Favourite Local radio show or podcast

Witchpolice Radio

Eli Matas

1. Witchpolice Radio
2. Couch Surfin’
3. HUNKS Comedy

 

Witchpolice hasn’t lost the magic. Sam Thompson has been interviewing local musicians since 2012.

Since then, the podcast has expanded to include live shows. Thompson is happy the show is starting to go in that direction. 

“It’s a cool way it worked out, because it went from just talking about music to actually being involved in promoting and presenting live music,” Thompson says.

They have a semi-regular show at the Park Theatre, where they take local musicians and throw them into confusing situations, like having to improvise a song. They also do live Q&A shows, giving up-and-coming bands the chance to play their music in front of a larger audience.

Thompson says he enjoys a lot of what he does on the show, but his favourite episode is an interview with Propagandhi. 

“It’s nice to get to talk to someone who I grew up listening to. On our 100th episode, we had Chris from Propagandhi on our show, and that was a big deal. That was a band that constantly comes up, no matter who we talked to,” Thompson says.

Thompson doesn’t have any concrete plans for the future of Witchpolice, only that he wants the show to continue for as long as it can and to see what opportunities come next. 

He wants to explore the themes of the local music scene more and even look at new genres the show hasn’t covered yet.

“I’m 34 years old. The era I started going to see bands is early to late ’90s,” Thompson says. “A lot of my deep knowledge of the music scene is from that time period. There’s a lot of people who are 18 or 20 years old playing in bands now … They might be playing the music I love, but they’re coming at it from a different direction.”

Find their podcast at witchpolice.com, where new episodes go up every Wednesday.

Published in Volume 71, Number 13 of The Uniter (December 1, 2016)

Related Reads