Concerts

Sense of Place: Step inside Denver's famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre

XPN | By Raina Douris,

Kimberly Junod

Published October 21, 2024 at 1:23 PM CDT

Sitting just outside of Denver at almost 6,500 feet above sea level, the Red Rocks Amphitheatre is one of the world's most famous and most beautiful outdoor venues. But it also comes with a unique set of challenges: the weather, the wildlife and the altitude.

To round out our latest Sense of Place trip to Colorado, we're taking you on a tour of Red Rocks. You'll hear how musical acts from The Beatles to Zach Bryan have dealt with these unique challenges, the venue's economic impact on Denver, and how the city operates this unique outdoor venue.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

Concerts

Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, is the host and writer of NPR's daily nationally-syndicated music interview and discovery program World Cafe. She has interviewed artists like Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, Questlove and Brandi Carlile, and was a 2022 keynote lecturer on the topic of Folk Music and music discovery at the Chautauqua Institution.

Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).