We receive a lot of pitches here at HIGH TIMES for a slew of entertainers, but it's rare that we commit as easily and quickly as we did to premiering Bud Bronson & the Good Timers' video for "Vapedemic" from their album, Fantasy Machine.
Besides being described as a cross between "Thin Lizzy and Diarrhea Planet," the Colorado-based rockers' stripped-down sound is as much retro good-time feelin' as it is a breath of fresh air. And a lot of their music is inspired by their long history with cannabis.
"The first thing I ever smoked out of was my friend's black metal pipe," recalls vocalist Brian Beer. "I never owned my own piece, and neither did my closest friends, so we'd get creative and make our own stuff. One of the go-to's was a Poland Spring water bottle, filled halfway, with tinfoil on top and the tube of a pen stuck into the side, sealed with chewing gum. God knows what chemicals we ingested along with the THC by burning that plastic. Following the water bottle bong was pretty much the entire gamut of homemade teenage smoking devices – apple cores, empty beer cans, a light bulb, and the occasional Philly Blunt. Later in high school, Aaron's brother Colin – a fraternal twin who played football and gelled his hair while the rest of us grew ours out and ran cross country – bought a foot-long pipe that he stored in a padded zipper bag under his bed. Aaron and Colin named it "The Jeffman," after their dad. If Aaron's parents ever knew their kids were smoking, they didn't let on. Even when Colin carelessly left the Jeffman, zipped in its bag, on the kitchen counter overnight, only to wake up and find it placed gently on the stairs, presumably after his mom had moved it. Did she know what it was and just not care? Or was she totally oblivious? It doesn't seem like the kind of thing a normal straight-shooting parent from our small, sheltered Christian conservative New Jersey town would just casually accept, but I guess we're old enough now to just ask her.
She discovered the truth once we put out "Vapedemic" — the line "walk from Aaron's house straight into Lion's Park" was kind of a dead giveaway. My parents had already known for years — we got busted in the woods of that very park during the summer immediately following senior year of high school. As explained in the song, I did try to tell the cops that we were just smoking a cigar. But they used their giant mag-lite flashlight to find the small copper pipe we had tossed into the undergrowth. They then decided to let my four friends walk while taking me down to the station for fingerprints and a citation, probably because I was the one with the longest hair, and the only one who tried to bold-faced lie our way out of the situation — as if cops didn't know the difference between the smell of tobacco and weed. It was a huge bummer at the time, and I still regret the way I let down my parents for that, but I think everyone's moved past it and, to some extent, is able to laugh about it now. We were just kids doing the stuff that kids too. And we got an awesome song out of it, so in that way, it was all worth it."
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