Song Exploder - Bon Iver - Holyfields,

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

Justin Vernon founded the band Bon Iver in 2006. Bon Iver’s released four albums, and won two Grammys, including Best New Artist. The most recent album, i,i, came out in August 2019, and in this episode, Justin breaks down a song from it called “Holyfields,.” He’s joined by producers Chris Messina and Brad Cook. We spoke to him in July, from his studio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where the song started. They finished it at Sonic Ranch studio, in Tornillo, Texas, on the border of the US and Mexico. songexploder.net/bon-iver

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. My name is Tao Wyn. Justin Vernon founded the band Bonie Verre in 2006. BoniVeer's released four albums and won two Grammys, including Best New Artist. The most recent album, I comma I, came out in August 2019, and in this episode, Justin breaks down a song from it called Holyfields. He's joined by producers Chris Messina and Brad Cook. We spoke to him in July from his studio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where the song started. They finished it at Sonic Ranch Studio in Torneo, Texas, on the border of U.S. in Mexico.

This is Justin Vernon. My name is Brad Cook, and I was a producer for this record. Brad and I go so insanely far back that it's kind of impossible to explain, but our musical language is pretty deep. I think at this stage in the game, we've been making songs together for 20 years. When we and Brad were growing up, we were finding life meaning out of listening to all the Bob Marley Records and learning about humanity through his lyrics and through his music and attitude. And so that was a really huge impact on me. That was really the high point of seeing what music can do in the world and why it's more

powerful than maybe we even give it credit for at times. I'm Chris Messina and I produced mixed and engineered this record. We're in O'Clair, Wisconsin, and we have our own studio here called April Base. Chris has been running the studio for, what is it, seven years? We feel like partners in this band in a lot of ways. It was just the three of us in the studio at April Base one morning. We were just trying to create environments in which songs could kind of pour out. And we just had a couple of different synths hooked up.

The core of the song is based around an EML Electro Comp 101, which is this early modular synth. I think it's like 70s-ish, and we got a sound out of it that was sort of cool and caught a vibe. It's that sound that goes ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. One of the confusing things about it is that, you know, when people hear the word synth, they often imagine, like, keyboard sounds. But the EML has this random noise generator, so you're twisting knobs, and all of a sudden you have this totally insane, weird rhythmic pattern.

So there was no real tone. You could just hear percussive elements. It was really just in sort of learning how to use it. We just turned it on and recorded it for a few minutes. And that it's sort of the drums, if you will, or the rhythmic sense in the song. And then we tracked on top of that right away. Brad was playing a Yamaha CS synthesizer, playing all different versions of D, the note D,

just has this loop of D going where he's adjusting textures, but it's only one note. And he's kind of playing it constantly. but you only hear it based on a gate that we set from the EML. So you can see it's following the same rhythm as the EML. And so while that was happening, I was playing the Messina, which is a harmonizing machine sort of that Chris and I came up with a bunch of years back. And it's his last name because that's how you'd name things.

I'll do my best to explain how the Messina works. So Brad was playing one note. And then that one note gets fed to the Messina. And when you press the keyboard on the Messina, it's like you're playing a full piano version of that one note. So just being able to play multiple tones in harmony with each other of that original sound source, being able to take that exact sound and spread it out over a keyboard in real time.

And so I was just making up stuff, trying to play some cool chords. was also going through the email. The email was sending a pulse gate opening thing to everything. So there's really only three instruments happening, but they're all reacting to one another all simultaneously. And so all of us were sort of performing all at the same time as kind of recording an improvisation

that we stuck with for the whole life of the song. Being in the room when the initial song came to life was pretty moving. It felt cosmic in a really cool way. It's a moment. The three of us kind of just spurred this moment that feels so magical. And it's just all of a sudden it's happening. Oh my God, that works.

Yeah, it's just a snowball. It just plopped right into reality. And in the minutes it took to record it, basically. We really felt something that day. Like we had something on our record, whatever that record would turn out to be. We really had something we could gather around. I almost remember arguing you shouldn't even put vocals on it for a while. Let's just leave it as an instrumental.

It was so moving. And then Justin was like, no, no, no, I hear this thing. Kind of immediately I did, I sang like a scratch idea. You just kind of go in there and get weird and try to find little patterns that work in the cuts, I suppose. Don't you've been stepping in. I'm happy as I ever been. I don't know where the lyrics come from. It's a mystery to me as well.

But there's meaning in it. Couldn't tell you what the cadence is. It's folded in the air. evidences. There's a lot of like me or the singer of the song talking to people with a little bit of disdain or a little anger or a little impatience. So you want to leave a mark. You're honing in on Meadow Park.

Do you want to leave a mark to me is, oh, you want to like rise the ranks and work in tall buildings? You're honing in on Meadow Park. You know, like you found a cool neighborhood to live. Oh, I heard you guys are very safe. Caught up with the feather weights, you know, the other people that aren't pulling their weight. I heard you guys are very safe. I'm caught up with the featherweight. I think the song definitely sort of speaks to a general rejection of status quo. I just think the narrator like Justin

is pretty restless and not very satisfied with passivity in a passive existence. I think the only concrete feeling that I get is the lyrics there are in the chorus. The dawn is rising, but the land ain't rising. The dawn is rising. You know, it's just like you're up all night, you know, the dawn's rising, you're going to work or you've wasted your life or whatever, but the land is not rising. The water keeps rising. Like, you know, when are you going to figure this out? Like, figure out pollution and climate change, you know, like, when are you going to stop denying the certain things in your mind and start accepting the hard things? Rob Moose was the next step in the development of the song.

Rob Moose, he's done arrangements for different string and horn parts since the second Bonnevere record. And he's truly just unbelievable in the way he's able to add to the music we give him. The way we work with Rob is that he'll just come and hang out at April Base for a couple days. And we'll set him up his own little recording space because he's pretty comfortable recording himself these days. We just would feed him stuff and he would go away and record different ideas with his violin and viola. He just really pulled out some interesting harmonies. Making harmonics with his violin, which is incredibly difficult to do, I find. But he slides the harmonics up and it gives it this really scratchy,

sort of sounds like weird violins from the 20s or something. And he's so creative in thinking about the layers. There's probably 20 parts, 30 parts of himself playing. Such a cool part comes in there. And the third section of the song, what I'd call the bridge, he comes in with this really strange kind of seventh chord or whatever the hell it is, kind of this minor, darker element kind of out of nowhere. When he solidified his part, he pulled something out of me melodically

that it was written around and interwoven into Rob's string part. That whole section of the song was really the inspiration to get me through writing and finishing the lyrics the rest of the way. That was at Sonic Ranch to Neo Texas. That's where we finished the record. I did end up finishing and recording the final vocals while we were down there.

Any one of these verses in Holyfields, I could pretend one day or imagine one day that I'm singing as another person straight to me. Like maybe I'm a little mad at myself or not following through or being a better person being that close to that border and being with

you know everyone was Mexican at the studio almost except us and so i think being that close to that during this time in our lives that just influenced everything not one line not you know this it's just influenced everything trying to gain perspective and trying to be as good as we can be well things like that are going down so geographically close texas is a heavy vibe right now yeah i mean damn it's quite Yeah, it's pretty emotional. There's a lot of pain there. I mean, and to be able to do what we want to do,

just such a simple, safe, if you consider it, it's not very, it's not immediately necessary for survival. And to be able to do it is just a blessing, you know? I think all that energy really, really touched all of us. We can never not be all of us. We're always sharing the moment that we are here, living in time. And so it's really hard to separate and really truly try to decipher what one person really is because you don't really have one person without the other. And that to me is just like

seems to be sacred math for figuring out our problems as human beings. It's just understanding that there's always the other that we're kind of responsible for. And now here's Holyfields by Bonnevere in its entirety. Visit you guys are very safe And caught up with the featherweights You ask me not to pull alarms We have to act our ages Visit songexplor.net for more information about BoniVeer.

You'll also find a link to buy or stream this song. Song Exploder is made by Rishi Kesh Hirwei, producer Christian Coons, and me. I'm guest hosting for the year. Carlos Laram is our illustrator. You can see his portrait of Justin Vernon on the Song Exploder website or Instagram. Song Explorer is a proud member of Radiotopia

from PRX, a mighty collective of independent podcasts. You can learn about all of our shows at radiotopia.fm. You can also follow Song Explorer on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Song Exploder, and you can follow me at Tal Get Stay Down. My name is Tal Wyn. Thanks for listening.