Eau Claire, WI

Eau Claire — "clear water", named by French voyageurs — was once Sawdust City, the lumber capital where the white pine of northern Wisconsin came down the Chippewa River to the mills. When the pines gave out, the city reinvented itself more than once: rubber, computers, and finally, unexpectedly, music. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Eau Claire's most famous son, recorded his Grammy-winning debut in a nearby hunting cabin and then repaid his hometown handsomely, co-founding the Eaux Claires festival that drew the indie-music world to the riverbanks and helping transform the confluence of the rivers into an arts district. The city's jazz pedigree is older: the university's jazz programme has long ranked among the best in the country.

The University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, on its bluff above the water, sustains the concert life documented in this archive at the Phillips stage recorded in the events — the Phillips name, borne by the city's great philanthropic family, marks institutions across Eau Claire. Between the restored lumber-baron mansions, the trestle footbridges and a downtown that has turned its two rivers from workplaces into promenades, Eau Claire makes a quiet Midwestern argument: that a mill town's second century can sound better than its first.