Bon Iver's Justin Vernon Opens His Own Record Label

Bon Iver performs at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago.

Timothy Hiatt/Getty Images

Bon Iver mastermind Justin Vernon has launched a new label, Chigliak Records, as an imprint of Jagjaguwar, the label that has released his two albums. A post on the Chigliak website that was later taken down – the site now only features a logo and no links – said that the label will focus on releasing records that were either "never commercially released" or "locally released [in Wisconsin] and never put out on vinyl." The label will also issue some new recordings.

Not many specific details have been revealed about Chigliak's plans in the short term, though Vernon has told Pitchfork that he intends the label's first release to be a record by a band called Amateur Love from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. "They put out a record and it probably sold like 500 copies – it was like this electro-pop thing with a Neil Young or Paul Westerberg-quality songwriter, I shit you not," says Vernon.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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