Courtesy Photo

If you didn’t have plans for 4-20 this year, you do now.

If you’re a Soundings student planning your last events to attend, you’ll even be able to get two birds stoned at once – by attending Bobby Gosh’s Soundings event on April 20 titled “Confessions of a Marijuana Eater.”

Professor Phillip Lamy says besides performing, the Grammy winning Gosh will be talking about “his story, all the famous people he knew, famous things he did, as well his songs, bands, famous commercial jingles and movie music; he conducted famous orchestras, things like this.”  

But since Gosh was 16 years old, he was using marijuana.

 “He was always in the closet, so with this book, he is really coming out of the closet,” Lamy said, adding that Gosh is essentially saying “by the way, I was a musician and marijuana was a major part of my life and I want to talk about that.”

Gosh, reached by phone, said he is excited to be speaking at Castleton and said he hopes students are receptive.

“The concert’s going to be something new, something you don’t see every day: instead of just being a concert or a book talk, it’s going to be a combination of both,” he said.

Gosh is even going to play his beautiful baby grand piano on Casella’s stage. He will perform, present, read excerpts from his book, and most of all share his views on life – and consuming pot not by smoking.

His book has been in the making for three years now, Gosh says. And the Soundings event will most likely draw just as many students as “The Marijuana Debate” Soundings event did in October 2013.

In his lengthy career, Gosh has opened for Billy Joel in the 70’s, for Barbara Streisand in Central Park in front of a quarter-of-a-million people, and soon he’ll be at Castleton. His biggest hit was “A Little Bit More” with Dr. Hook, which went world-wide and has been recorded by many different singers thereafter. His musical work has also been in over 200 commercials.

So how many people are really “in the closet” about their marijuana use?

Senior softball and volleyball player Brittany Brayman says she knows many athletes at Castleton who use marijuana and perform well in their respective sports.

“I know someone who has ADHD, and they use it as a way to calm themselves down, instead of a prescription drug,” she said.

For a lot of athletes that Brayman knows, the herb is “more of like a calming-thing for them to use before they play or practice.”   

Lamy said the cat is out of the bag, that every day people use marijuana as part of a healthy and balanced lifestyle.

Brayman says she thinks marijuana legalization could be good, simply because “everyone’s doing it anyway, we might as well put rules in place to make sure it’s being done safely.”

“Confessions of a Marijuana Eater” is set to be wildly entertaining and extremely informative.

If you’re thinking of not attending this event, you must be high.