CHRIS ADOLF - GUITARS, SINGING, WRITING
I’m a regular person just like you. I’m not fancy.
It took me a long time to get BWC off the ground. At 14 years old I started to learn how to use borrowed cassette 4 track recorders to compensate for the lack of anyone who actually wanted to play the music that I wanted to play. I grew up in the desert southwest on my family’s tree farm. I wasn’t privy to the ‘hip’ music, art etc. that the suburban and urban kids were. (This was pre-internet.) We didn’t have cable TV so I wasn’t exposed to the MTV culture of the 80s-90s. My parents had stacks and stacks of magical, classic 60s records though. Beattles, Stones, Dylan, Mamas, Papas, Velvet Undergrounds etc... The greats. The Classics. I didn’t discover modern music until way later. Like so many pre-internet, small-town-outsiders, I discovered more alt/punk music through skate boarding magazine ‘Thrasher’. I mail ordered records from bands like Sonic Youth and other alt/punk stuff that I read about in Thrasher. I was pretty turned on by it all and it was a big influence but to this day, the warm and honest feeling of my parent’s records will overshadow everything I listened to.
Bad Weather California was started as a live vehicle for my home recordings. We are regular people.
JOE SAMPSON - BASS, GUITARS, SINGING
(Written by Chris) I met Joe through a friend Kate Magnus in 2002. Mutual admiration for one another as songwriters immediately drew us towards collaboration. Like myself, Joe is also a home recording nerd. Joe is the longest standing member of BWC besides myself. Joe has stuck it out through countless member changes in the early 2000s. Joe’s solo work has gained him critical acclaim as a songwriter. A highly respected member of Denver’s music and art community. A quote from Denver Westword’s article on Joe’s best songwriter of the year award sums it up best, “We don’t know who your favorite songwriter is but we’re willing to bet that your favorite songwriter’s favorite songwriter is Joe Sampson.”
Joe’s father was a Jazz singer who had four sons so he could form a barbershop quartet with them. As a young boy Joe performed with his three brothers as a kind of Connecticut, Barbershop Jackson 5. The Sampson 4? Joe has a deep catalog of over 200 home recorded songs called, ‘The Box Set’. If you ask him he’ll probably send it to you on CDR.
CONTACT JOE
OTHER PROJECTS:
ADAM BAUMIESTER - GUITARS, PETAL STEEL
(Written by Chris) Adam and I knew who each other were before we had ever actually met. Going back into the late 90s we networked in the same small circle of lo-fi recording nerds. Before myface.com people used to mail tapes to each other. And yes, like Joe and I, Adam is also a home recording nerd.
We finally met in person when I offered to record Adam’s now legendary Denver punk band The Navy Girls.
I was immediately blown away by his strange psychedelic style. Adam is one of those guitar players that you know who it is the second you hear the first note. No one sounds like Adam.
In 2008 his solo project, Littles Paia, was awarded, ‘Best One Man Band’ by the Denver Westword. You should get one of his records. It’s a trip. A perfect blend of American folk and avant psychedelia.
CONTACT ADAM
OTHER PROJECTS:
LOGAN COCORAN - DRUMS, MOVIES
(Written by Chris) We must be doing something right because we were able to get one of Denver’s most in demand Drummers. I mean, everyone wants this guy in their band. We almost had to fight Seattle’s iji for him on our last tour! And he almost ended up in Rounder Record’s the Wheel. (Probably would have made more money with them Logan! Glad you chose us.)
One word for Logan would be ENERGY!!!
I remember a few years ago watching Boulder’s teamAWESOME! play with my jaw on the ground as this dude ripped. I remember telling him that night that if he ever found himself living in Denver we should play. When teamAWESOME! announced that they were playing their last show we pounced.
He also makes all of BWC’s videos.
OTHER PROJECTS:
THIS ISN’T NEXT LEVEL MUSIC. THIS IS STREET LEVEL MUSIC.
“Great rehearsal guys! You guys remind me of the Grateful Dead!”
This is how Daniel Johnston described Denver’s Bad Weather California after their first rehearsal as his backing band. They weren’t sure what to make of Daniel’s comment. Was that a compliment or an insult?
Adam (guitars) finally got the nerve to ask, “So Daniel… Do you like the Grateful Dead?”
“Oh yeah! I love the Dead! I used to go see them in Texas all the time. There were so many people dancing!”
But NO. Here’s how we see it:
A punk band that doesn’t sound like one. A sound track to a made up movie about the summer you spent skateboarding, discovering drugs, going to the beach, falling in love... This is American music. Drawing on The Velvet Underground, John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band to the Minutemen and Black Flag, Bad Weather California is both timeless and classic yet forward-thinking and modern.
“The songs should write themselves. The performances should look easy… As a kid, I used to have this intense nervous feeling when I would go watch punk bands play. Like anything might go down. Like it was unstable. I’m looking for that again. Striving for it,” explains guitarist/singer Chris BWC
(As written by Chris Swanson at Secretly Canadian/ St. Ives Records)(He said it not us!)
“Bad Weather California -- the minute-men of the 2010s -- are taking misfit culture back to the streets. A working class band that’s clearly in it for life,”
In this fast paced world of cyber-culture, where bands have a shelf life of about as many months as they have paid the publicist for, Bad Weather California carry on in the spirit of earlier, punk legends that paved the way and inspired us all so many years ago.
THE “ONE SHEET”
BIOGRAPHIES
PDF version here