Justin Vernon plans an 'urgent' Bon Iver show in Duluth on Wednesday

While most musicians have been clamoring to perform again in 2021, Justin Vernon has mixed feelings about returning to the road.

That uncertainty is partly what led the Grammy-winning Wisconsin song man to jump at the chance to play Bon Iver's first post-quarantine show Wednesday in Duluth.

"There's no going back to the old normal," Vernon said last week.

Answering questions via e-mail ahead of the Water Is Life Festival at Bayfront Festival Park — a benefit for Winona LaDuke's environmental organization, Honor the Earth, and a protest of Enbridge's Line 3 oil pipeline — Vernon explained how the concert's purpose and close-to-home location meshes with his new outlook on touring.

In short: He's going to be a lot more selective about when and how he books Bon Iver gigs.

"I think everybody had the time to ponder larger questions in the last year and half," Vernon said. "I finally settled on the fact that touring is important to me, but also exactly how much it can be important.

"We're so lucky to do it. But just because you're lucky and fortunate doesn't mean you deserve to do anything you want anytime you want. We are implementing systems to calculate our carbon footprint and be much more eco-conscious. We don't need to cross an ocean more than once in a year, for instance."

Vernon and his full Bon Iver crew will cross the ocean in November to play some postponed European dates, but unlike those shows he is keeping the Water Is Life gig simple.

Wednesday's performance will feature a pared-down, three-man version of the group last seen in Minnesota at Xcel Energy Center in 2019. He and his bandmates — fellow Eau Claire multi-instrumentalist Sean Carey and Twin Cities bassist/saxophonist Michael Lewis — will arrive in one car, he noted.

"No crew. No sound," Vernon emphasized, playfully describing this version of the group as "renegade, howl-at-the-moon, urgent musical energy."

Vernon's renegades will top off a 10-hour, 14-act lineup Wednesday that includes acclaimed Southeastern R&B singers Mumu Fresh and Adia Victoria; Minnesota/Iowa staples Hippo Campus, Lissie, Charlie Parr, David Huckfelt, Alan Sparhawk (of Low), Larry Long and Superior Siren; and a multitribal contingent of Native singer/songwriters from around the country, including Keith Secola, Annie Humphrey, Quiltman and Corey Medina.

The musicians are all rallying around LaDuke and her team of Indigenous activists at Honor the Earth, who upped their protests of Line 3 in northern Minnesota this summer and faced arrests from Hubbard County sheriffs deputies (for reasons later decried by a federal judge).

Construction on Line 3 — a replacement line carrying tar-sand oil cross-continent — began in Minnesota early this year after already being completed in Canada and Wisconsin. Opponents of the line say it threatens waterways including the Mississippi River with possible pollution and breaks tribal treaties. Proponents say it creates more localized energy resources and some much-needed jobs.

Vernon said he has been a fan of LaDuke and Honor the Earth since learning of them via the Indigo Girls in his midteens in the mid-'90s, when the folk duo helmed an all-star benefit CD and several concerts for the cause.

"They did a benefit for Honor the Earth with Bonnie Raitt and Winona and bunch of Native folks from the Upper Midwestern communities," he recalled. "It was my first feeling of understanding what true activism looked like. I am no expert, but I'll never forget what it taught me."

Vernon will join LaDuke, fellow musician Huckfelt and other Water Is Life organizers for a Facebook Live discussion about the event and their efforts on Monday at 6 p.m. (Central Time).

While he's likely to be labeled another overreaching, elite liberal musician by supporters of Line 3 for headlining Wednesday's concert, Vernon actually hails from a rural part of the Midwest (Fall Creek, Wis., near where he grew up in Eau Claire) with blue-collar roots and a well-documented affinity for deer hunting.

He's not too far removed from residents of northern Minnesota who want the economic benefits of the pipeline, in other words.

"What makes me sad is that the story isn't how there aren't more jobs up there other than ones that aren't directly lining the pocketbooks of Canadian and American oil moguls," he said. "All the while [they're] fleecing the very thing that makes northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin so special: its pristine nature."

Wading into an issue as contentious as Line 3 is a rather loud way for Vernon to come out of what was mostly a quiet — albeit hardly low-profile — 18-month quarantine period.

During the 2020-21 lockdown, he prominently guested on Taylor Swift's Grammy-sweeping "Folklore" album and its follow-up, "Evermore." He also worked with Swift producer Aaron Dessner from Ohio indie-rock band the National on their second album together as Big Red Machine, titled "How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?" It's due out next week with Swift singing on the single "Renegade."

Bon Iver, however, mostly stayed dormant through quarantine. The group that famously started with a batch of solo recordings made in a Wisconsin cabin in 2007 — and went on to win the best new artist Grammy in 2012 — will mark the 10th anniversary of its self-titled sophomore album with a special-edition release this fall, plus two related performances Oct. 22 and 23 in Los Angeles.

Asked about any plans for an all-new Bon Iver album, Vernon firmly responded, "Absolutely none!"

Wednesday's show thus might be the first and last we hear from Bon Iver for quite a while. Here's more of what Vernon had to say last week.

On his hesitancy to begin touring again: "Art suffers past a certain point of repetition. I want to play music with my friends forever, but I want it to stay sweet and necessary. It will."

On why he quickly committed to playing the Water Is Life Festival: "We didn't even blink before saying yes to this cause. Anyone who saw any reporting on the U.N. report about climate change last week knows there is really just one headline for humanity going forward.

"This event, this cause, touches on what seems like every important concept and immediate need for what human beings are going through right now: People being oppressed by a system that they didn't make, that doesn't value them; treaties being ignored; and a fossil fuel industry that we should all collectively agree should be put to its deathbed as we watch the Earth cranking up in heat."

On playing Bayfront Park for the first time: "Never been! I love Duluth. I tried going there for college, but I don't think I got in!"

On playing his first gig in front of a live audience in almost two years: "I don't really think about that part of it. I just think about plugging in and making sure the sound is coming through, then reading the lyrics and making the music; making music on a stage shared with important people, and activists trying to protect our Earth."

On whether the chaos of 2020-21 has renewed his commitment to social causes like Honor the Earth: "Not renewed … [I'm] just particularly poised. There is no going back to the old normal. I think it's the greatest gift Earth has given us, as much as it's taken from us in the last two years."

On how he spent most of the lockdown months from COVID-19: "Mostly by myself in Wisconsin. I didn't hardly do any music. I renewed myself as a person and remembered that I'm not just a musician that people know about. I'm a son, a brother and a friend. And music is important but not the most important thing."

On what he learned and enjoyed from working on Swift's albums: "That it's fun to sing a song I didn't write! And it was an honor to do so."

Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658

@ChrisRstrib

Water Is Life Festival

With: Bon Iver, Hippo Campus, Mumu Fresh, Adia Victoria, Lissie, David Huckfelt, Keith Secola, Annie Humphrey and more.

When: Noon-10 p.m. Wed.

Where: Bayfront Festival Park, Duluth.

Tickets: $65, first-avenue.com.