Deadhead Cannabis Show

How would replacing the Dead's drummers impact the band & will Illinois have enough cannabis on Jan 1st

Episode Summary

Jim & Marty discuss how changes in the band have or would have impacted the Grateful Dead starting with the drummers. Produced by PodCONX https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkin https://podconx.com/guests/jim-marty https://podconx.com/guests/rob-hunt

Episode Notes

Cannabis CPA Jim Marty from Bridgewest Accounting and Cannabis attorney Larry Mishkin from the Hoban Law Group begin the first of a series of discussions about the changes to the Grateful Dead and Dead and Company. In this episode they talk about the drummers, their styles and their relationship with the other members of the band. They close the episode talking about Illinois new adult use cannabis laws and if the cultivation facilities will have enough time to produce the cannabis to supply the demand on Jan 1st.

Produced by PodCONX

https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkin

https://podconx.com/guests/jim-marty

https://podconx.com/guests/rob-hunt

Episode Transcription

Jim Marty: [00:00:34] Hi everybody and welcome to the Deadhead cannabis show. Glad to have you on board.

Jim Marty: [00:00:39] Jim Marty here in Longmont Colorado and my partner Larry Mishkin from Chicago is on the line. Hey Jim how are you today. Good it's a beautiful day here in Colorado. Eighty six degrees and sunny out and we have lots to talk about. How are things in Chicago.

Larry Mishkin: [00:00:58] It's lovely here in Chicago. Weather is nice. And earlier this week our governor signed the adult legislation so we're very happy and very excited.

Jim Marty: [00:01:08] That's excellent as it is very exciting. Illinois is a big population state and having full adult use is going to be huge because in my opinion Illinois kind of messed up on medical marijuana. They thought their illness list was too restrictive. I thought the doctors were not on board with signing up patients though so you had an imbalance of production capacity in Illinois. and not a lot of patients. So now all that production capability can be focused on the adult population. Well here's something that's really interesting about that Jim and this leads me to what I like to talk about with you today for a few minutes is that forever the problem for the people with the only medical program was the patient count was so low exactly as the reasons you stated that.

Larry Mishkin: [00:01:58] Condition list was too restrictive. Doctors were being asked to write recommendations. Patients had to give fingerprints and it was going absolutely nowhere. One by one those those those hurdles fell away. And now what even to the point where once you're going you sign up within 24 hours you get a provisional card you know as long as you know you're not on the FBI most wanted list or anything like that. I was just talking to somebody the other day and I had checked it in a while and realized this all of a sudden the patient population in Illinois has shot up to almost 70000 people. And that's where the adult use coming right at the first of the year. So. here's my question. And you know what happened in Colorado what happens to the medical market. when it's old news shows up.

Jim Marty: [00:02:44] And it stays strong for a variety of reasons. So yeah we got high watermark for a patient count and our population is about 6 million. You know what Illinois's is about 12 million people. Yes almost twice our size and people. And so our high watermark for medical patients was about one hundred and ten thousand and it's drifted down since full adult use. But I still think we have over 80000. medical patients on the rolls and there's a couple of big reasons for that is for recreational adult use you pay about a 20 1 percent tax at the cash register so your 10 dollar joint cost you 12 dollars and change if you're a medical marijuana patient you just pay the regular Colorado sales tax of about 7 to 8 percent. So you save on taxes and you also save on prices a lot of times. Dispensaries have lower prices for medical patients. And then the big one is that in Colorado a few of you can get a medical card at 18 but you can't buy adult use until you're 21. So that's why we have 18 to 20 year 21 year old medical market. That's very strong here in Colorado as well.

Larry Mishkin: [00:04:00] Interesting. Let me ask you this. How does it work with supply and what I mean is you know you people island we're going to their medical dispensaries right now between now and January 1st when the program kicks in. The current dispensary licence holders are going to be allowed to take their current medical dispensary and make it a doubles use felt use and medical and get one additional adult use dispensary license so all of a sudden you know could be twice as many dispensaries without a whole heck of a lot more people. in Colorado today. Take any steps to make sure that the supply necessary to take care of the patients would be preserved or was it up to the dispensary owners to designate the marijuana wherever they thought they could you know get the best sales from. Well. what's going on there is.

Jim Marty: [00:04:52] Colorado is a free market system as far as the number of computation facilities. The number of extraction in retail. So the result of that you take the states that don't have any limits on cultivation licenses. Colorado Oregon and Washington state being the most prominent of those. They very quickly get oversupply. So it's going to be important for Illinois. is I think prices will stay high. I don't think you'll have over. Production and you'll probably have a shortage because for instance do you know how many cultivation licenses are available in Illinois.

Larry Mishkin: [00:05:31] Well that's the thing. First when it on January 1st the only ones producing will be the current. medical cultivation centers which 21 of them and they've been assuring us that they'll be able to meet our supply because they've only been growing on a relatively small percentage of their overall canopy space. due to the lack of a market because of all the restrictive conditions. So they take the present greatly now when they expand to their full space that they should be able to cover the additional surge of adult users. Does that make sense to you. It does. January 1st is when the first adult sales will take place. Correct and they'll be there'll be no additional licenses offered besides those one ons for the dispensaries to the current owners until May at which time they'll be offering 70 up to 75 adult use dispensaries. 40 what they're calling craft grows meaning that your canopy space will be limited to no more than 5000 square feet. And then they'll be giving out to 40 up process for licenses which will be the first time that they'll be allowing processing to take place outside of a cultivation center.

Jim Marty: [00:06:42] Wow. So Illinois is really moving forward on a lot of fronts. That's excellent. Oh yeah and Google cultivators be able to get a head start on January 1st will they be able to start growing adult use plants in their medical cultivation facilities this fall to get a harvest under their belt for January 1st. That's exactly why I'm asking the questions from before because I'm getting questions from people who were saying. if we start growing now to ramp up for January 1st.

Larry Mishkin: [00:07:13] We have to designate these plants one way or the other. We just grows so that we write away as soon as they can expand it they're already licensed to grow their facility they're just choosing to grow on a much smaller portion of it. I think that they can know relatively easily expanded to the rest of their space once they get all the equipment set up. I'm sure they have to have the state come in and review it all and looked it over. But you know these guys are already up and operating for three years now.

Larry Mishkin: [00:07:39] They should know what they're doing to be able to do that relatively quickly I would think.

Jim Marty: [00:07:43] Yes there's a lot of excess capacity as you pointed out because of the weak patient count wasn't being utilized. It would be great if Illinois could allow its cultivators to get one. I think you have enough time in the calendar as you said here on June 28 to get to it maybe even three harvest cycles under your belts which would give you the image where you're going to need when you're going to see long lines around the block at dispensaries a probably very cold January 1st in Chicago.

Larry Mishkin: [00:08:16] That's right. So the less it is you know if you're a medical card holder. Make sure you get there before the first of the year and stock up.

Jim Marty: [00:08:22] Yes. Well let's talk a little music because it's been a great week for music. Once again hearing that rave reviews on dead and co and finish dead and co played their first stadium show at Gillette Stadium and probably could have held 80000 people if it's sold out. I wasn't at the show but I talked to friends who were there and they did not sell the top tier of the stadium but they still had a good 60 to 70000 thousand people at the show. Once again I stadium was phenomenal best. Some of my friends have ever seen them. And then that was on Saturday night. And then the very next day Sunday they played Citi Field in Queens New York because was the metal glitter. And yeah it's been pretty fun to watch the videos. I wasn't able to attend that show either but the videos are that amazing. Jerry's Wolf Qatar resides at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. When somebody got permission to check it out bring it down to Citi Field and John Mayer plays Jerry's golf guitar throughout the whole show at Citi Field and from the videos I've seen that sure sounded pretty good.

Larry Mishkin: [00:09:36] That's really incredible. And actually I heard Parrish talking about that on the pitch Steve our on the Grateful Dead station on Sirius XM about how they broke that out. You know he was there to kind of oversee the whole scene and make sure it all went down okay and everything. Those are great stories to hear. Here's the question. Here's the question I'd love to ask you. You know there's no doubt that what we're seeing getting company right. We're missing Jerry. Jerry is not there anymore. So for whatever the reasons that we don't have to get and all of that is also not with them. And so you know we don't even have the core for we have the two drummers We have Bobby. I think there's no debate that they sound great. They're coming out with tremendous energy. The songs that they're playing are wonderful but you know it kind of led me and my buddies at the last show we read to kind of gauge. OK with mental gymnastics for a few minutes to try and go through the lineup of the band and really the core for right. They're the ones who filter through their kids. Then you know now that Jerry's gone and everything.

Larry Mishkin: [00:10:34] And I thought it might be fine if you know over the course of the next couple of weeks we kind of examine different positions in the band and discuss how the band could or could not survive without all the Kerry's the best way to talk about so I like to put that went off to the head start that I always have. But this is what we were talking about is how unnecessary or the drummer is. Don't get me wrong I love the approach but I love Mickey Hart and I think it could be fair to say that this conversation all of them played an integral role everybody in the band ultimately played a critical role to the whole thing. But now at this point if they're not going to be playing tainted with the whole group together you know when I saw still with John Lawler lines rubs I thought he was tremendous. Well there's been other drummers who have come in and done a great job and really whether it was the guys up front or other guitars or jamming. Does it really matter who's in the back and you know. Maybe yes maybe no. What would you say about that first that I'll answer.

Jim Marty: [00:11:28] Well certainly Bill Croutes a mickey heart as the drummers for the Grateful Dead or you know one of the great partnerships in rock n roll history might put it right there with Lennon McCartney. Jagger Richards but those two drummers play an absolute synchronicity. In fact there's stories that sometimes before the show they'll feel each other's pulse and their pulse will be beat. And so if you watch those two there it absolutely totally synchronized drumming. In fact Gerry actually switched sides of the stage when Mickey Hart joined the band. He used to be on the other side it was near some stage later stage which stage left.

Jim Marty: [00:12:10] But he was more in front of Billy more towards the middle in the 70s early 70s and then he switched sides to be on Mickey's side because he liked the military cadence of Mickey's playing Mickey got his start as a drummer in the Air Force and Air Force marching band. So when he came out of the Air Force in round 67 and by frequent circumstance join the Grateful Dead he brought a military cadence and a discipline Billy Bill craftsman is more of a jazz from. Jerry's theory on drummers was that you never stop whatever you do never stop drumming. And Billy really has that down. He'll just roll through a 90 minute set and even between the songs when the others are finding their way into the next song he'll still be drumming right along. But those are my comments on the drummers. Just a great team a great pair and the fact they've had the good health to tour hard and play hard up into their 70s they're well into their 70s now it's just one of the great gifts that we've had to be able to watch these two guys as they age. I'm going to let you jump in and then I have a point about Mickey Hart as branding some cannabis. I was seeing on the Internet but you go and comment on what I just said.

Larry Mishkin: [00:13:32] Well first of all you know there's a part of me that wants to just shut up and walk away because I don't know that I could say it any better than you just said it. And you know what I love about talking with you Jim is that there's always this inside that I didn't know the story about make hard in the military bad is the case that that makes sense and it's that it's tremendous. You know when I was watching it at Wrigley Field it was interesting that they had the camera on at least every time I looked up they had an I believe a lot more than they had about Mickey. And the thing about Bill that I love when he's strumming is he he looks it's effortless. If you get to sign him from the waist up and you could see his arms you would know that he was drumming. It's just like a natural extension of his arms and his salt fluid it just you know it's almost relaxed style that I'm not a drummer so I can't explain it but none of those you know where you see the rock and roll drummers of the 70s and 80s with the sticks are flying all over the place and it builds just up their drummer away it makes it a little more demonstrative I think when he drums. And what I've noticed certainly as you know is he's gotten a little bit older has he's mellowed it out a little bit on his side too. And there was that period of time when he left the band following issues with his father as the manager you know having taken some money with.

Larry Mishkin: [00:14:46] I never knew that the song he's gone was about his father. I always thought it was about somebody maybe one day. But you know admissions a little bit strange I remember Steve Parish in his book saying that originally the band had him working with Mickey and ramrod was working with Jerry but Steve just couldn't mesh with Mickey. They just couldn't see eye to eye. And so he was going to leave the band and ramrod switched with him and let Steve go work with Jerry and ramrod came over to work with Mickey you know to keep harmony and keep everybody in the band. And they said he was the one guy who could you know give it back and forth with Mickey. But here's the thing about Mickey. That to me will always endure him and make him so integral. She wrote the music for fire on them. You know it's a Robert Hunter song. That's Mickey Hart's music and I always tend to forget that from time to time but but it's one of my all time favorite yet. Scarlet Begonias is great but Scarlet Begonias know they're going into fire on the mountain just like oh you know they'll kick you off to a whole nother level. And I love the fact that you know Blinky wrote it and so it's so tame it during everything it's just great too. He's such a talented person. So yeah. OK what about his branding.

Jim Marty: [00:16:02] No great comments great comments. Young people listening back in the days and Dead shows were recorded on audio cassettes. We would write on the outside for scale then to fire on the mountain. Scarlet with an arrow and fire Scarlet arrow fire would indicate a Scarlet Begonias and to fire on the mountain which always seemed to go together rather nicely.

Larry Mishkin: [00:16:28] Absolutely. One of my favorites. Great way to start a set or so start a show or anywhere. They was stitcher then is OK with me.

Jim Marty: [00:16:34] So Mickey Hart's brand is called I just had it right here. Free your mind which is a Northern California stream. Mind your head. Mind your head and you'll be able to purchase that in 10 packs of one third of a gram joints. and it's that high CBD. But I seriously doubt that Mickey's out in the cultivation center tending those plants and trimming and harvesting. I think it's more like a Willie Nelson deal where he's lending his name to the product not necessarily. Maybe he might be doing a little bit testing the field testing and that's why do you think she's doing it.

Larry Mishkin: [00:17:17] You know that's another thing I like about Mickey too. She would not have been my first choice in terms of which one of the guys you know would start a cannabis brand. And you know I mean I guess my obvious choice of all time would have Jerry. But after Jerry I would have liked Billy. I really seems to me to be the kind of guy who likes to sit around and smoke a joint. We're always seemed a little too hyperactive to spend too much time spoke of marijuana. But I don't know. You know that those are just my observations from the peanut gallery here.

Jim Marty: [00:17:48] But one other observation and billy side is one of my favorite Billy experiences is when fish got back together in 2009 and played bedrock. They played four shows at Red Rocks on that reunion tour the summer of 2009 for an entire second set at Red Rocks. Billy Kurtzman sat in on the drums with John Fishman and it's available out there that you find. And it's probably one of the best characters zeroes I've ever heard. With Billy on drums with Fishman. So if you like the song character 0 by fish check out the jar. I believe it's August 2009 at Red Rock. Very very good. It was pretty fun and at the end of the set Fishman said I want to have my drummer back faster pace.

Larry Mishkin: [00:18:38] Listen I know we're about to run out of time but before we go your ear toward widespread panic this weekend aren't you.

Jim Marty: [00:18:43] Yeah I'm going to the Sunday man a 6:00 p.m. show. Looking forward to it. It'll be a perfect day for me because I'm going to get up and play with my friends and families who are going on the show with me. I'm going to cook everybody a good breakfast and as soon as breakfast is over we're gonna head right to red rice sit on the stairs and play some cribbage over the first ones in for G.A. and is the Sunday shows are very fun because it starts at 6:00 p.m. and there's no warmup band for the entire first set as in broad daylight. And then in essence it's a Sunday night work night. Very cool that we can get out of there about nine 30 10:00 o'clock and quote Steve Parrish home before midnight.

Larry Mishkin: [00:19:24] That's awesome man. That's perfect that'll be great fun for you guys. We've got a whole bunch of music coming up here so Jay rad fish. So we'll be able to join you guys out there for our Folsom Field this year. But you know for you to think about it for our listeners to mark on their challengers last weekend in July I'm going to be out your way in the Boulder area to see just two trucks. We should talk about that too but just friends I'm at red right. Good. So maybe we'll maybe we'll have stitcher that are doing a show from the barn that weekend and if we can get our wonderful producer Dan Humiston out there with us then we really have a good time.

Jim Marty: [00:20:02] That sounds great. And we'll be the next show that we're going to do is July 5th. That will be a broadcast from my barn right before the dead and Co show over at Folsom Field in Boulder. And we do have a special guest a good friend of mine Duke Brumley and Duke works in the rehab business. Alcohol and Drug Rehab. And so we're going to get some of his. What he sees as some of the social impacts of legal cannabis. So we'll have that to look forward to also.

Larry Mishkin: [00:20:29] And we're going to talk about whether or not phil replaceable especially soup's getting cold but doing wonderful with oatmeal. Oh but I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on that next week too.

Jim Marty: [00:20:41] Well you're going to get some good fresh thoughts because I just saw Phil on May 30 first and at 79 years old he completely filled the Red Rocks with his base. That was wonderful. So lots of good comments. I've never been disappointed on a fill in friendship.

Jim Marty: [00:20:56] No very good cover. All right everybody. Wonderful overflow from the Deadhead cannabis show. Thank you Jim. Larry have a great time. That widespread.

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