Culture
Mendo Dope Drops a New Album Live From the Garden
Musical duo known for their specialized focus on growing cannabis releases their second album recorded inside the ganja farm.
Sure, brothers Old E and Bleezy grow monster outdoor plants and create a unique genre of music they call cannabis culture, but when Mendo Dope decided to create an entire album from tracks they recorded live in their personal ganja garden they added another level of meaning to their message. Now the musical duo is back with a new live release and this time they brought even more fire. “Live in the Garden Season 2” was released on 420 and contains plenty of instant hits for your next smoke sesh.
Starting with a track that comes in at 4 minutes and 20 seconds, “Cough and Choke” opens with a cacophony of symbols and keyboard strokes.
“Puff this, you might cough you might choke,” Old E says. “Puff this and leave clouds of the smoke. So Puff this, burn it down to the roach. You might cough you might choke, that’s how you know that it’s dope.”
The YouTube video that shows the making of the track shows producer Bleezy crafting the song outdoors in the dead of night. When Old E steps in to record his lyrics in the light of day his microphone can be seen located within a giant marijuana plant, expertly trellised to grow around the mic.
Cannabis cultivators at their very core, Mendo Dope created an entire album based around the intricacies of marijuana culture. One track on the new album “Fiskarz” is an homage to trimming sheers. At the end of the making of video for the song the brothers climb on top of one of their massive outdoor plants and trim off fat 12-inch colas.
“I’m headed out to the next crop, still got resin on me from the last harvest,” Old E says embodying the sheers themselves. “Head hunting, going for tops in the hands of a farmer with past charges.”
To help them create “Live in the Garden Season 2” Mendo Dope invited both musical artists and cannabis legends to collaborate in their grow. Famed TGA breeder Subcool adds his voice to the opening track of the new album and joined in a group of friends and well wishers at the album release party in Santa Rosa earlier this month. The afternoon affair, hosted by the Natural Cannabis Company, featured a hosted dab bar in another type of garden setting, one that might be most traditionally used to host events like wine country weddings.
Upon arrival the group was spotted hanging out in a tiki hut just beyond a small pond. The hut was packed tightly with people surrounding a table overflowing with Backwoods and dab rigs. With a bit of convincing — there was a pinch of tobacco paired with the hashish — Mendo Dope was spotted taking huge rips from a traditional chillum provided by Frenchy Cannoli, the hash maker featured in a few of their songs including the unforgettable 2014 classic “Hashishin.”
At 4:20 p.m. Old E was wielding a giant cannabis stem that Mendo Dope crafted into a “ganja mic stand” and performing alongside Bleezy along with reggae artists Winstrong and Trevor Lyon who contributed to the project.
“We live the high life that’s how we roll,” Winstrong says in the uplifting smoke anthem “High Life.”
Available on both iTunes and Spotify, to craft this album Mendo Dope brought musical instruments and recording equipment into their outdoor garden. Learn about cannabis directly from the California cultivators growing some of the world’s best varieties, “Live in the Garden Season 2” takes you on a journey straight to the heart of dopeness.
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