B-Side Guys

Rory Lynch moved to California with a specific fantasy: sit on a porch, get high, play guitar all day. The reality he documents in “I Used To Work The Weed Farm” is considerably less idyllic. “Farm life was hard working, and it left me bare and sore,” he sings, and the refrain “I don’t work there anymore” stops sounding like relief and starts sounding like defeat by the third repetition.

The song functions as a condensed origin story—Lynch calls it his true story about growing and selling weed before relocating to New York City. What makes it resonate beyond stoner memoir is how each verse adds another layer of disillusionment. He bought a guitar specifically for the mountain porch dream, but “weed took all my time, yes it was an endless chore.” The crop looked healthy, harvest approached, then the county sheriff showed up at his door. After smuggling product all around the USA, he still came up short financially. It’s the American Dream played out in a cash crop that was supposed to be easier money than it turned out to be.

Lynch—who describes himself as a wandering troubadour who brings the same raw intensity whether busking Fish Alley or playing World Cafe Live—delivers this with the plainspoken directness of someone who’s already processed the loss. The song doesn’t mourn the weed farm; it acknowledges that some pursuits look better from a distance than they do when you’re bent over plants in the summer heat, waiting for a payday that might arrive with handcuffs.

He says it’s always a hit at his shows. Of course it is—everyone’s got a version of the job they thought would set them free that just left them bare and sore instead.