This year, at the Eaux Claires Festival in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Justin Vernon’s Bon Iver will be performing a tribute show in honor of Bob Dylan. This will be their only scheduled performance for 2026. After seeing Dylan perform in his hometown, Vernon was inspired to do the tribute backed by a 12-piece band. The band includes guitarist Jeremy Ylvisaker, a frequent collaborator in Bon Iver’s projects.
“I played on one recording, and I’ve sat in on the band live, but mostly they have this band that plays in this hotel in Eau Claire called Oxbow,” Ylvisaker said. “When there’s zero pressure, and it’s just a cover band, that’s usually when I’m playing with those guys.”
Ylvisaker denotes the band that will play at the festival as an expansion of the hotel band feeling–a lower-pressure environment to play covers in. The band will be drawing from Dylan’s early 90s ‘MTV Unplugged’ sound, with song choices that extend across the breadth of Dylan’s discography.
“There’s no real rules to it,” Ylvisaker said. “We’re just trying songs in different ways, which is, I think, in the spirit of how the Bob Dylan band did it.”
A big part of this project is the idea of legacy. The group must tackle the feat of tapping into the cultural memory of Dylan’s work, while also not reproducing it. They have taken steps to approach this in an effective way by studying up on Dylan’s work (specifically Daniel and Lois, Time Out of Mind, and Free Willing). However, Ylvisaker mentions that Dylan’s own approach to his work wasn’t straightforward–it constantly changed.
“[Dylan] already introduced this idea of freedom,” Ylvisaker said. “Traditional folk music is kind of free anyway, three chords and the truth kind of thing, so you can kind of update it to exactly how you feel in a moment. Spiritually, that’s what that music is for.”
‘Bon Dylan’, at its core, is just a group of musicians playing great music together. Ylvisaker mentioned how presenting your own music can be raw and intense–removing that layer allows for a more joyful, breathable experience.
“In [folk] tradition, we’re gonna arrive and play together as friends,” Ylvisaker said. “There’s just a reason to play these songs at the same time, and it just happens to be these really amazing songs.”
