David Crosby Talks Marijuana, His Upcoming Weed Brand & Joni Mitchell

David Crosby has been smoking marijuana for so long, it’s time to name a strain after him.

The founding member of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is seeking licensing opportunities with a cannabis brand under the suggested moniker “Mighty Croz.”

It’s the next chapter in a lifelong relationship with weed for a musician whose name, songs, politics — and facial hair — are synonymous with the 1960s counterculture. With state after state legalizing recreational marijuana, Crosby says now is the right time for him to formally enter the business of pot.

“I’m going for the highest quality,” Crosby, 76, tells High Times. “Anything that has my name on it is going to have to be the highest quality. My first priority is partnering with a leading cannabis company.”

Much like the American auto industry of the 1950s, Crosby predicts the weed industry will consolidate.

“Big companies eat each other, compete with each other, combine with each other and there will wind up being a few national and international companies that are the centers of it, probably 10 or a dozen. One of those I would like to do a deal with.”

A Pot Brand For Boomers

When asked why he’s launching “Mighty Croz,” Crosby has a simple answer.

“Because it’s fun,” he says with a cackle. “Getting high is fun, people who get high are fun, marijuana is fun and I like to have fun in my life.

“’Mighty Croz’ will be aimed at the same demographic that’s likely to own a copy of ‘If I Could Only Remember My Name,’” according to Crosby and his business partner Steven Sponder.

“Baby boomers, the biggest bump in the population curve. That’s who my audience is,” Crosby says.

“There’s a secondary audience of all of their kids that’s millions of people as well, but the main audience is the baby boomers,” he says, promising more details on the brand soon.

“Mighty Croz” could also represent a welcome income stream for Crosby.

Crosby, who kicks off a European tour in support of his latest album “Sky Trails” later in August, is a vocal critic of the tiny royalties artists are paid by streaming services such as Spotify.

Despite songwriting credits on classics like “Déjà Vu,” “Eight Miles High” and “Wooden Ships,” the singer earns most of his income from live performances.

‘It’s Much Better For People’

Crosby’s preferred method of getting high today is vaping homegrown flowers with a PAX 3, he discloses. Most extracts aren’t clean enough for Crosby’s liking, and he says if any extract were to carry his name, it would be one that’s free of aftertaste or chemicals.

Cannabis, he says, is the best and safest route to an altered state.

The singer’s history with harder drugs is well-documented: a long, destructive freebase cocaine addiction ended with five months in a Texas prison in 1986. In 1994, he underwent a liver transplant.

“It’s much better for people than the other available ways to get loaded,” Crosby says of marijuana. “The human race has always liked getting loaded. That’s why we invented fermenting and distilling — and ate every kind of fruit and berry in the jungle.”

Crosby remembers being one of the first in his Laurel Canyon circle to source sinsemilla — a revelation compared to the seedy brick weed he’d been buying by the kilo.

Fresh out of The Byrds, he’d just returned to California with then-girlfriend Joni Mitchell and was preparing to produce her debut album Song to a Seagull, released in 1968.

“I’d get groups of friends together and give them a joint or two of this spectacularly strong pot they had never encountered before, and then Joni would sing them a song or two.”

‘I Wanted To Hide Under The Piano’

Crosby shared his fond memories of old-school strains such as Maui Wowie.

“Maui Wowie was the name that the guys who grew in Kona used, and the guys in Maui called their pot Kona Gold,” Crosby says.

“They mixed everything back in the beginning of the ‘70s. The guys in Hawaii were growing the best pot in the world at the time. They crossbred everything with everything, so I think most of the separations you see people talking about now are theoretical more than actual.”

The strongest pot Crosby ever sampled came from a decidedly less tropical climate: Canada. He crossed the border clean and found some weed that came with a warning.

“It was called ‘Kootenay Thunderfuck’ and it was so goddamned strong, it was way too strong — I wanted to hide under the piano and suck my thumb.”