Bon Iver to play at Mountain Park in Holyoke on Saturday, August 6th at 7PM. Tickets on sale this Friday, May 13th.

Justin Vernon, on the heels of a show-stopping performance with Kanye West at this year’s Coachella Music Festival, will release his band Bon Iver’s highly anticipated self-titled sophomore effort on June 21^st.

Frozen cabins in the woods of northern Wisconsin aren't normally places where legendary music is born. But in the winter of 2007, the spirits of folk-rock somehow came together to help Justin Vernon — better known as Bon Iver — record a masterpiece of a debut, For Emma, Forever Ago. The follow-up EP Blood Bank was equally stunning but fans of his story and his style have been clamoring for new music, and Vernon is ready to oblige with a new album and a tour that will bring him to Mountain Park in Holyoke on Saturday, August 6th.

Anyone who had even a single listen to For Emma Forever Ago, will peg Justin Vernon's vocals immediately on the long awaited follow-up Bon Iver, due out on June 21^st  on Jagjaguwar (and on 4AD in the UK).  Bon Iver‘s 10 tracks are said to feature “silky electric guitars, beautifully intricate keys, and subtle horn and string sections.”

The album was recorded in a remodeled veterinarian clinic in Fall Creek, Wisconsin, which was bought by Vernon and his brother in 2008. It was converted into April Base Studios, built mainly over the defunct swimming pool attached to the clinic. Vernon's reason for recording in the location was that “It’s been a wonderful freedom, working in a place we built. It's also only three miles from the house I grew up in, and just ten minutes from the bar where my parents met.”

“Bon Iver is often equated with just me," says Vernon, "but you are who surrounds you, and for Bon Iver, Bon Iver I wanted to invite those voices as musical catalysts."

For the shows, Justin Vernon will perform with an eight-piece band that includes many musicians who contributed to Bon Iver. The touring band will consist of regular Bon Iver contributors Sean Carey (drums, piano), Mike Noyce (guitar) and Matt McCaughan (drums), Rob Moose on violin and guitar (Antony and the Johnsons, The National), Mike Lewis on bass (Andrew Bird, Happy Apple), and a horn section including Reginald Pace, Colin Stetson (Tom Waits, Arcade Fire), and C.J. Camerieri (Rufus Wainwright, Sufjan Stevens).

Opening the show will be The Rosebuds of Raleigh, North Carolina whose fifth album Loud Planes Fly Low, out June 7^th on Merge,  is their most inventive to date. Justin Vernon and the Rosebuds have been personal and musical friends for years.

Hearing Bon Iver’s music in a live setting should prove a transcendent experience outdoors on the lush grass nestled in the trees on the mountainside at Mountain Park in Holyoke on Saturday, August 6^th at 7PM.

Tickets go on sale this Friday, May 13^th at Northampton Box Office, 76 Main Street, 413-586-8686 and online at IHEG.com. 

The painting above is the Bon Iver album cover and the image for the tour.