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Northern exposure

After turning heartache into art, Justin Vernon has risen from the obscurity of a northern Wisconsin cabin to budding success on the indie music scene.

It's the voice that grabs you.

A falsetto, shot through with heartbreak and hard experience, floating above layers of guitars, horns, the thump of drums, even the beautiful, eerie creaking of a northern Wisconsin cabin in winter.

This is the voice - and music - of Justin Vernon.

In the last year, Vernon has gone from being a lonely voice in the wilderness to a leading voice on the cutting edge of indie music.

From a self-pressed CD with a first run of 500 copies and a spot on MySpace, where millions of musical acts compete for listeners, Vernon jump-started a career that has led to a deal with an independent record label, a just-completed three-month American tour and an upcoming tour in Europe.

"I don't know how it started," he says, genuinely mystified by the new calculus of modern music, where somebody hands somebody a CD and where bloggers are the new DJs, the arbiters of taste.

His album, "For Emma, Forever Ago," caused a stir online and on college radio. His live shows, in sweaty, intimate halls across America, connected him to a small army of new fans.

The fans flock to a new sound made by an artist who goes by the stage name Bon Iver, a purposely misspelled French phrase that means "good winter." He got the phrase from an episode of the old television show "Northern Exposure."

"To me, it's a celebration of the sentiment of winter and a sacred understanding," he says. "It's not a band name - it's a statement of character."

He still gets e-mails from fans who call him Bon.

"Dude," he says, as if answering the e-mails, "I am not a guy who needs to be called a stage name."

In his hometown, he's just Justin.

"I understand things just by being here," he says. "It's comfortable."

He's the one they all remember from Eau Claire Memorial High School, where he played tight end and captained the football team, ran the floor on the basketball court, served on student council and played in the jazz program.

He's a 2004 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where he earned a degree in world religious studies.

He's the rock 'n' roll dreamer who started playing in bands in the sixth grade - his parents still have that video of young Justin playing guitar and singing in the laundry room. He followed friends to North Carolina, to see if they could all hit it big in a group they called DeYarmond Edison.

And then . . . a dream deferred.

He quit the band, broke up with a girlfriend and returned home, broke, burned out.

It's a story as old as rock 'n' roll.

In late autumn of 2006, he retreated to his father's cabin on 80 acres in Dunn County, sat around for a few weeks, chopped wood, put up walls in a barn, hunted deer, even swapped a hind quarter of venison for a repair of his trusty 1964 Sears Silvertone guitar.

"I wasn't defeated," he says. "More like cut down naked about to be reborn."

He wrote, played and recorded, turning hurt into art and an album.

In the song "Skinny Love," he rages:

And I told you to be patient

And I told you to be fine

And I told you to be balanced

And I told you to be kind

He celebrated his 27th birthday on Thursday and went out to dinner with his mom, Justine, who works in the local school district. He's also very close with his dad, Gil, a labor-management arbitrator.

And he's practical.

With his first big music paycheck, he bought a washer-dryer for his new home, a small house on a busy main street near the downtown.

Books, guitars and sound equipment are spread through the house. There's a piano in the living room and a six-pack of New Glarus beer by the sink in the kitchen.

Out back is the 15-seat van that Vernon used on his first American tour.

Parents have faith

He's 6-foot-3, with thinning hair, a beard and a big, deep voice.

His parents are proud of him, proud of his start in the music business, but prouder still of his ability to bounce back from heartbreak - the loss of the band, the girlfriend.

"I always knew he would come out of it," Gil Vernon said. "I never thought that he had lost light at the end of the tunnel. I always thought there was light in this process for him. I knew there would be a spring for him."

The love of music came from his mother, who plays piano, organ and French horn. She would often sing in the car with Justin, his sister, Kim, now 35, and brother, Nate, now 23. They'd run through the Indigo Girls, Neil Young, even show tunes.

"We believe that the 20s are for trying things," Justine says. "When you're young like that, follow your dreams, do what you want to do. You have to pay the rent, buy your own food."

The parents are nearly as dazed as their son when they consider how far he has come in so short a time.

The spare album - nine songs around 30 minutes - documents his feelings at a certain stage of his life.

There really was a great first love in his life, a girl from Eau Claire. Emma was her middle name.

They broke up in 2001.

The album isn't about the girl, though. It's about him.

"My struggle, my facing mediocrity, lost love and longing," he says. "It's a mild death, almost. What happened to me in the wake of your first true love."

New path to success

The making of a career only starts with the art, the album, the music. The music has to get heard and played, difficult tasks in an industry that has been blown to bits by the Internet and musical downloads. But for up-and-coming acts, the new age brings new opportunities boosted by new media.

Bloggers cut through the noise, post reviews and musical downloads.

Vernon was championed by the likes of Craig "Dodge" Lile, who runs My Old Kentucky Blog.

"He's just a guy, man, a guy who runs a music blog," Vernon says. "He has advertisers. Bloggers have become this force. They have unlimited resources on what they can play. The people come to them."

The record was noticed by other influential blogs, BrooklynVegan and Pitchfork.

Word-of-mouth built. By October 2007, Vernon was booked at the CMJ Festival in New York, a launching pad for musical acts. Representatives from more than a dozen music labels swirled around Vernon, tried to sign him.

He ended up going back to his Midwest roots, and signed with Bloomington, Ind.-based Jagjaguwar, which gave the album a commercial release.

More than 26,000 copies have been sold or downloaded, said Chris Swanson, the label's co-founder.

"You have to approach selling records in a real roundabout way," Swanson says. "You're not only selling records, but you're selling digital downloads. You're looking to license music, hook up with TV, radio, commercials. We're on the cusp of landing Bon Iver songs in a few TV shows, which is exciting."

Taking it on the road

And then there are live shows. Artists have to tour constantly to sell their wares, make a name.

Vernon has a captivating live show. He's backed by two players. Sean Carey is a drummer from Lake Geneva who attended UW-Eau Claire. One day he just showed up at Vernon's performance in Eau Claire, said he knew all the lyrics and sat in.

He was brilliant. And he was in.

So was guitarist Mike Noyce. He was one of Vernon's guitar students. Vernon said that in November he called Noyce, who was studying at Lawrence University in Appleton, told him to drop out and come on tour.

Noyce hit the road.

There were plenty of good nights: a concert in San Francisco, where the energy ran high, and another night in Madison, at the Orpheum Stage Door theater, where the band sat in front of a dusty old movie screen and roared. They brought the crowd along on a marvelous musical journey that ended with Vernon, Carey, and Noyce wandering into the crowd, singing in three-part harmony, bringing the house down.

There were three shows at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, a jamboree and industry fling where fans, musicians and industry movers and shakers meet.

Vernon played with passion. The only downer occurred when someone slipped backstage and ripped off Vernon's passport and his wallet, which included cash, credit cards, even his hunter education safety certificate.

But it's all part of learning how to survive and thrive on the road.

His first act is finished.

Vernon longs for a long career in the studio and on the road.

"What's important is to keep making music I want to make," he says. "Music is going to want to breathe, because music is its own animal."

© 2014, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved.

About Bill Glauber
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