WAMI announces awards nominees, takes a chance on Grammy-winning upstart Bon Iver
Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, moments after the announcement.
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The Wisconsin Area Music Industry—or WAMI, if you’re nasty—has always been a strange beast. The pay-to-play organization’s annual awards are even stranger, and seem to exist solely as an excuse to celebrate the state’s many hardworking cover bands, the BoDeans, groups that recently scored record deals, the BoDeans, and folks who can utter the words “Wisconsin” and “music industry” without losing their lunch. So it should come as no surprise that the just-announced 2012 nominees are a gloriously mixed bag, and that one of the most successful groups to come out of Wisconsin, Bon Iver, is up for a bunch of awards. Because who needs multiple Grammys when you can go up against Reverend Raven And The Chain Smokin’ Altar Boys for Wisconsin Artist Of The Year?
Here are a few categories of note:
Artist of the Year
Bon Iver, Naima Adedapo, I’m Not A Pilot, Lucas Cates, Reverend Raven And The Chain Smokin’ Altar Boys, The Fatty Acids
Album of the Year
Bon Iver, Bon Iver; Love Love, Jayme Dawicki; 10:49, Aaron Williams & The Hoodoo; La Tortuga, De La Buena; Calling All Dawns (Christopher Tin), Waterford Union High School; Chico, Herman Astro
Song of the Year
“72 ½ Toyota Truck,” Jayme Dawicki; “Coffee Beans,” Annie B. And The Vagabond Company; “Tell Me (What I Gotta Do),” Herman Astro; “Holocene,” Bon Iver; “I-94,” Trapper Schoepp And The Shades; “Blame It On Me,” The Delta Routine
Polka
The Happy Schnapps Combo, Buttons And Banjo, Steve Meisner Band, The Squeezettes, The Jerry Schneider Band
The complete list of nominees is similarly random, though it does include A.V. Club favorites like The Fatty Acids, The Celebrated Workingman, and, um, Cherry Pie? The awards show is scheduled for April 15 and is being moved from Milwaukee to Appleton this year, possibly in an attempt to lure Eau Claire-based Bon Iver to the ceremony. Should Justin Vernon and friends attend (they won’t) and win (they will), they can thank all of the little people who made their success possible, and gently remind those same little people to pay their annual WAMI membership dues.
[It should also be noted that the Milwaukee A.V. Club has once again been shut out of the “Media (Print or Electronic)” category. Just tell us where to send the check, WAMI!]
