Bad Weather California premieres new video from Sunkissed

​Since the guys in Bad Weather California each have busy lives and work at different times, it's hard enough for them to find time to get together for an hour to practice, let alone make a music video. That said, making grandiose videos was just out of the picture for the band, so instead they hooked with Brass Tree Sessions' Leighton Peterson and his crew to shoot the video for "I'll Raise Up My Hand," a song from the band's forthcoming album, Sunkissed, due out on February 21, on Akron/Family's Family Tree imprint. The video ended up being shot at the Brass Tree house with some footage from the band's set at the Gothic last November with Nathanial Rateliff. Keep an eye out for a ton of cameos.

Bad Weather California just wrapped up a three-week tour with Akron/Family last weekend in Brooklyn and is playing shows in the south before heading back to Denver later in this month. Frontman Chris Adolf says Bad Weather's friendship with Akron/Family goes back about three years when the two bands shared a bill in Vail.

"Just from the get-go we all kind of hit it off," Adolf says. "Just being non-rockstar dudes, just regular people who like to play music, just out of being earnest people. It's weird being earnest people that go on stage. We all have that in common. We all hit it off as buddies. They liked our band a lot and they said they wanted to help us."

In the fall of 2010, Bad Weather went to Detroit to record Sunkissed at engineer Chris Koltay's studio with Akron/Family's guitarist Seth Olinsky handling the production duties. It was the first the band had worked with a producer.

"Us, as a band, we know the songs this way -- X way," Adolf says. "After a while your brain only knows it that way. It's kind of like if you hear a cover a song. Even though the cover may be better you never really accept it. It's doubly and triply with songs you've written and produced. So you can get trapped though. You're just used to hearing it a certain way and a fifth brain in there being like, 'Hey! He's fresh to it.' He's not trapped in the box of hearing it a certain way.

"We've been playing it shows so many times we're trapped in it." he adds. "Seth was a new brain that gets deep into the song and has a key to unlock the box that you've built around it. It was just nice to have a fresh set of ears on everything and be like, 'What if we did a Motown beat on this one?' I never thought of that lets try it.

"If, at the end of the day, that's the better thing, cool," he concludes. "There were some things we were right the first time and Seth backed off on some of his ideas. At the end of the day, this is another player, another artist, another musician that we trust to get new ears on it. That was his role. He wasn't pushy. He wasn't bossy. He was a fifth member of the band."

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