Local podcast 'Mile High Stash' delivers intimate conversations from big-name Colorado creatives
Kalene McCort, Daily Camera, Boulder, Colo.
5 min read
Dec. 28—While some New Year's resolutions involve making more trips to the library to expand reading lists, certain folks are looking to discover more content with the number of podcasts they tune in to.
From true crime to comedy, advice and tv show recaps, the number of broadcasts that dot the web remains an entertaining mix.
Adam Perry — a Boulder-based musician, paralegal at a local veterans' disability law firm and journalist — debuted his diverse podcast, "Mile High Stash," in November. Offering a roster of varied Colorado-based guests, including musicians Clay Rose and Bonnie and Taylor Sims and artists like psychedelic illustrator Lexie Baker, his program has already become a favorite among local listeners.
We caught up with the host to find out what inspired him to make the leap into the world of webcasts, what podcasts he can't get enough of and what dream guest he would welcome the chance to interview in 2023.
Kalene McCort: What inspired you to want to start Mile High Stash, and what's been the most rewarding part of this new venture?
Adam Perry: Anybody who gets in my orbit knows about my madcap ideas that come to fruition overnight, and Mile High Stash was one of those impulses about two months ago. It made sense because I've been interviewing musicians as a journalist for so long and, of course, only a portion of those ends up in the newspaper, while a podcast is a chance to really dig into who a person is and share that, at length, with the world.
As I began doing Mile High Stash regularly, though, the mission behind it really started to shine: This is a chance to let musicians, and interesting people who love music, truly speak for themselves. There is a music theme, because that's the world I traverse the most, but the five albums are really just intermittent sparks in conversation about who my guests are.
KM: Do you have any podcasts that you listen to religiously?
AP: Most of the ones I like are about sports. But "WTF"'s Marc Maron is a talented interviewer and, similar to me, he started a podcast after developing relationships and connections in a specific industry — and ostensibly realizing there was an audience who'd love to hear the conversations he was already having in private. Terry Gross is not a podcaster, but she's really the great American interviewer of our time. Just listening to her for the last few decades has been as much of a journalism, and even English, education for me as my college education.
KM: What do you think makes an intriguing podcast?
AP: The opposite of an intriguing podcast, for me at least, is where the hosts spend 10, 15 or even 20 minutes talking about their cats, their homes, the mundane details of their personal lives. Mile High Stash is not a show about me. It's good to have an entertaining theme people can rely on and regularly invite diverse, interesting guests on to really explore their lives, their careers, just what they care deeply about, what moves them.
Music is what I hope I know how to talk about, so it's good to have the five-album theme as the genesis for good conversation. The goal is for that to intrigue people enough to tune in to Mile High Stash, and then surprise listeners when the conversation goes deep into who my guests are. The Slim Cessna episode is a good example of that, because it was a rock star sharing sensitive, moving intricacies of his life story in a way a newspaper or magazine feature just couldn't.
KM: Who can we expect to hear on Mile High Stash next, and do you have any dream guests you'd like to host in 2023?
AP: I'm really trying to stray from the white rock star stereotype and have to say I'm excited to share my conversations with Steve Berlin of Los Lobos and Miguel Aviña of iZCALLi in the next month. They're both supremely talented and smart individuals with ridiculously vast knowledge of music and culture that is new and exciting to me, and hopefully to people eager to break their own bubbles too. The Reminders, from Fort Collins, are a dream guest for me, locally, and I'm talking with them about a Mile High Stash episode for the near future.
The ultimate guest for any show, though? Of course it's Tom Waits.
KM: I understand Rolling Harvest is opening up for Gasoline Lollipops for a New Year's Eve show at Nederland's The Caribou Room. What can attendees expect from this upcoming show, and do you have any resolutions for 2023?
AP: With veterans of GasPops in Rolling Harvest, New Year's at the Caribou Room will be an amazing all-in-the-family event, and I know Clay Rose is especially excited because he can now throw a rock from his home and hit the Caribou Room, it's so close. Rolling Harvest will have members of Gasoline Lollipops sit in with us at the New Year's show and it'll be really special.
My New Year's resolution should probably be to work less and spend more time with family and friends and, well, just more time with myself — but I have to be practical and say my resolution is to find ways to balance work and my personal life in order to see friends and family more.
