Eaux Claires, also known as the Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival, was a two-day music and arts festival that took place for four years in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The festival took what was to be a year-long hiatus in 2019 but was expected to return in 2020, before being postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Eaux Claires was founded in 2015 by Aaron Dessner of The National and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. During its first four years, the festival was held at Foster Farms in Eau Claire County.
Past performers include Bon Iver, The National, Paul Simon, Chance the Rapper, Lizzo, the Indigo Girls, Wilco, Sufjan Stevens, Erykah Badu, Spoon, Blind Boys of Alabama, Sturgill Simpson, Doomtree, Vince Staples, Tenement and James Blake.
On December 10, 2018, the festival organizers revealed that the festival would "take a year off" for 2019, announcing a planned relaunch of the festival on a different site with a new format slated for 2020. The festival did not take place in 2020 or 2021 due to the pandemic, and no future festival dates have been announced.
2015
The festival was founded as what Vernon described as [more than] “all the things I hate at festivals: really loud music all the time, no breaks, bad food, all that kind of thing.".
For the inaugural year, The National closed out the main stage Friday evening followed by late night sets at the uphill stage including Lizzo and Marijuana Deathsquads. The second night was anchored by Sufjan followed by Bon Iver, who closed the festival playing songs from both of his albums along with many guest artists. The festival leveraged much of the regional infrastructure in place for the Country Jam music festival, including the Foster Farms location and the Whispering Pines campground, with school buses used as shuttles between the two, while expanding the venue to include art domes and smaller stages in an uphill field previously unused by prior festivals.
The visual and performance arts experience began the moment festival goers entered the grounds, walking under an art piece of dangling colored yarn in a work commissioned from Eric Rieger, and continued through the giant letters of the Big Eaux sign. On a side stage each day the festival opened with a performance of Ragnar Kjartansson's Forever Love, a collaborative song cycle including costumed performances from Bryce and Aaron Dessner.
2016
The 2016 festival expanded the ideas of the first year, adding more bands and reconfiguring the grounds. A small forest stage and a second amplified stage were added atop the hill, while the downhill area changes included retiring the children's stage. Gone were the sweltering uphill art/music domes of the first year, replaced by an air-conditioned headphones dome. The Thursday night campground performances were replaced by a ticketed show in downtown Eau Claire by Phil Cook and the Guitarheels, who would also play the festival itself.
Notable performances in 2016 included the live premiere of Bon Iver's 22, A Million, and the only live performance of the Day of the Dead collaboration based on the album tribute charity album. Also new in 2016 was the inclusion of an art installation organ downhill where musicians would play unannounced performances in-between sets, and other hidden art pieces scattered around the grounds that festival goers had to seek out.
A common theme in both years of the festival was collaboration, including in the first year The Blind Boys of Alabama playing with the Lone Bellow, Amy Ray of Indigo Girls performing with Phil Cook, Sufjan Stevens playing with The National, No BS Brass Band and Bryce Dessner playing with Sufjan Stevens, Vernon playing with his old bandmate Aero Flynn and The National, and in the second year Lucius and The Staves making multiple guest appearances.
2017
The third year was notable for having neither Bon Iver nor The National playing sets of their own music, with the members of Bon Iver presenting music from John Prine and no scheduled involvement from the Dessners' bandmates.
In early February 2017 the creative team announced an overhaul for the third iteration of the festival via a bound book named "Troix". Sent to pre-sale ticket buyers, it included both the lineup and artist statements about how the festival had evolved, with a video including festival narrator Michael Perry laying at the outset that "the river doesn't plan its course ... it finds its course", likely pointing to both internal and external forces.