Bon Iver has grown into a band that can sell out arenas

FAN Editor

Bon Iver started as a little indie band out of Wisconsin. But it’s since become something much bigger. The folk-indie favorites have grown into a band that can sell out arenas.

“It sure feels weird for me. I skipped a lot of steps. I just got plopped right down in here,” Jenn Wasner told “CBS This Morning” co-host Anthony Mason. She is the newest member of the band that started with Justin Vernon and now includes Matt McCaughan, Sean Carey, Mike Lewis and Andrew Fitzpatrick on guitar.

Mason spoke with the Grammy-winning band just before their recent sold-out show at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

“I think of your music as very intimate in a lot of ways, and when you’re in a place like this you always wonder, ‘Can you create intimacy?'” Mason asked.

“I think it works. Because it’s so big, you end up kind of feeling really small and part of something bigger,” Fitzpatrick said.

Saturday Sessions: Bon Iver performs “Blood Bank”

Bon Iver was born when Vernon went off into the Wisconsin woods to write music. He took the group’s name from a greeting used in an episode of the TV show “Northern Exposure” 

Bon Iver’s debut album, released in 2007, “For Emma, Forever Ago” would go platinum. The band’s second and third albums both soared to #2 on the charts and Bon Iver won two Grammys. But success scared Vernon. In 2017, he canceled a tour partly over his discomfort with the attention.

“This is an example of something I couldn’t have done five years ago. I just didn’t have it within me or the strength to sit here and talk with you,” he said.

Friendship and therapy, he said, healed him. “Vulnerability seems to be the word.” His bandmates agree there’s been a change. 

Saturday Sessions: Bon Iver performs “iMi”

The band recorded its new album “i,i” over six weeks in west Texas. “There’s a lot of language that you develop that is not the English language,” Vernon said of recording an album in that environment. “It’s the musical language that you can only develop between people that you actually play with every day.”

That new collaborative spirit was what convinced Jenn Wesner to join.

“It’s a sign of a lot confidence, but it’s also a sign of generosity. And I felt welcome instantly,” Wesner said.

With a big smile on his face, Vernon said, “it’s the first time that I don’t really want to leave tour, you know, ever.”

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