If you don't know DeYarmond Edison, well my friend, consider yourself in the majority (although I know I've got the eyeballs of at least three of you that could do this write-up with far more insight than me, including one of you who's acknowledged as keyboardist on page 17), which is why I was shocked to receive an email on June 1: "Announcing 'Epoch', the Definitive Box Set from DeYarmond Edison." What wait? A never-signed to a label, released two albums band has a "definitive box set" coming out on five vinyl, four CDs, plus extra digital only content? There's a lot to unpack. Most of which I can't even begin to cover here.

Derived from the middle names of one Justin Vernon, the quartet (sometime quintet, sometime sextet) started in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and ended in Raleigh, North Carolina. This box set spans the Midwest prologue and Southeastern maturation of a group whose future never arrived. The epilogue is present both within the contents of Epoch and through what the world came to know as Bon Iver. 

Epoch begins with two tracks not by DeYarmond Edison, but Mount Vernon, a high school band featuring all four future DeYarmond members, plus a handful of others. From there the tale unfolds, and includes, in summation: 

• the entirety of the group's second LP
• a Myspace-only EP
• a collection of tunes that most directly portends that which didn't come to pass
• the often experimental live recordings from early 2006 (covered over four CDs)
• Vernon's solo, self-released 100 CD-R edition Hazeltons from that same July (some 12 months before his Bon Iver debut For Emma, Forever Ago, and very much a companion) that more or less signaled the end of DeYarmond Edison
• a selection of "we just broke up" spiteful tunes from all parties that same summer
• a few tracks three to seven years later of the DeYarmond members "reunited" through Bon Iver and Megafaun collaborations. 

Whew. 

Whether or not that qualifies as a happy ending, the box set is something to behold. 

I was dubious about the quality to which these recordings could be presented on vinyl, but it is almost disgusting how good everything sounds, from the high school Mount Vernon, to the self-recorded Hazeltons, not to mention Silent Signs and Epoch, etc., that second DeYarmond Edison full length and third that never was. Hats off to Adam McDaniel's mastering, it is beyond impressive. 

And then there's the book. Through his own friendship with the musicians along with extensive research, Grayson Haver Currin tells the overlapping Brad Cook, Phil Cook, Justin Vernon, and Joe Westerlund evolution, going back to 1993, through an 11-chapter, 114-page paperback that is a work in its own right, detailed through intimate photos and, among other things, battle of the bands posters, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire campus newspaper, a letter to drummer Joe Westerland from Wynton Marsalis. And that's just the first 16 pages. 

The entire listening experience is a combination of admiration, confusion, and possibility. What's the point of something so grandiose under the name of a band who, in the grand scheme of things, is largely just a blip on the radar? Well, for one, it's good music and a window into a future unrealized. And for those involved, the answer lies in the set's title.