Willie Nelson’s Willie’s Reserve. Band of Heathens’ Heathens Haze. Wiz Khalifa’s Khalifa Kush. And of course, no mention of musicians in marijuana could go without Snoop Dogg, who has his own brand of cannabis products (Leafs by Snoop), media company (Merry Jane) and cannabis private equity firm (Casa Verde Capital).
Thievery Corporation are the latest musicians to join the cannabis industry. The electronic music duo – Rob Garza and Eric Hilton – are partnering with vaporizer brand Pax and the cannabis extract producers Blue River for their latest album, Treasures for the Temple. The album and cannabis products both drop on – you guessed it – 4/20.
With Pax, Thievery Corporation will produce their own limited-edition Pax Era – the company’s cannabis concentrate vaporizer. The Pax Era is only compatible with Pax Era pods, produced in partnership with select concentrate manufacturers. Blue River will be handling production of the Lebanese Blonde Pax Pod – named after the group’s 1997 eponymous single. The song itself was a tribute to Lebanese hash, a precursor of the modern cannabis concentrates you see on dispensary shelves today.
“We released Lebanese Blonde more than 20 years ago, so this whole adventure is a great tribute to the journey we’ve been on together,” Rob Garza said in a statement announcing the news. “This partnership was a no-brainer for us, since we were already huge Pax and Blue River fans.”
The feeling was mutual. Tony Verzura, the founder of Blue River, was a fan of the group in his former career as a music studio engineer. As “a huge Thievery fan… he was able to develop a product that cerebrally reflected the type of experience we wanted our consumer to have when smoking Lebanese Blonde,” said Garza. “[Verzura’s] extraction method was based off of the same practices used in Lebanon for a century which involves a sifting procedure that [he] had mechanized with modern technology.”
Fellow Thievery fans will only be able to buy the vaporizer and cannabis oil pod at certain dispensaries in California, but Pax hopes to roll them out to other markets later this year.
Credit: forbes.com