Justin Vernon was a guest on Elton John’s Rocket Hour this week on Apple Music’s Beats 1, where the duo chatted about Bon Iver’s recently released album, i, i.
“We were writing a lot of the tunes for a long time. When I say writing them, I think we really just were chipping away at these giant boulders and until they get finished, they’re just boulders until they’re something more like a sculpture towards the end,” Vernon explained on how the album came about. “So some of them were sitting around for five, six years. But then we went to a studio right outside of El Paso right on the Mexican border, only a few miles from some of these detention camps, and we were recording out there, and it was such a vibrant, inspiring, strange place to be in the world, and we were there for six weeks to kind of come all together, all the people in the band, and the production teams and everything, and even these dancers that we had been collaborating with, and we all just went there for six weeks and took it all, put it in a pile, and finished it.”
John then noted that he “hasn’t heard this consistent of songwriting” since music from The Band’s Big Pink, before asking if Bon Iver will be going on tour. “Well, if I’m around in America in the fall and if I’m around in the same place as you are, you’ll see me knocking on the door saying, ‘Hello. I love you.'”
“Come out to a show, we can sing a song together or something,” Vernon asked, to which John replied, “I’d love that. Oh, by the way, your version of ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ is just amazing.”
Listen to the interview below.