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Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival Kicks Off

Field Notes From Day 1 Of The Homegrown Wisconsin Music Festival

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Eaux Claires Music Festival
John K. Wilson/WPR

Eau Claire musician Justin Vernon and company are back this summer with the sophomore edition of the Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival, a two-day event that packs a diverse set of musical performers and art installations into the woods and meadows that hug the north bank of the Chippewa River.

Vernon — best known for his leading role in Bon Iver — along with a group of collaborators put on the first Eaux Claires in 2015, billing it as something more than a standard music festival, with a focus on community and shared experiences.

This year’s lineup returns to those themes with a tightly curated eclecticism, a focus on collaborations and plenty of regional acts. Performances range from hip hop to electronica to Americana, including sets from Mavis Staples, Bruce Hornsby, James Blake, Beach House, a Grateful Dead tribute featuring members of the National and a debut of new material from Bon Iver.

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Included below are images and observations from Eaux Claires 2016.


A nature art installation. John K. Wilson/WPR

Where are we?

From the front gate on, the festival feels intent on taking attendees into its own, separate world. The venue is just outside of Eau Clair but you wouldn’t know it from inside. It’s surrounded by woods, with no buildings in sight, and before you ever see a stage, music wafts through the trees.

Getting from one stage to the next involves following crowds down secluded paths where twigs are woven into archways and glass bulbs are covered in moss. Your standard fair grounds it is not.


Hidden in the woods, a structure. John K. Wilson/WPR


My Brightest Diamond. John K. Wilson/WPR

Music big and not so big

There aren’t any platinum-selling artists or stadium-fillers on the bill, but there is still a collection of music on different scales. There are intimate clap-alongs in the woods, stumbled upon totally unexpectedly, offset by full-size festival stages with light-shows and ear-bruising speakers.

Chamber-rock outfit My Brightest Diamond and California rapper Vince Staples were the loudest and felt the largest of the opening afternoon — Staples especially, stirring up a sizable crowd with heavy, atmospheric beats and vibrant video collages behind him.


Vince Staples. John K. Wilson/WPR

On the other end of the spectrum, Wisconsinite and Bon Iver collaborator, S. Carey, was occasionally on the verge of being drowned out by bleeding music from other stages as he reeled off delicate songs from behind his electric keyboard under a timber-framed structure in the middle of a clearing.


S. Carey. John K. Wilson/WPR

And there’s been plenty in between, including energetic sets by Little Scream and Prinze George, and poetry in the woods. A little bit of everything at any given time.


Little Scream. John K. Wilson/WPR


Bon Iver from a distance. John K. Wilson/WPR

An album’s worth from Bon Iver

The first day’s evening centerpiece was the premier of an album’s worth of new material from Bon Iver, start to finish, in public for the first time.

For those who follow the band, the new album (its first in five years) seems to be both an evolution and a departure from earlier sounds. Justin Vernon’s lilting, effect-soaked falsetto vocals remain, but mostly gone are the resonator guitars and moody keyboards that characterized Bon Iver’s past work. Now, instead, Vernon sings atop a cascade of glitch tape loops, synth beats and a full horn section.

For those who are less familiar with the group’s back catalogue, it was still a very entertaining show.

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