Intel M U S I C
NORT H E R N
EXPOSURE JUSTIN VERNON TURNS UP THE VOLUME IN HIS WISCONSIN HOMETOWN. BY ANDREA SWENSSON
270
Artful Living
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Magazine of the North
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KELLY OWEN
It’s a Monday night in downtown Eau Claire, and the Lakely — the chic eatery and bar attached to the city’s newest hotel, the Oxbow — might be the most swinging little scene in Northwest Wisconsin. A row of college students sits at the back tables, penciling in notations on sheet music while waiting for their turn on stage, where University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire professor Michael Shults directs a young pickup band through a round of solos. A server swings a tray of craft cocktails through the crowd as the room sways to the beat. And when versatile young drummer Cami Mennitte Pereyra tosses out a particularly tasty fill, the students look up from their homework and holler toward the stage. On a wall nearby, a crocheted replica of a deer head, complete with antlers, watches over the proceedings with its expressionless, beady eyes. It used to hang in the main recording studio of its owner, Justin Vernon, frontman of the globally acclaimed experimental folk project Bon Iver. When he wrapped his most recent album, 22, A Million, he brought the deer here to help decorate the new space. It’s just one of the many ways Vernon, one of the Oxbow’s owners, has left his imprint on his hometown. The scene is a perfect encapsulation of an Eau Claire at a crossroads. The city has always had a rich musical heritage. Greats like Bill Evans, Dizzy Gillespie, John Lee Hooker and Charles Mingus all stopped on their way through town to play at the Joynt, a bar that today is frequented by students from the university’s revered jazz-studies program. And now that the city has birthed a Grammy-winning artist who has risen to such mainstream success that he’s been spoofed on Saturday Night Live, the cultural scene here is exploding. Although Vernon isn’t at the Lakely this particular evening, his influence is everywhere. It’s in the incredible sound system that could easily accommodate a band of Bon Iver’s stature, despite the fact that the room only seats 150. It’s in the staircase leading to the Oxbow’s guest quarters, which are inscribed with the title of Bon Iver drummer S. Carey’s debut album, All We Grow. And it’s in the rooms themselves, where 22, A Million is nestled beside a turntable, a hipster take on the typical bedside bible. At every turn across town, there’s music from artists who live right here, blaring over the loudspeakers that perk up sleepy, shop-laden Main Street, through the PAs in the city’s bars and jumping on stage at the