Emerson Drive Film New ‘Sleep It Off’ Music Video

On Wednesday, June 29, the members of Emerson Drive flocked to Watertown, Tenn. to film a music video for their upcoming Canadian single, 'Sleep It Off,' as seen in the photo gallery here. The song will impact the country radio airwaves north of the U.S. boarder later this month, so the band wasted no time readying the song's video.

The video's opening scene shows small town U.S.A., where the Emerson Drive tour bus breaks down in front of an old gas station as the workers are closing up shop for the day. As smoke clouds stream from the back of the bus, the Emerson Drive members -- Brad Mates (lead vocals), David Pichette (fiddle), Mike Melancon (drums), Danick Dupelle (guitar/background vocals), Dale Wallace (keyboard/background vocals) and their bassist, Arlo Gilliam -- pile from the bus, deciding to make themselves at home in the gas station lot. They begin to take coolers off the bus filled with cold beverages, and set their instruments up for a little jam session, which draws the attention of the local town folk who are ready to have a good time.

'Sleep It Off' marks the fifth Emerson Drive video that their own David Pichette has had a hand in contrubuting to the creative process and directing. Pichette worked with Flick Whiltshire on the band's previous videos for 'I Love This Road,' 'When I See You Again' and 'That Kind of Beautiful,' as well as their latest U.S. single released earlier this year, 'Let Your Love Speak,' which he co-wrote the treatment for with Australian director Adam Khamis. Pichette does admit that juggling the directing with his own on-camera scenes can be a little overwhelming at times.

"It actually got crazy when we got to the performance of the band, because all morning, I had the director’s hat on, where I didn’t have to be in frame or in front of the camera," Pichette tells Taste of Country. "I really love being behind the camera and seeing how we’re setting up a room or setting up lighting, or how we’re actually dealing with our main character that’s outside the band when we’re shooting the B-roll or the storyline. When we got to that point where we were setting up the production for the performance, that’s when I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to go change! I need to get makeup! I need to get the camera in the right place!’ I was following my storyboard and following the idea that I’ve had when I wrote the treatment, when I was thinking the whole video through. I had like a minute and a half of panic, and then we were right in position, and we performed. I was actually going back and forth between the monitor to see if the frame was good and make sure we had the right lenses on … then running in the frame and perform[ing] my thing, but I didn’t mind it! It all worked out great in the end!"

'Sleep It Off' is set to air on CMT Canada starting July 26, but stay tuned to Taste of Country for the video in the coming weeks.