Cali High

          After enlisting in the US Navy and spending a year at the Naval Air Technical Training Center, in Millington Tennessee, I managed to get stationed close to home at the Naval Air Station Point Mugu’s Search and Rescue Division. While there, I put a band together with three friends and three female Thai background singers.

         During my fourth year in the Navy, and a few years with the band, I got orders to a munitions ship that would be going to the first Gulf War. I found this turn of events unacceptable according to what I believed and applied for discharge as a conscientious objector.

         This episode has been one of the most difficult to write and read due to the heaviness of the material and so I tried not to edit that heaviness out.

         This story deals with internal struggles in the band and a personal relationship that developed as well as my ordeal with the United States Navy.

This week we check back in with Armen Paronyan, CEO of LA Cannabis to talk about the present state of legal cannabis in California. Armen is a board member of the United Cannabis Business Association here in Southern California and we discuss his dealings with state legislators regarding issues of cannabis tax, regulation, and licensing. 

We find out about various bills proposed to make cannabis tax laws less onerous and fairer. We discover where the industry is currently, and where it’s headed, as well as the future of cannabis nationally. The discussion includes what can be done about California’s onerous Metric system of tagging plants with hundreds of thousands of plastic RFID tags. We talk about AB 1111 and the proposal for cannabis farmers’ markets. 

Armen also explains why LA Cannabis has recently made the switch to organic soil in 5 gallon grow bags after using Rockwell cubes for over a decade in a hydroponic setting. He also tells us about his new strains and the lower prices favoring consumers. Tune in for an in-depth talk with one of the most knowledgeable people in cannabis today.

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We return to the world of cannabis for a talk with Nat Pennington and his daughter Halle Pennington of the Humboldt Seed Company about the origins of cultivars, registering strains in Columbia, searching for landraces in Jamaica, the development of triploids, which I found out has nothing to do with three leaves, old strains, new strains as well as scratch and sniff cannabis and more.

         Welcome to Cali High Episode 65: The Gare Du Nord

         This is the fifth episode in a new series called,  “A Work in Progress: A Retrospective of Adventures”.

         The Gare Du Nord is a cautionary travelers’ tale which begins in a rainstorm in Studio City and takes us through Paris, Tunis, and Amsterdam and ends on a Eurostar train bound for Florence Italy. 

         This episode leaves out certain names, or changes them, due to concerns over various countries’ cannabis laws and current political climates as well as family.

Welcome to Cali High Episode 64: Soy Cowboy pt. 1

This is the fourth episode in a new series called “A Work in Progress, a Retrospective of Adventures. In this episode, Cenzo joins the Navy and gets stationed at Naval Air Station, Point Mugu and decides to put a band together. The band, Soy Cowboy, plays its first show, live on Tom Schnabel’s Morning Becomes Eclectic, at KCRW, while Cenzo is still in the Navy. 

         The episode ends with a recording of that performance.

Cenzo meets his new partner Molly and flies to Miami to meet Rick Hershman founder of the now world-famous Rick’s Café Negril.

Next, a chance encounter on the Sunset Strip with two guys sporting dreadlocks, who turned out to be two of the world’s most prominent reggae musicians: Stephen Cat Coore and Richard Daily of the band, Third World. 
Lastly, a blessed memory of smoking with Bunny Rugs.
It is a story of a serendipitous chain of events linked by my time in Jamaica and how the threads of that experience wove together a tapestry of lives.
Episode 63 takes place the year after episode 61: Jamaica and is the third episode in a new series called “A Work in Progress,” a retrospective of adventures.
Episode 63 is dedicated to the memory of Molly Harper, Richard Hershman and William “Bunny Rugs” Clarke!

Welcome to Cali HIGH episode 62: Instant Karma
This week we have a very special two-part episode. In part 1, Satire meets a most earnest quest for the hearts and minds of our fans and in part 2, We have a true childhood story of weed, recklessness and mischief.

This week we have a special holiday episode for you. Jamaica is the first in a new series of retrospectives called, A Work in Progress. It is a story of my search for Rastafarians, and their herb and what really happened as well as the lessons learned. This episode is a true story and is dedicated to the memory of Joe Frank, Richard Hershman and Reford Ward! 

This week we visit Rancho Verde Farms close to harvest and talk with my old friend Peter G. Out on the California coastal plains, Peter G has a medical grow at Rancho Verde Farm, where the it gets sun all day from sunrise to sunset. We take a stroll with Peter through the garden and learn some of his clever growing techniques. 

Peter has been a friend of mine for 44 years. We were in an avant-garde band called The Dadas in the late ‘70’s and in recent years he has been a mentor to me, helping me with my grow and sharing his knowledge, expertise and techniques of growing high quality, healthy cannabis. Peter is a drummer and after the garden visit, we composed a small duet for drums and melodica, of which several clips are interspersed in this episode. This is a fun episode to watch if just to watch us circle the garden and uncover gems of knowledge while checking out Peter’s grow. Not to mention the musical repartee between us. Just two (too) high OG’s in the garden and jamming! Check it out!

Also included at the end of the episode is the only known clip of The Dadas performing Pete the Pet Shampooer

This week our guest is Victor Pinho proprietor of Emerald Farm Tours.

Based out of San Francisco, his tours will take you to cannabis farms in Mendocino and the Anderson Valley to see first hand what you may have only imagined. Tours include wine tasting and dining experiences as well and recently expanded bar services for private events. Tours of the farms culminate with stopping at the local outlets carrying the farm’s products, so tour goers can purchase cannabis from the farms they have just visited. Emerald tours also includes visits to cannabis lounges and cannabis landmarks. Tours are mostly seasonal from July to harvest season. 

This week our guest is Adam Gross, vice president of Ineffable Records, a reggae label with the world’s leading artists in the field, such as Stick Figure, Collie Buddz, Surfer Girl, DENM, The Dirty Heads and many more. Gross was fortunate enough to join the company in 2019 just as Stick Figure was about to release World on Fire, which Adam parlayed into one of the biggest hits of the modern genre. We talk about the record business, developing artists, as well as putting artists together in collabs to expand audiences. Gross relates some of his more memorable moments from festivals and concerts and talks about some of Ineffable’s new artists.

Stay tuned for a most enlightening interview!

This week our guest is Carter Reeves, the innovative young singer-songwriter of the band, Surfer Girl. He recently released his first single, Two, a collab with The Hip Abduction, off his upcoming album, Sunrise, due to be released in September. Reeves’ songs embrace the feel-good aspects of surf/reggae culture and at the same time can leave you thinking on a deeper level while his catchy melodies linger in your head. His first self-titled EP, Surfer Girl, on Ineffable Records, written during the pandemic, shows his depth of talent and may end up becoming anthemic of the period, with songs such as Hero and Joyride, and Bag of Bones. Carter saw his first success with the band AER right after high school and we talk about those early beginnings in New England, as well his move to the West Coast. He tells of getting signed to Ineffable Records and the collaborations with other artists on Ineffable, including the Collie Buddz collab on Roots Riddim 2021 with the song Family! Reeves also talks about his musical influences, and the decision to put his solo material on hold while moving forward with Surfer Girl. This is a very cool episode and includes the official video for Bag of Bones off the Surfer Girl EP! Stay Tuned!

This week our guest is BIG ARSON aka Justin Klaus, a young local hip-hop artist from the 818, who has just released his fifth album at the age of 23 called Keep Going! He gives Cali High a candid look into his creative process for this album, which is tied in with the inspiration and support given by is uncles and dad in pursuit of his goals. Justin tells us how the theme of Keep Going is derived from that inspiration and support! We include music from BIG ARSON’s 2022 release, Keep Going in some B-roll from the backyard and over the credits.

Happy 420 from Cali High!

Cali High joins Brett Feldman of WonderBrett at the WonderBrett facilities in Long Beach for an enlightening interview on the history of WonderBrett and the future of cannabis. We talk about growing up in the San Fernando Valley and his early days attending Humboldt State University, and procuring the good herb to bring back to the 818. Brett recalls hanging out with Dre and Snoop, and how he was gifted the original OG Kush, which led to such strains as Orange Sunset and Pink Picasso, as well as others. The discussion flows to the preservation of strains, how long to keep a mother, and what to look for in a male. Brett describes the new five-acre farm in Santa Barbara and reveals a new line of WonderBrett seeds coming soon. We also talk artwork and cultural influences behind the iconic brand. 

As planting season draws near, we talk with Nat Pennington about the new strains at Humboldt seed company, the selection and process for making a stabilized strain, improved quality of auto-flower strains, how to save a phenotype with tissue culture, trends in strain popularity and commercial vs. personal seed choices. We also talk about the current problems with the legalization of cannabis in California, and more. Coming from a science background, Nat is one of best-informed people in cannabis breeding, and as in our previous interviews with him, he lays out a cornucopia of valuable knowledge before us in this must-see episode.

Nat also appears in Cali High Episodes 39 and 23!

Considering recent media reports which have described a collapsing cannabis industry in California, due to unfair, over-taxation, we reach out to the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance’s Executive Director, Michael Katz, for an update on this potentially devastating news. We find out why the cannabis community of legacy farmers in Northern California are up in arms about cultivation and excise taxes and other challenges they face. We talk about the Equity Grant Program and the difficulties it is having due to mismanagement and understaffing in Mendocino County. Katz has many years of experience in the cannabis industry and the PR industry and is the MCA’s first full-time executive director.

Happy New Year from Cali High! 2021 is coming to a close and we’ve put together a little montage of memorable moments from our incredibly talented musical guests! We are immensely grateful to all them for sharing their stories with our audience. And we are grateful to our followers and listeners for the thoughtful interactions we’ve had!

 If you’ve been a little remiss as to watching full length videos, here’s a good place to start. This is a true Cali High classic adorned with a little video clip of each guest as well. Most are from the Cali High backyard series and a few long-distance Zooms from Jamaica, Mt. Piños CA and Florida. 

As Cali High starts 2022, we look back at the year that was in the cannabis industry. We talk with three growers, two NORML people, Two CEO’s, and a fellow podcaster! We speak with Armen Paronyan and Chris Koljan from LA Cannabis Co, Chiah Rodriques of Arcanna Flowers, River Txai Farm and Chaos Herbals as well as the herb documentary, Lady Buds. We speak with Nat Pennington of Humboldt Seed Company about the removal of four dams along the Klamath River, and incredible win for the Native peoples of Northern California as well as for Northern California itself. We learn a lot from Ellen Scanlon of How to Do the Pot podcast and Peter G of Pete’s Garden! Then we also check in with CA NORML and LA NORML’s Ellen Komp and Ian Rassman about patient advocacy in a recreational cannabis California. Quite an entertaining and informative episode if we do say so ourselves!! 

Rocky Dawuni, our guest for episode 37, has just been nominated for a 2022 Grammy. And so, we are revisiting our episode with Rocky for your holiday entertainment!  After our interview with Rocky, his latest album, Voices of Bunbon, was nominated for a 2022 Grammy in the category of Best Global Music Album, and this is his second Grammy nomination. 

Dawuni is a Ghanaian singer songwriter and while his roots are in the African styles of High Life and Afrobeat, he often plays reggae as well- and his 2015 album, Branches of the Same Tree was nominated for Best Reggae Album. 

Dawuni is a statesman and a humanitarian as well as a singer/songwriter. His videos are cinematic masterpieces, and we feature two in this episode. We talk about his music, growing up in Ghana, the first time he ever heard a Bob Marley song, his muses for certain tunes, and his videos. Dawuni is eloquent and thoughtful, and this interview is a classic! Watch it now! Happy Holidays from Cali High! Stay blessed! 

Ryan Cash is an amazingly original Jamaican artist who is a self-proclaimed ganja man with several albums of material, one of which, his 2019 release, Smoke One, is a whole album of herb songs, each it its own genre, from old school hip hop to roots to dancehall to dubstep and trap as well. He comes from Waterhouse, a neighborhood in Kingston, Jamaica. We talk about his concern for the youth of the Caribbean and his album, Save the Caribbean.  

While his style is his own and he calls it Universal, we here at Cali High dubbed it Croaking Lizard Style in a shout out to Lee Scratch Perry. We talk about his early influences and his childhood in Jamaica and explore his music in depth. We feature his video Blowing Smoke! Ryan is a brilliant fellow and his words are worth listening to!