Bon Iver, even not necessarily recording under your government name, as it were. It does, it puts a little air, maybe a little space between you and the thing out in the world, but you're in these videos. It was lovely to see your face.

Justin Vernon: Thank you. It felt there was a certain amount of acceptance, I think, in that. My great friend Eric Carlson, who did all the artwork, and we worked so closely together for seven years. We're still very, very close and working on various things together. He was like, "Man, just when are you going to do your Man in Black thing?" I was like, "Challenge accepted. Let's go." I think hiding has been a valuable thing and a way to express that I don't think it's that important who I am, but that the songs are most important.

Then I also sought it as a challenge to myself and a way to-- people have come up to me on the street and said, "Bon, Bon, Mr. Iver," or whatever. I just thought, "Well, maybe this is for them, that they don't mind or need Justin. They might need Mr. Iver."

Amanda Petrusich: [chuckles]

Justin Vernon: I think that was why I kind of wanted to step up and really enjoyed working with Erinn Springer and her photography. It was a good experience. It felt like it matched. It matched the whole-- It's me in a cabin playing a guitar, kind of playing a character, which I don't wear Cabo hats easily.

Amanda Petrusich: No, the videos are gorgeous. I think there are nods in there to the whole sort of Bon Iver canon, the Bon Iver mythology. It also feels very true sort of you right now. I feel like I want to clarify by the Man in Black thing, you were talking about Johnny Cash, and not Men in Black, the legendary film.

Justin Vernon: Oh, yes, definitely Mr. Cash.

Amanda Petrusich: Because that would be an incredible twist-

Justin Vernon: [laughs]

Amanda Petrusich: -for the Bon Iver story.

Justin Vernon: Thank you very much for clarifying that.

Amanda Petrusich: You mentioned the cabin imagery, which obviously is so central and crucial to your origin tale. For listeners who have been with you since, For Emma, Forever Ago, your debut as Bon Iver, I suspect the single Speyside might feel at first like a return insofar as it's a little more stripped down, it's a little less layered, it's raw. I mean, we're just talking about your face, but your voice is incredibly big, present, and vibrant on that song.

Do you think of the two kind of poles of Bon Iver, as I would describe them, your music that's minimally produced versus music that's maybe more maximally produced? Did those things feel in opposition to one another for you?

Justin Vernon: I think it felt like From Emma until I,I, it felt that it was an arc or an expansion from one to all. I,I was very much me trying to talk about that we, the us, outside of I. I think when I got to these songs, it was just like-- the obvious thing, I was like, "Well, people might think this is a return to something," but it really feels like the kind of raw second skin. I do think about time in cylindrical, forward moving circles. I think this has been a big, big one intersecting. Yes, it feels very raw and like a new person, new skin, new everything, rather than like a return.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes, that makes total sense.

Justin Vernon: I didn't want it to be people say, "I wanted it to be like this," but I did feel like it was important to strip it down to just the bare essentials and kind of get out of the way and not hide with swaths of choirs and things like that. Just get it as close to the human ear as possible.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. Okay, so I have this kind of running text thread with a close friend of mine, where we try to text each other the loneliest things we can think of. We've been doing this for years. Every six months or so, I'll get a text from him that we'll just say, rental car, shuttle, pre-dawn, or horse stuck in the mud. A recurring character on our text thread is the pedal steel guitar.

Justin Vernon: Oh, man.

Amanda Petrusich: It will just be like pedal steel solo, like Buck Owens together again, apocalyptic.

Justin Vernon: That's apocalyptic sad. That's right.

Amanda Petrusich: Pedal steel on two of these three new songs. I'm curious, your relationship to that instrument, what you kind of hear in it.

Justin Vernon: Yes. Well, it's the most beautiful musical instrument that humans have constructed, for sure.

Amanda Petrusich: I think so, too.

Justin Vernon: It really is. It's impossible. It's an impossibility. The innovators of it, truly an American invention, and just how it mimicked the voice, but there's just nothing that slides between chords like that still, like they've been trying to make keyboards in this century that mimic that, and they're just nothing like it. Particularly, Greg Leisz, now he played on the second record as well. He's one of my favorite musicians to ever live, and I was very, very lucky to get to record him again. Very formative record was Bill Frisell's Good Dog, Happy Man. That was the first time I ever heard Greg play.

He played mostly dobro on that album. Without going too deep in his story, there's a song that my high school friends and I, that were very, very, very close, the song on that record called That Was Then, we all have a tattooed. The moment in which we all kind of felt the most alive and together was this little seven, eight second passage. It's Greg playing this metal steel. It's kind of like the pinnacle of music to me. To get him on there is just adding something familiar to me, and on the best instrument there is.

Even him, he's a master, right? He's so funny, and we get along so well. He'll sit there and be like, "Oh, how does this go?" Like, "Oh." It's just so hard. It's just so many strings and pedals.

Amanda Petrusich: It's so hard to play.

Justin Vernon: But he's always searching, and he's always right on the edge of finding genius stuff.

Amanda Petrusich: That's amazing. You can kind of hear that searching, I think, in his performance on those songs in particular. There's so much yearning in it. When I was thinking about what I wanted to talk to you about today, one thought was that I really don't want to ask you too much about the lyrics because I feel like there's an opacity and a kind of obliqueness to your writing that I find incredibly beautiful and useful for me in the music. The language is close without being too confessional. It's sort of narrative without being too explicit.

I thought, "Well, okay, I'm not that interested in the literal meaning. I don't want to ask about that," but I did want to ask about the title. Sable, a synonym for black. It's a piece of clothing, sometimes widows wear. It's a river in Michigan that my fly fishing friends tell me is kind of holy water for trout, but you use it as a noun in awards season. The lyric is, but I'm a sable and honey us the fable.

[MUSIC - Bon Iver: Sable]

I'm a sable

And honey, us the fable

You said that you were unable

That it is not reprieved

Oh, but many things can change

[unintelligible 00:13:20] can weigh?

Amanda Petrusich: Can you talk a little bit about what that word means to you?

Justin Vernon: It's such a good question. For years and years, it's been this word that's just always been there. There's an outtake from the second record I think that I'm just remembering right in this moment that I think I used in a lyric for that. I'd never known what it is, and so I've been exploring it. Those lyrics came out when I was writing. Award season, I'm like, "Well, I don't know what it is, but it's true." Since I wrote it and I knew it was true and I didn't know what it meant, I was like, "Be okay with that."

I looked it up. I'm like, "Sable, morning, deepest black, also place name." Like, "What is it?" For me, I think when I'm speaking that line, what it kind of refers to as being the darkness. I reflect on it like, there's been times in my career where it felt like repeating a cycle of heartache. I was getting a lot of positive feedback for being heartbroken and having heartache. I've wondered. I haven't found the answer yet, but I kind of referred to myself as, like, "Maybe I'm pressing the bruise, maybe I go back, maybe I'm unknowingly steering this ship into the rocks over and over again."

Because I'm not famous on the street, People magazine, but I've been highly-- there's been a lot of accolades for me and my heartache and that thing. It's asking the question, like, "I'm a sable. I've been a sable. I'm repeating this cycle of sorrow. Am I? Or am I just felt unlucky? Or is it just how sorrow goes, and this is how everyone feels, but it's--" That's kind of what it means to me.

Amanda Petrusich: I hear joy and wonder in the work, too, but you're right, that that is sort of part of the story of Bon Iver. That's part of what people hear in your music. I think it's easy to be kind of dismissive of that idea and say, like, "Well, that's a toxic notion that artists need to suffer to make work. Pain is a particular-- it's generative in a way.

Justin Vernon: That's a really good way to say it.

Amanda Petrusich: Right? I mean, when we're grieving, when we're mourning, when we're hurting, it's an expression of love, and it's also sort of when we're kind of the deepest in ourselves. I hate to say all of this. This seems like a terrible idea of perpetuate.

Justin Vernon: Either the most surface or the deepest thing. Grief can only come from the highest joys and the greatest things in life. I think that's why it's so familiar to so many of us and why I find it, as a person, to sort of explore it, to make sure that I'm not doing that. I'm not sure I've done that, but I'm sure that there's some truth to it. I think it's good to examine it and to wonder if there's toxicity to that while also sharing some things that I really needed to find out about myself in these songs.

In that regard, it's been worth it because I needed to go through these songs to find out how I felt, to really actually say how I've been feeling.

Amanda Petrusich: Oh, that's so interesting. I relate to that as a writer, too, that feeling of, like, "I don't know how I feel about anything," until I sit down and try to write about it.

Justin Vernon: Yes, totally.

Amanda Petrusich: You learn about yourself in the course of songwriting.

Justin Vernon: Yes.

Amanda Petrusich: It's a way to kind of, I don't know, express or actualize things about yourself that maybe you didn't know before. I mean, are there things that have surprised you, that have come out in the lyrics where you thought, "Wow, I didn't know I felt that way"?

Justin Vernon: Well, it's hard now, because I've worked on the lyrics to these songs for so long that they don't feel like surprises anymore. As I finished them, I was sitting alone when Speyside came out and I've done a really good job of getting off socials and not reading reviews positive or negative or anything. It was just kind of a weird feeling. I was like, "What do I feel like right now? Speyside's out in the world, and I'm not hearing anything back or I don't know what's going on."

I just kind of said to myself, I was like, "Well, my work is done. I did it." The reason I did this was for myself and to say sorry and to reckon with truthful things. I was like, "Well, it's okay. Just go play tennis."

Amanda Petrusich: [chuckles] Yes. There's a lot of regret in that song, I think. A lot of culpability.

Justin Vernon: Yes.

Amanda Petrusich: Those are really hard things to deliver. Those are very hard things to say out loud to understand about yourself. I can see how on the other side of that you might feel a little lighter, a little more free.

Justin Vernon: A little bit. There's always going to be scar tissue, but if you can heal up and you can look at it and you can mend, then you got a chance to find joy again.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes, absolutely. Speaking of lyrics, I think of you as a person who considers language kind of pliable, and not just language, but punctuation, too, which is a very fun thing about the Bon Iver discography. You've made up some words. Where does that kind of playfulness with language come from for you?

Justin Vernon: Man, I don't know. Probably just from-- I did not get-- You say the punctuation thing. My first thought is like, "I just did it wrong."

Amanda Petrusich: [laughs]

Justin Vernon: But no, I mean, I think it's just expression, having one of my best friends growing up. We're still really close. We get in semantic arguments sometimes. He's like, "Justin, you can't say something is super unique or really unique. It's either unique or it's not." I'm like, "No."

Amanda Petrusich: Your friend should get a job at The New Yorker.

Justin Vernon: [laughs]

Amanda Petrusich: He could edit my work with enthusiasm.

Justin Vernon: Shout out, Kyle. Yes. Well, I mean, it comes from a place. It's the sable thing. It didn't really know what it was. It's interesting you bring up this opacity about my lyrics in the past. It really feels speaking of the second skin and getting to this EP, it does feel like I've found this new narrative structure in these songs where it's a little more clear what's been going on and just saying it versus dancing around it or shrouding it in choirs.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. You've discussed the utility of psychedelic drugs in your life in terms of managing anxiety or maybe enabling creativity at times. I'm sort of curious how that stuff fits into your life these days.

Justin Vernon: Well, these days, not much. At first, you start with marijuana or something now, which is legal all over the place, and you can talk about it, but it's not in my life anymore, really. I once thought about pot, weed, my Mary Jane. Oh God, all the names are so whack. It's like going to the bowling alley and putting those bumpers in the thing. It's like this rules, every ball I hit, hits pins. Every idea I have, got legs. After a number of years, that feeling gets really addictive and it's like everything feels like you're going downhill until you're like, "Wait, the bumpers are in the lane."

I think mushrooms, LDS, these are things that really-- there were times where it was very, very therapeutic. I think I look at it like opening a door, a door that needs to be opened to open your mind. It certainly stirred deeper pits of empathy, understanding, and oneness with human beings and the world, ideas I already had, but that utterly solidified these ideas that we are each other and hurting one another is not going to get us anywhere but down, right? The metaphor about it opening a door is that you have to close a door. It can get pretty drafty.

If you leave that door open too long, the snow is going to come in and you're going to get fried. There's a spot. I don't look back with many regrets, although I look back with accountability and reckoning and a hope to change difficult behaviors. Those stuff's not in my life anymore because I think I opened that door. When I've tried to go and see, "Oh, maybe I could open it again." It's like, "It's okay to keep this one closed," but having gone through it, here I am.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes, yes. No, that's kind of the journey I think one hopes for, right?

Justin Vernon: Yes.

Amanda Petrusich: Like, it's useful while it's useful, and then when it's not, you walk away. Looking at the discography, the band on this record is pretty, pretty small, pretty tight. Looking at all the other records, I think I can presume maybe a kind of hunger in you for collaboration. As a person who writes alone, door locked-- I'm both sort of envious of and extremely curious about what that process actualizes for you. You said in a profile in 2019 that, "Power has come to me, but it's not fun to wield by yourself, and it's not as useful if it's just your vision."

I think that was one of the themes of I,I, as you mentioned. I'm curious about what appeals to you about sort of resisting that kind of auteur path and letting other people in.

Justin Vernon: I believe in the power of the individual, don't get me wrong, but I've always just found it a bit distracting to the point, like, "Why do we like a song? Is it because of who it is that's singing it to us, or is it the song?" I just think it's the song. For me, it is. For me, it's just about the song and what the music does because it can be very distracting when it becomes like, "Oh, I love Bon Iver so much. I want more Bon Iver. I want to see Bon Iver. I want to get his autograph."

Not only is that stuff just, I'm sensitive to it and the attention can be just a little overwhelming. I'm also uncomfortable with it because it feels distracting to the main point, to the point that music delivered me to myself. I can also say when I first heard Hello in There by John Prine, I was 12 years old and I saw a universe of human joy, pain, love, life and death, all in three minutes. I was like, of course I'm going to be like, "What was that?" I'm going to be like, "Okay, it was John Prine." More of that, and it's useful to have a name or whatever.

I just think I've also found that when I've drink little sips of the Kool Aid where it's like, "Oh, maybe I am really good at this or really special, or I've got some sort of gift." Not that I don't think that that's true or not that I don't think I've really rigged up a huge antenna to catch things and have gotten better at crafting songs, and these are my best songs, et cetera, et cetera. I just don't need to dwell on it very long, and it's not going to help me get any better, and it's not going to make the songs any more true or less true.

The collaborative aspect, it just like, you can't do it all. If you try to do it all, you'll end up not getting it right. I couldn't play the petal steel, so why would I try? I try playing stuff and then getting somebody else and then replaying it, but yes, I'm just interested in the truth, I guess.

Amanda Petrusich: No, that's such a beautiful answer to that question. I mean, I wonder if what you were talking about the kind of emphasis that we place on performers and performance, I wonder if it's because-- It's a very funny thing for me to say as a music critic. I wonder if it's because no one understands songwriting, even songwriters, I think, right? It's a very mysterious process. A lot of people speak of it as this almost sort of divine channeling, where a sound or an idea or melody comes to them and they're just sort of receiving it and recording it.

It's harder, right? It's easier to be like, "Oh, there's a guy up there, and he's singing, and he has a voice, and I also have a voice." That makes sense to me. This other thing, it's like, "Where did that come from? Where do songs come from?"

Justin Vernon: Well, I mean, that's the big question, right? Why are we worried about what happens when we die? What are we trying to find out? What is this mystery that we all seem to agree is there?

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. Music is such a big piece of that. I mean, it's like one of those things that I think neurobiologists are constantly studying it, trying to understand, sort of why it works on us. There's no kind of clear evolutionary advantage or reason for people to just be absolutely devastated or buoyed by music, but we are, and we always have been. There's a little bit of God in it in that way. Anyway, it's a hard thing to say.

Justin Vernon: It's having been atheist and an agnostic at different times in my life, growing up Lutheran and then studying world religion in college, I was cynical, atheist, agnostic, and almost angry that when we used the word God, I think we were misusing that word. I've been saying the word again lately because I'm sick and tired of saying synchronicity and coincidence. I just don't know what else to call it. I've had friends who are deeply religious, and they talk about what God means to them. I've been a little more open to it. I'm certainly not a theist, but I like the word God, and I'm back to it, back to using it.

Amanda Petrusich: To kind of return to the idea of collaboration just a little bit, one of the things I think is really amazing about it is, or in my mind, would be really amazing about it, is that it's got to really force you to be incredibly honest, vulnerable, and sort of true. Things that are hard for me, I think things historically are hard for a lot of people. I'm curious. I would imagine when you're working with people, you have this sort of line of communication that's quite open, and you're able to be really frank about like, "This is working. This is not working."

I mean, how has that been for you? Have there been moments where your vision has not aligned with someone you were working with? It was a little bit more of a tense thing than a sort of beautiful blossoming thing?

Justin Vernon: Yes.

Amanda Petrusich: You ever had to scream, "Get out of my studio."

Justin Vernon: Twice. You know who you are.

Amanda Petrusich: [chuckles]

Justin Vernon: I think there's just times to communicate. I just learned that saying how you feel is really important. I'm 43 years old. It's really hard. You just have to do it. It sucks. I think collaboration in the musical sense is like, "Oh, just try it again," as a way of saying, that wasn't it. Then sometimes you're like, "Well, this just isn't going to be it," and then you don't really have to say anything. In that way, I never had to practice being super honest. I would just be like, "Well, I'm not going to use that, or I'm going to redo that later, or I'll edit it. I'll chop it up later," is what they say.

Yes, of course, some of my longtime collaborators, like Rob Moose, we just have such a language that we've built over the years that it's pretty easy for us to find what each other is wanting, and we're both very giving to space to the other, like, "Okay, I'm not sure what you mean, but let's explore that." He would say the same to me. Rob's one of my favorite collaborators, if not my favorite, just musically. The way that what I've gotten to achieve with him is just kind of wild.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. It feels like an almost sort of fated partnership.

Justin Vernon: Yes.

Amanda Petrusich: You very famously collaborated with Taylor Swift first on her album Folklore, which won the Grammy for album of the year in 2021. In her acceptance speech, she says, "I want to thank Justin Vernon. I'm so excited to meet you one day." I have to ask, since that moment, have you two met each other on IRL?

Justin Vernon: Yes, IRL. We got to hang quite a bit.

Amanda Petrusich: Did you learn anything from her about songwriting in particular?

Justin Vernon: Oh, man. I mean, in every song I hear, I learned something, but she's just gotten better and better and better. Of course, her and Aaron together has just been an amazing partnership.

Amanda Petrusich: You mentioned Aaron. You mean Aaron Dessner of The National, a band that has been collaborators, friends for many years.

Justin Vernon: I know what it's like to hear Aaron pull up a beat or a little piece of music that he's done and want to be running. I'm running to the microphone and to the pad of paper and to hear her-- She did a song on Big Red Machine together, and the albums that Aaron's worked on just heard like a progression. You keep getting better, and that's flabbergasting to me.

She keeps digging it, and you can tell that it's coming out of her. It's not like, she's like, "Let me try really hard to be a better songwriter." It's just happening. I just can't applaud her enough for, I don't know, just hearing herself and believing in herself so much.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. Well, it's kind of cool to hear or to behold an artist, where it seems like maybe there's no bottom to that well. Do you live and work in fear that one day I'm just going to run out of ideas like a writer's block?

Justin Vernon: No. If anything, bring it on. If I didn't have to write songs, then maybe I could be chilling on a beach somewhere or something. You know what I mean? I definitely feel like there's a well for me, and I don't necessarily want it to end, but I will accept again, truth is the most important thing to me, even if it hurts, even if it's painful. If I run out of juice and I'm not meant to be writing anymore, that will be okay. I will know what to do. I will try to be just a good person.

[MUSIC - Bon Iver: Speyside]

It serves to suffer, make a hole in my foot

And I hope you look

As I fill my book

What a waste of wood

Nothing's really happened like I thought it would

Ah, ah, ah

David Remnick: Bon Iver speaking with staff writer Amanda Petrusich. More in just a moment.

Amanda Petrusich: I also wanted to ask about your collaboration with Charli XCX. We've seen the billboard. We've seen Bon Iver in the--

Justin Vernon: Is it out there?

Amanda Petrusich: I don't know. Maybe it was AI. I saw a picture of it.

Justin Vernon: Maybe it was AI.

Amanda Petrusich: The Internet. What can you tell us about your contribution to the remix of Brat?

Justin Vernon: Oh, man. Well, got a random call, like, "Hey, you know, what--?" I was like, "Yes, this is happening." I mean, Charli's amazing. I think she's carving this path that's her. That's what I want from an artist, and she's doing it so well. The art and the music, that's aggression. It's power. It's popness. It's just amazing. It was kind of a no brainer. I came down the pike and we just sort of tried out some things and batted it back and forth. It was also strange. The day that we were working in the studio together, I think it was that day that or the day before or something.

This is all within 20 hours or something. They had announced Walz as the vice president, and then there was-- Charli was over, and then almost, I think it was like the afternoon that I met Charli that they were like, "Harris and Walz are doing a rally in Eau Claire tomorrow or whatever, can you play?"

Amanda Petrusich: Wow. That later became this very funny kind of flashpoint amongst conservatives, who saw photos of this massive crowd in this panicked way, said, "Well, these people are only here for the pop star Bon Iver." It was trying to sort of diminish, I think, Harris' poll. What was that experience like? Both the fundraiser itself and then sort of seeing that happen afterwards?

Justin Vernon: Well, I didn't see much of that afterwards. I was just blown away by being n front of people again. Mike and Sean and I hadn't-- I had barely picked up a guitar in a year, and we had not rehearsed. We just went in through all the crazy security, secret service, and we just got on the stage and started going. We didn't have our usual homies there to help us, and we went in with our friends from town, and we just got up there and did it. The experience of singing the Bon Iver songs was a little too familiar and not quite what I was hoping to feel.

It was hot. It was a dry sound. It was outside. We didn't have the biggest PA system, and it was hard to look at the people, like you've been down in this pit, in this sunshine all day, and here we are going [singing]. It doesn't feel quite like yeah. We tried to pick some good songs, but it was like, we are slogging through some old Bon Iver material right here, but I had been-- kind of a long story short, I had been listening to this Ry Cooder song Rally 'Round the Flag a lot. It's, of course, this old union melody from the Civil War, and I had the correct intuition to play it.

[MUSIC - Bon Iver: Rally 'Round the Flag]

Rally once again

Shouting the battle cry of freedom

Justin Vernon: It was one of those things. It was one of those moments, where it reminded me of that real moments are real moments. No matter how much somebody might have liked one of those first three performances of those Bon Iver songs, the entire energy in the air switched polarity when we started playing that familiar melody. These people, "It's the battle cry, it's Rally 'Round the Flag." We did it. The crowd erupted. Everyone's shoulders changed. My voice changed to something more embodied and comfortable and present.

It just felt like patriotic in a way. While I have a great amount of cynicism and an appropriate amount of such for the systems in place that don't deliver actual freedom that's promised, or constitution and things, it felt like a really valuable moment to also say, we have so much, and we still have this dream of America. I was really, really, really proud to be there. Just Walz being a Minnesota, hunter football player, like I was, I felt very, very honored to be there to that day.

Amanda Petrusich: That's beautiful. That's really nice. I think you're right. There is an inertia and an energy to the anger and the rage that we all justifiably feel, but it's good to check in with those other moments of feeling proud.

Justin Vernon: What do we have and how much suffering has gone down for us to be able to walk down the street today?

Amanda Petrusich: Yes, absolutely.

Justin Vernon: It's not the most future-leaning. It's not the most, like, let's change the future of feeling, but boy, is it rooted in understanding? I feel like that's an underappreciated thing at times.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes. No, agreed, agreed. The last record, I,I you made in Texas, right along the border.

Justin Vernon: The majority of it.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes, but these three songs were all recorded at April Bass, your studio in Eau Claire in Wisconsin. Do you work differently there than other studios?

Justin Vernon: Yes. It's been a big reflection point because I was actually working in this kind of makeshift studio during the pandemic. It just so happened that we went under intense renovation process right at the beginning of 2019. That's when we moved most of the stuff to Texas and set up there for almost a couple of months, but then when the record was done and we went on that tour, by that time, it was 2020, and then the pandemic happened, and the studio was empty. I had to move into this small house on the property and live there by myself during the pandemic.

That's where I set up a makeshift studio. It was really good experience because I hadn't set up my own gear in a long time, and that's something I've always done since I was really, really young, is just setting up the stuff. I've had so much great help through the years. That was really good.

Amanda Petrusich: Just like the ritual of untangling the cables.

Justin Vernon: Oh, man. There was a point where I was like, "I need to switch the screen, so it's over there." It took me three days to untangle the cables, and I was like, "This is good for me. This is really good for me."

Amanda Petrusich: Just humbling experience.

Justin Vernon: But to answer your question about being out there, I think for years, during the psychedelic mind opening years especially, it was like running downhill. Everything was expanding quickly. It felt like I was surfing down the hill, right? At a certain point, it started to feel a little stagnant. I think it was because my social life, my creative and collaborative life, was now becoming-- there was a circle, and everything was inside of it. I hadn't met a lot of new friends. I hadn't really been in other studios in many years.

I think there's been a little bit of action in the last couple years of, like, "Let me get out of here a little more," but it was a different experience during the pandemic because it was just the makeshift studio, and it's just me by myself. It was very much like a reset in that way.

Amanda Petrusich: Yes, I can imagine. Now, you're spending time elsewhere, you're spending some time in California.

Justin Vernon: Yes.

Amanda Petrusich: How does that feel?

Justin Vernon: Necessary.

Amanda Petrusich: All that sunshine, man.

Justin Vernon: I mean, holy hell. Anybody who knows me, it's like I am Wisconsin through and through. Speaking of April Base, it's like, if I'm just there, then what is April Base for? What's my love of Wisconsin for if I don't have to come back to it? Also, it's a little lonely out there. A lot of my family and my oldest friends have all moved away. I also haven't had a lot of opportunity to meet new friends that weren't somehow connected to my past, my hometown-

Amanda Petrusich: Or to your work.

Justin Vernon: -or to my work. A couple of my new friends in LA was just like, "Hi, my name is Justin." "Hi, my name is so and so. Do you want to be friends?" This is great. I almost started crying when I realized this is my first new friend based on normal circumstances in 16, 17 years. I really mean that. That's been a very positive thing. There's a little anonymity for me walking around, a lot of anonymity in that town and in Los Angeles particular. It's been very positive and challenging in the best ways.

Amanda Petrusich: You and I are kind of around the same age, 29.

Justin Vernon: [laughs] Yep.

Amanda Petrusich: I kind of wonder what this era of life. Some people, not me, but some people might call it middle aged. I'm curious what it has felt like for you?

Justin Vernon: Kind of like graduating master's program or something. Kind of feeling a little old, a little aged out, a little like looking back, like Chris Farley at the bottom of the hill in Black Sheep saying, "What the hell was that all about?" Like I said, I think I've been reckoning a lot with times I haven't been so great or times I haven't been able to be as good of a brother or a family member that I know I should be. Maybe I was tempted by this or brought in by this idea that I don't necessarily am not centered with over time.

While I feel a little weary, I feel very young in another way, in the sense that I feel like I get a chance now to not only look back, but look forward and kind of refresh, not a restart. They're 43 year old bones. I feel I've taken care of my body more, I'm taking care of my mental health more. If I look back and see a lot of suffering in my past, it's because I wasn't treating myself correctly. Certainly, I've had everything I've needed to be flourishing, kind, and loving person.

When I look back, I do see a lot of confusion, anxiety, and despair. I just have gotten to this point now, and these songs have really helped me kind of, I don't know, open that door or whatever the metaphor is, to start that new journey and to be alive and present and grateful from now on, as much as I can be.

Amanda Petrusich: Justin, this has been such a pleasure. Thank you for being here.

Justin Vernon: Thank you for having me.

David Remnick: Bon Iver the musician Justin Vernon, speaking with staff writer Amanda Petrusich.

[MUSIC - Bon Iver: Speyside]

I know now that I can't make good

How I wish I could

Go back and put

Me where you stood

Nothing's really something, now the whole thing's soot

 

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