Between July 2005 and May 2006, Justin Vernon recorded his third solo album, hazeltons, which was released as a limited run of 100 handmade, hand-numbered CD-Rs. The album contained the song “hazelton,” which was a precursor to the song “Holocene” later recorded by Vernon on the 2011 self-titled Bon Iver album.
Vernon’s recording of “hazelton” is among the 83 tracks included in the DeYarmond Edison box set Epoch, which will be released by Jagjaguwar on August 18. The entire hazeltons album is one of five LPs included in the box set, alongside four CDs and a 114-page booklet detailing the band’s history.
DeYarmond Edison featured Vernon, Joe Westerlund and brothers Phil Cook and Brad Cook, who formed the band in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Their album Silent Signs was released in 2005 but by the end of 2006 the band, which had collectively relocated to North Carolina, had dissolved.
Vernon retreated to Wisconsin and began working on his first Bon Iver recordings. Westerlund and the Cooks formed the short-lived but impactful Megafaun.
Released along with “hazelton,” is the fellow hazeltons track “liner.” Press materials described “hazelton”:
As the oldest song that would become part of Bon Iver’s wider repertoire, “hazelton” eventually matured into the indelible “Holocene,” but Justin Vernon first recorded it between July 2005-May 2006 for what would be his third solo album. Originally released on a batch of 100 handmade, hand-numbered CD-Rs, hazeltons now makes up one of Epoch’s five LPs.
“This is the sound of sorting through an overabundance of new info, mostly for yourself. And, even in the rather fraught process, finding out just where it is you’ve been headed your whole life,” writes Grayson Haver Currin, the box set’s executive producer and biographer.
Above a cascading melody and novel picking pattern, Vernon uses his newly excavated falsetto to offer elliptical lyrics about hurt and hurting and salvation and self-definition. “hazelton” feels like a lightning strike of inspiration, but at the time it was the most significant point of departure in the dissolution of DeYarmond Edison. It was an extracurricular insult when Vernon, Westerlund and the Cook brothers were all still evolving as a four-piece unit. Just more than a month after Vernon dropped off copies of hazeltons at the record store where Brad Cook worked in their adopted hometown of Raleigh, NC, DeYarmond Edison played its final show. Less than a year later, Bon Iver and Megafaun would each issue their respective debuts.
In addition to “hazelton” and “liner,” the rest of hazeltons features other eccentricities, ideas and remarkable steps forward that Justin Vernon would further explore on Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago and beyond. “hannah, my ophelia,” a collaboration with members of Collections of Colonies of Bees, would soon yield the band Volcano Choir. Also available on Epoch’s physical edition is an exclusive live version of “hazelton” that Vernon recorded with Aaron and Bryce Dessner in Paris.
Stream the “Holocene” precursor “hazelton” below:
