Edison Deyarmond

Though only active for a short time in the 2000s, DeYarmond Edison foreshadowed some of the major trends in experimentally minded indie rock that followed as its membership went on to form wildly influential projects Bon Iver, Megafaun, and Field Report. The band mixed thoughtful and sometimes surrealistic indie folk with more boundary-pushing sounds on two studio albums, and years after their disbandment, the 2023 box set Epoch collected hours of rarities, live tracks, unreleased recordings, and a book-length written history of the band. DeYarmond Edison began in Eau Claire, Wisconsin in 2001, morphing from an earlier project, Mount Vernon. The band was formed by friends Justin Vernon (taking its moniker from Vernon's two middle names), Chris Porterfield, Joe Westerlund, and brothers Brad Cook and Phil Cook. The band's sound was rooted in acoustic folk rock, but also wove in orchestral horn arrangements, atmospheric electronics, and other less traditional songwriting approaches. They played primarily around their home base and released a self-titled album in 2004 and 2005's Silent Signs before relocating to Raleigh, North Carolina in hopes of making the band a full-time endeavor. They splintered shortly after their move, however, sharing one last EP of unreleased material online after announcing the breakup in September of 2006. Vernon returned to Wisconsin and began work on the earliest Bon Iver recordings, while Westerlund and the Cook brothers remained in North Carolina and formed a new band, Megafaun. Porterfield focused on writing new material for many years, eventually starting the folk-inclined group Field Report. In 2011, DeYarmond Edison reunited for a single show at that year's South by Southwest festival and in 2016 they recorded a cover of "Black Muddy River" for the Grateful Dead tribute compilation Day of the Dead. In 2023, multi-disc box set Epoch collected 83 DeYarmond Edison tracks, many of which hadn't been widely released beforehand. In addition to a 60,000-word written history of the band, Epoch included the entirety of Silent Signs, demos, live recordings, early Megafaun rehearsal tapes, Vernon's pre-Bon Iver solo recordings, and other documents of the band's short lifespan and what they did afterwards.
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