This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

In the winter of 2007, a songwriter by the name of Justin Vernon returned to the Wisconsin Woods, not far from where he grew up.

Just a few months later, he emerged with the album for Emma forever ago,

and it was his first album produced under the name Boniverre.

Since then, Vernon and various bandmates have released three more records and won two Grammys.

He also became a frequent collaborator with Kanye West.

The New Yorkers Amanda Petrusich spoke with Vernon at the New Yorker Festival back in 2019,

along with Brad Cook and Chris Messina, who also worked on Bonne Verre's album, I, comma, I.

So a lot of people, I think, first came to know you, Justin, as kind of a dude with a guitar,

but in recent years you've become something of a master

collaborator. It seems to me that one of the central tensions of Bonne Verre is that kind of push-pull

between the individual and the collective. So do you think of Bonne-Vare as a band? Is it a more

kind of fluid enterprise? It's never been nailed down for me. If anything, if anything, it's the closest I feel to a true way to describe it as,

it's like a little town that's growing, you know, ever and ever, forever and ever.

And it did kind of start out with just me.

But I'm always kind of constantly thinking about how you're never really alone.

When you are physically alone, you got there vis-a-vis the people that, you know, made you

who you are.

And so in a way, I think when I thought of that name, Bonne Verre for the, when it was just me

playing the music, I did imagine a town, a community, so to speak.

And so that's the closest I get to name in the thing.

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