For touring comedians won over by the alt-comedy scene OK Party Comedy has organized in Omaha, Saddle Creek artists are one of the few Omaha reputation staples that often precede a visit.

But when Denver comedian Adam Cayton-Holland tweets at Saddle Creek artists to come to his shows when he appears in Omaha, it’s more than a geography-based gaff — more than something akin to tweeting at Warren Buffett. Years ago, ss an aspring young comedian in Denver, Cayton-Holland — who will appear in Omaha this weekend at Crom Comedy Festival — felt an earnest artistic kindsmanship with Conor Oberst.

“It just opened my eyes to the fact that this guy is from the middle of the country shouting off his rooftop and everyone is listening,” Cayton-Holland says.

Cayton-Holland is a member of the Denver comedy group The Grawlix and the host of the My Dining Room Table podcast. He’s been a repeat customer to OK Party Comedy shows in Omaha and has taken his bitingly observational stand-up across the country in recent years, including appearances on Conan and The Pete Holmes Show.

And while Cayton-Holland says he largely approves of Crom’s missions and booking decisions, he took issue with the inclusion of one comedian who dissed Cayton-Holland in a Hear Nebraska interview earlier this week.

“Of course, you can’t please everyone all the time,” Cayton-Holland says, “so I guess it’s good that [Crom] brought in Rory Scovel for this festival, as well. Not every comic has to be interesting or even really even funny at all, I suppose. People like low-hanging fruit for a reason, you know? It’s just easy. So I guess Rory is there for that.”

If the feud boils over further at Crom this weekend, it could adversely impact Scovel’s and Cayton-Holland’s work together in sketches like this one.

Read our full interview with Cayton-Holland below.

Hear Nebraska: Can I ask who conceived of Lloyd Ricky? Because while I accept some of the stereotypes he’s based on, he kind of looks like a Texas oil man.

Adam Cayton-Holland: Oh yeah. I conceived Lloyd Ricky and I just kinda wanted to make him a hick. He just takes in any hick element he likes: Omaha, Texas, I just wanted to make him country.

HN: So I was just listening to your most recent Dining Room Table podcast with Ian [Douglas Terry] and I think you called Omaha a “sneaky little jewel” of comedy. I know you’ve been several times to hang out with the OK Party guys, but what was your first experience like, and what if anything, was surprising about it to you?

ACH: You know the more and more I do comedy, the less I’m surprised when you go to a town that you think is ostensibly going to not be that cool and then there’s pockets of cool shit. But Omaha was sort of one of the first to really show that to me. And I came in and from the get-go everyone was down for the cause, audiences were smart, you didn’t feel like you were going over their heads. All the people I was hanging out with, it was just like, “Oh, they’re like my friends that I’d have anywhere.” It felt like a home life. I’m from Denver, it’s not that different.

HN: If I can duck back for a second, that must be kind of heartening, to travel across the country and find that more-often-than-not there are cool things where you might not expect them. Is that encouraging to you?

ACH: Yeah, it is. Some places are harder than others because you have to look for them. But Omaha’s not even that hard. You go there and it’s pretty good on the eyes, and with just a little bit of research and you’re in Benson.

HN: So you pretty much wear Colorado and Denver on your sleeve as you tour the country, but do people have different perceptions of Colorado in different parts of the country, or is it pretty much a homogenized weed question at this point?

ACH: Yeah exactly. It’s pretty much that. Everybody wants to know about pot. But it’s only because it’s new. So two years ago I would field skiing questions or people think of Boulder as a hippie Mecca. People know a lot about beer. I feel lucky to be from Colorado. Most people who’ve been there are very fond of it. And most people who haven’t have heard pretty good things.

But yeah I wear it on my sleeve more than most people would [laughs].

HN: You do, and I wanted to ask, is there ever a point at which a little Denver goes a long way? There was a video you were doing with Bobby Crane in Denver where you were bringing up Broncos wide receives from the pre-Super Bowl Elway years and people were a little blank.

ACH: Well, that’s not the act I take out on the road night-to-night. Of course, in a Denver vs. Colorado debate things are going to get pretty hometown.

HN: You’re not going to talk about Vance Johnson [in Long Island] tonight?

ACH: No, of course not. I’m not a Colorado automaton.

HN: Let me go here, Adam, because you’re also known as someone who used to write sort of long-form journalistic pieces. And some people might think of that as pretty set off from or opposed to comedy, but I wonder if the observational nature of both makes them closer than people might think.

ACH: I don’t really know. When I get up on stage, no one wants to hear me read a long-winded piece about whatever. But I think it’s not surprising that a lot of comics have a literary muscle. I was a writer first. But I think it does require a similar sensitivity and similar sense of observation, watching the world and commenting on the world. It’s the same type of gene or impulse that compels people to write and do stand-up. But for me, they haven’t bled into each other. I certainly treat them sort of separately.

HN: The word sensitivity is one that’s come up with you before. You’ve talked before about how you don’t buy into the ethos or the proverbial sort of trauma of the comedian. But your material can be dark and pretty deeply self-deprecating at times. How do you parse those two things out?

ACH: Just because funny is funny, and I’m drawn to dark shit. I think if you’re intelligent you are. I’ve certainly had bad things happen to me in my life, especially in the last few years. But my comedic impulses were to be funny and I think people spend too much time psychoanalyzing where that comes from. Like, “Oh, there was a divorce and he needed attention, so he started writing jokes!” It’s too easy.

Like, “He was bullied and picked on until he made ‘em laugh!” Like I’ve definitely used humor as a defense mechanism but I don’t’ think it’s the exclusive territory of the picked-upon and sad and weak.

Lots of people who are intelligent and view the world through a humorous lens, I don’t think they had to have been pushed into a locker and called “fag” for nine years.

HN: Right.

ACH: That did happen to me sometimes. But it happens to a lot of people.

HN: Let me jump to the podcast really quick, because it seems to be an increasingly prevalent thing with comedians. But you’ve talked about how you enjoy the immediacy of stand-up as opposed to writing because of the live audience and how it their feedback can dictate how a set goes. With a podcast, it seems much more like a vacuum of speech. How do you know if what you’re doing is working without the advent of the live audience?

ACH: It’s really interesting you say that because I just did a live one, and it was so much more enjoyable because I am a comedian. I had four or five guests. I could see what was working, so if a guy I had on was doing well riffing, I’d encourage him to continue. There’s a lot of feeling when you’re recording one that you’re just shouting into a vacuum. Like, “I hope someone’s listening!”

There’s parts where you’re doing your intro and you think “God, this is masturbatory.” And then someone on Twitter says something, and then it’s like, “Oh! People are listening.” But once you get into the conversation with a guest, you just have to get into it and can’t get hung up.

HN: Do you think there’s a certain sort of comedian stylistically for whom podcast-hosting jives better?

ACH: I don’t know. Initially, I didn’t want to do podcast because everybody does a podcast. But I enjoy it because I was a journalist and I liked interviewing people. I like the art of the interview. I think you need to able able to shut up and listen. I think a lot of people are waiting for their next turn to talk and if that’s how you go through life, then you shouldn’t have a podcast.

HN: Last one, I was watching a Doom Room thing. Do you actually tweet at Saddle Creek bands when you’re in town? Is that a truthful bit?

ACH: Oh yeah! I always tweet at Bright Eyes. Last time I was in town, I actually ended up hanging out with Tim Kasher and the Cursive dudes. But that was more because Ian knows them and made the introduction. But I do tweet at Saddle Creek people. I remember listening to Lifted, the Bright Eyes album, and I just loved that shit. I was probably 18 or 19 when I got deep into it. I remember thinking, “This dude is my age and he’s from Omaha. I’m from Denver, so we’re both prairie folk! I dig it!

HN: [Laughs]. Kindred spirits.

ACH: It just opened my eyes to the fact that this guy is from the middle of the country shouting off his rooftop and everyone is listening. I sort of liked that mantra. I was in Denver trying to do the same thing. And I want to do what the Saddle Creek guys have done. Buy a dive bar in my hometown, outfit it with a cool sound system and just fucking ride out the next 40 years.

HN: [Laughs] It’s not a bad way to live, it would appear.

ACH: It’s as cool as can be! Paying homage to your hometown and getting big nationally. I respect what they’re doing.

Chance Solem-Pfeifer is Hear Nebraska’s managing editor. Reach him at chancesp@hearnebraska.org.