![]() In October 2020, Vernon wants to route a Bon Iver tour all around Wisconsin-the once and future battleground state that Trump surprisingly won in 2016-doing as many shows as he can in support of the Democractic presidential nominee, whoever that may be. “But I’ve got mad love for him, and we’re still friends.” As opposed to Kanye’s infamous Trump worship, Vernon is more attracted to the progressive ideologies of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. “I can’t really kick it with him anymore on a personal level, just the energy,” Vernon tells me, diplomatically. Vernon and Kanye’s idea of how to run a highly collaborative recording session may be the same, but they have drifted apart in their politics. Both are interested in fashion-though unlike Yeezy’s grayscale couture, the historically unkempt Vernon plans to start a company with his lifelong friend, the noise musician Trever Hagen, by purchasing a shipping container full of old clothes and making “weird recycled fashion” with a pair of scissors. Both staunchly refuse to look back on their past and rest on their laurels. Both don masks and search wide-eyed for inspiration among a coterie of collaborators. What started as two artists finding mutual inspiration in one another has evolved into the yin and yang of Kanye and Justin. It was Kanye who first ushered Vernon into the greater pop world by featuring him on 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and 2013’s Yeezus. ![]() ![]() Vernon and Kanye have famously developed a strong working and personal relationship throughout the decade. “It was wild,” Vernon says, matter-of-factly. ![]() Three-on-three basketball games were played. A revolving door of musicians came out to the country-from Bon Iver band members to Arcade Fire’s Win Butler, Common, and Kendrick Lamar-building song bites for Kanye to taste. The studio has been part and parcel to Bon Iver’s success through the years, welcoming a wide array of people, from regulars like veteran indie rockers Low all the way to Kanye West, who commandeered the entire property for an entire week in October 2014 while working on The Life of Pablo. “I’m riding just as hard for the people who are like, ‘Whoever this guy thinks he is trying to make cool shit happen in his own hometown with his guitar music can get fucked.’ I’m fine.” Vernon, ever the chill bro, is unbothered. There are few American artists who have invested so much of their time and money to put their backwater hometown on the map-even if the reader’s poll in the local alt-weekly recently decided that Justin Vernon, his local music festival Eaux Claires, and the new downtown performing arts center he has supported are all among the city’s “Most Overrated” attractions. He loves it out here, surrounded by rolling green fields of soybeans and corn stalks, where time seems to be meaningless. The city of Eau Claire, population 65,883, is split by the Chippewa River, leaving an oxbow lake just across from its state school, where Vernon once majored in religion and women’s studies. We crest hills on empty roads with names like County Road HH, from which, on this unconditional August day, you can see a highway cut through the treeline on the horizon.
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