MycoWizards

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Where did it all begin I asked Marc R Keith...picking up a hitch hiker to score some dope exactly 50 years ago, Marc told me...and the tale goes on from there...50 years later Marc is bound to the west coast while he forges ahead through a 7 year battle to get back his property from backwoods thieves who forged every document imaginable to kick the widowed king of the shroomery off his own land. This is the land his fans know well, where Let's Grow Mushrooms was filmed, where the double barrel boiler/pasteurization system and the shipping container buried in the back hill still sit like earthen question marks in the geography. Marc is making corned beef on rye and we go right into it like we have known one another for a lifetime. Marc is as sharp as a buck knife under a blood moon. He has a grasp on the past, present and future like a fearless sailor set to sea bellowing Hold Fast like the knuckle bone plasma scratches of old. Harleys and tales of wild times bring out his smile, seemingly brighter and more dangerous than ever. The spirit of your hero RR is alive and well and he is ready to tell his story.

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The road to finding the magical, mystical hero of a mycological OG that is Marc R Keith (Roger Rabbit) has been a wild one. We all have a bit of interloper syndrome in this life, especially when we are searching for someone we admire, someone who has been integral in getting us going, someone who possessed that nugget of info we needed to continue on, someone who inspired more than just you. That last fact is what has carried this MycoWizards Podcast project forward. I come from a line of dedicated educators and I think stories, real life stories, unadulterated and only filtered through open conversations can brighten the mind like learning a new subject for the very first time. Enter a recording device. Podcasts are everywhere and the ones that seem to hold the most magick are the ones that meander like the mind in time and space. Interviews are so much looser now. The style of Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell has been expanded upon in interesting rivers that run wider and longer than the audience at hand. All in all, there are lessons over and over in the quick comments and displays of tales that seem too wild to be made up. This episode is my notes, my thoughts and really my first time just addressing the audience of the MycoWizards World as myself, Erik Lomen, unfiltered, unedited, in an attempt to translate the lead up to my first conversation with the master, RR. When you are young you often get asked the question: what three people would you like to have dinner with, dead or alive, and I’ve never been able to answer that, there are too many amazing people in this world and they're all invited to the feast! - Erik

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And just like that! WE ARE BACK! We have a lot of plans for the future of the Mycowizards Podcast and we are stoked to unroll it all slow and low like Texas style smoked meat! There are whispers in the Buck65 wind spreading rumors of @heymikevance and @shroomsodoom getting into a van with a carefully curated suitcase straight out of Fear And Loathing to scramble senses from farm to farm like bats out of doom, dead set of filming and recording the entire mycological insanity. Think 1990’s firework wars on the highway straight out of Thrasher magazine #phelperforeverforeverphelper … but with a proper mycological focus…after all Harvard still throws better parties than Amherst! (someones not gonna like that one!)  … But until then, here is the long-awaited Episode 22 of the Mycowizards Podcast featuring Andrew and Adam of @smallhold … I made a wild rip down to the Big Apple to catch up with the Smallhold crew to see what they were working on and in the process we got to recording a nice couple hour conversation on the when and the where of their mycological journey. So sit back and enjoy or get to knocking while you listen! Stay insane myco wizards of the world and stay tuned in while you drop the F$#* out!

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In another life, Dunk and I most likely crossed paths or perhaps we just ripped on two wheeled death traps up and down the same rugged streets of towns north of Boston. While he was running wild in the outlaw motorcycle scene, I was documenting and painting clandestine poets up and down the North Shore. There is a common thread that brings people to mycology and it finds its origins in the brains of those not interested in following anyone else’s life rules or rhythms. That break from socially acceptable directions has led a lot of wonderfully interesting people into this independent obsession with mushrooms. Maybe it’s that it takes us out of the world of people and into the world of our heads and the fifth kingdom. Many of us amateur mycologists are not what one would call “people pleasers”...there is a lack of patience in the drama of humanity where there is an abundance of patience for discovery, study and documentation. William Dunkerly has been building upon his myco-obsession ever since the day the mushroom-bug bit him and his journey has taken him in wild directions from basement growing to a commercial facility to value added frozen mushroom meals…one thing's for certain when speaking to and about the folks of the MycoWizard World, not one of them ever expected to be where they are today!

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BONUS EPISODE ALERT!
Maine Fungi Fest will be happening in Portland on May 14th, 2022. That’s coming up really fast! Tyler Crawford and Erik Lomen will be presenting a talk on commercial cultivation techniques and systems with a Q&A section. This conversation was recorded with the festival's organizer Jonathan Leavitt. Jonathan is an artist, a performer and a really talented musician who also has a long standing history that left a truly positive impact on Maine’s medical cannabis community. I learned a lot about Jonathan from his interview on In The Trees Podcast and it is worth hearing the whole tale from that side of the early 2000’s for some insight into why he is the right human for the organizational efforts of all things Fungi. All in all, Maine Cap N’ Stem is inspired by this mushroom boom and we are excited to share what we know to help sustain the growth of decentralized farms around the world. So come visit Tyler and Erik in the flesh the day of the festival! See you all there!

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Aron Gonsalves and I go back to the beginning in this conversation. We recorded one evening at his farm house in southern Maine, almost empty and fully packed up, as he and his wonderfully kind wife Laura were about to embark on a journey to their new home with new beginnings in mind, down south away from the frozen north. Aron is a hustler, a gear grinder, a motorhead and a nerd on a lot of levels kin to myself. When I first heard a mycologist from Hawaii was coming to Maine, my young myco-entrepreneurial feathers were ruffled and it sort of gave me a kick in the ass to hustle harder and faster and really it was for good reason as you’ll come to discover in this episode. Aron has a fire in him that is admirable and after a decade of talking mycology constantly (and motorcycles not frequently enough) i realized how rare it is to communicate with comrades in the same industry as yourself day in and out and just how much forward momentum can be achieved from working closely together in a growing industry. Our friendship and working relationship was and is without a doubt a primary motivator for this podcast and I hope it inspires you and your fellow mycophiles to communicate and build momentum together like more than one magnetic weight on a true wheel barrowing down the dawn with fire, grit and teeth aglow!

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Cory Nellissen of HiFi Mycology has unbounded devotion to the exploration of his mycological endeavors. The study and systematization of mushroom cultivation demands patience, a quality one must possess in spades to make a go at the commercial cultivation game. Some days it feels like competition is closing in and other days it feels like you are in an oasis all of your own creation and you have brought the manna machine to the people! But the myco-machine requires constant analysis and maintenance to crank out the new age “flavor-aid” that is gourmet mushrooms. There is a kinesthetic motion once must maintain for a semblance of control over biological organisms and this requires no time to even entertain the ideas of defeat…remove that word from your vocabulary and soldier on. Dive back into old grow-logs, identify with the struggle of shroomery usernames and recognize the fight will be constant if you can’t achieve a balance in working with these single celled organisms! If you make it this far, you’ll know just where Cory is at, just where most masters of mycology are at and you will be a MycoWizard maintaining a myco-manna-machine all your own.   

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Andrew Collier Reed: I’m fascinated by these radical myco-cats know by 3 names and there are a few...I know it’s largely a facebook phenomenon, but every time I heard his name mentioned, years before we had a solid back and forth, I heard all three names, like an ancient elder-futhark chant of sorts...and Andrew, he is an ancient soul, glued to runes and science fiction and their large projections on a immensely imaginative universe that’s conclusive in its own right and dedicated to the mission, no matter how mysterious it may seem when uttered out loud. Andrew and his myco-family have built a wildly interesting and successful system with their Mossback Syndicate. They generated the ultimate in low-tech methods to facilitate their associates' growth and have allowed support and growth of other companies around them to impact their sustainability in a positive way. Andrew’s Mossy Creek team might single handedly bring about substantial changes in the areas of phenotype development with their breeding programs and investment in liquid culture. While we don’t talk about it a ton in this conversation his King Blue strain has become so popular that it’s shadowed long standing phenos myco-farmers have depended on for decades...and that fact is true innovation at the microscopic beginnings of this entire world of mycology. 

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I’d assume Satchmo was one hell of a zen-calm yet lively jazz-wizard roaming the Americas and Europe like a madman on the horn through the 30s and 40s making myths in all the world’s clandestine clubs and dark alleyways, where spirit infused music spilled into the streets like smiles and wine. If I were to try to express who Josh Saul is to me and what he embodies as a mycologist, I'd have to say it’s a feeling similar to what one gets from soaking in the very early ear-candy jazz recordings, all crackle, pop and fuzz of the man himself, Satchmo. There is something about musicians getting into mycology; there is a mastery over the complexities of theory that requires much determination and deep study: experimentation and analysis on constant repetition. But after the mastery erupts a sort of Jazz in motion...and to me what Josh has done with Play Of Sunlight embodies the jazz of mycology. When you can live free-form in the chaos of a spore to store operation you can certainly attain this level of myco-jazz-wizardry, but I think it’s rare...rare enough to quote the late great Hunter S. Thompson, "There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die." 

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Only one Instagram account can rival @dunksmushrooms in fungal beauty and that's @bluffcityfungi . For Scott Avery Lisenby it's a family affair and the sincerity at the heart of his farm is alive and well in every way imaginable. Scott's got the drive and the focus of all great fungi-wizards, building his Memphis farm from the ground up inspired by innovation and pure hustle. In our couple hour conversation you'll find all the stories that generate the myco-myths, originating from the gentle and yet wildly tough spirit that is the Scott. It's one thing to call yourself a mushroom farmer and it's another to be genuinely skilled at the cultivation craft. This mushroom family is tuned, honed, talented and stoked, so enjoy the wild tale of Bluff City Fungi!

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