Music and Cannabis have long been complementary to each other in a few different ways. Whether you create it or just listen to and appreciate it, you learn to like even the most peculiar of things about it, even the instruments that make the music. For Joey Peebles (@lemmehashyousomethin), music and Cannabis have been pillars in his life for a long time. Even though his time to create is currently limited due to his work, he still gets inspired to play open mics and dive bar gigs from time to time with some family friends, one of whom led him to explore how it all works together.
“I’ve fixed accordions with her, and I’ve messed around with the weirdest instruments,” he said. She also sold his mom his first drum kit and helped him learn to appreciate being resourceful with different types of instruments. “One side is you just collect too much gear. The shiny side of that coin is you can just chunk up some old beaters and build lamps with it,” he added.
Growing up in Arnold, Peebles often bounced around to the neighboring communities like Annapolis and Severna Park to hang out and play shows when he was younger. He attended Broadneck High School and went to Anne Arundel Community College afterward, earning his associate degree with an interest in business and marketing. He said his first jobs included mostly general sales like phones and cable boxes — some requiring field work and going around knocking on doors — and credits these jobs for helping to introduce him to some of the skills and technology he still uses in his work today.
Peebles said he was introduced to Cannabis at a young age and recalled that when he decided to start working in the industry in 2016, he was a bicycle courier delivering Cannabis around Washington before eventually moving over to working in Maryland around 2021 at Mana Supply Co. in Edgewater. He added that he took a few online budtender training courses curated by former High Times Magazine columnist Ed Rosenthal to prepare to work in a different role and in a new market.
“I remember being among the people in the first 10 or so rounds for the Maryland medical cards,” he said, adding that Cannabis has helped him with insomnia. “Before I knew I was using it to treat that, that’s what I was treating that with.”
After a few years at Mana, Peebles decided to step away from budtending and into a brand ambassador role with Alchemist earlier this year, a refreshing change but with some familiar traits from what he’s done prior to settling into this job, he said. Having the product knowledge and experience was helpful in the transition, but he was curious about the wholesale and marketing sides of things.
“I’ve never had something like this that I’ve enjoyed so much, and I’ve never represented this awesome of a product,” he said. The job is less stressful in comparison to having to send workers to someone’s house to try and make a sale in his prior jobs. “I get to talk to my kind of people all day, everyone’s pretty direct and chill … we all want to eat, but we also want to smoke,” shared Peebles.
Much like working on and learning the different musical instruments he’s encountered, Peebles visits the company’s lab every chance he gets to learn more about the different products and the process behind how they’re made. As someone who also has experience with pressing his own dabs and a fan of the company since they began producing concentrates, he said it’s easy to be comfortable answering direct questions from customers with a solid team to assist him all the way up the company chain.
“It’s also cool that I can go around and talk to very knowledgeable people about it and try to bring some more people into it at the same time,” Peebles added.
As a heavy dabber, his go-to rig has been a Dr. Dabber Switch Go, saying he doesn’t have many glass pieces and only brings them out on certain occasions. While he said there’s certain things he likes to smoke on different occasions as well as a nice indica to help combat his insomnia, he tends to favor a strain’s more general flavor profile when looking for something to consume. “Pretty much anything my nose likes; I’m going to smoke it or dab it,” he stated.
Between collecting gear and visiting new dispensaries around the area, Peebles said one of his current goals is to expand somewhere he’s been slacking in: the digital space. Reels are just one way he said he wants to get into content creation, but in terms of actual content, he hopes to carve out a space that touches on all his interests while keeping things clever for the algorithm.
“I’m going to send it, I’m going to try and chop it up myself,” he said. “But if not, I’ll send it to somebody else. I want to market Cannabis like: ‘It was this way in the 1990s or 2000s.’”
