Grateful Dead hybrid act Dead & Co. will headline two nights at the 1stBank Center in Denver suburb Broomfield on Tuesday and Wednesday — but before they take the arena’s stage they toured one of Colorado’s largest marijuana cultivation facilities.
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The Cannabist found out about the weed tour when a friend tagged us on Mayer’s Instagram — where the singer-songwriter’s latest post had him adopting a prayer pose in the middle of a professional grow room with three levels of plants. Mayer’s only text on the photo was a tag to Medicine Man’s Insta.
“It was awesome — it was so much fun,” said Medicine Man CEO Andy Williams, who gave Mayer, Bill Kreutzmann, Oteil Burbridge and other bandmates and crew the tour. “You should have seen John Mayer when he took that one picture — I was standing right behind the camera person, and they were having so much fun in there.”
Mayer — who once said of his own limited marijuana use, “I am in the sort of suburban housewife category of weed smoking” — looks at peace in the photo. That makes sense, as the musicians took their time while meandering through the cannabis cultivation, according to Medicine Man CEO Williams, who guided the tour with his brother Pete Williams (Medicine Man’s COO) and sister Sally Williams (Medicine Man’s president)
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“When we first got in there, they were very conscious about pictures being taken and wanted this to be their time, which I understand completely,” said Williams. “So we got them in the back pretty quickly and started showing them around, gave them the history of Medicine Man and how we transformed from an empty warehouse to where we are today.
“We never let anybody in our rooms, but for these guys you open the doors. And we let them spend as much time and ask as many questions as they wanted. We took them through the veg rooms and through different flower rooms, we showed them the different stages of growth, and then we saw two different cure rooms and the trim room.”
Plenty of swag was exchanged after the tour. The band gifted the Medicine Man crew a bunch of tickets and backstage passes to the show, Williams said, and as soon as Mayer tagged the shop on his Instagram post, Medicine Man’s social media blew up. (Mayer has 1.3 million followers on Insta, and his photo had more than 55,000 likes and 5,000 comments only two hours after it’d been posted.)
“I was talking with my social media guy,” Andy Williams said, “and his instant message notifications of new followers was blowing up his phone.”
The band left the shop with arms full of Medicine Man gear — “I’m hoping they wear it at the show,” Williams said — and Williams presented the band with a custom, Medicine Man-branded drum from Castle Rock company Joyful Noise Drum Company, a gift for Dead & Co. percussionist Mickey Hart, who missed Monday’s tour but has been by the shop’s grow before, Williams said.
