Witchpolice Radio

It’s a reggae-heavy episode this week as Rastamils frontman Franklin Fernando joins us to talk about the “empire” theme. Franklin, originally from Sri Lanka, has rejuvenated Winnipeg’s reggae scene with his group’s mashup of Caribbean and South Asian sounds. We’re also joined by Rastamils bassist Christian Devoin, who has a history in the local reggae scene dating back to the early 1990s, via phone. This episode includes a ticket giveaway to see Rastamils in concert in January for a live audio/video recording, so stay tuned to see how you can get your hands on those. Listen to the end of the episode to hear a live performance by Franklin.

Returning guests Adam Parsons of Up n’ Atom and Ryan Sanders, formerly of Knifeinmyback and BSY (expect music by both of these groups on Witchpolice soon) join us to talk about this week's randomly-generated “snake” theme! This episode includes some news about Up n’ Atom’s upcoming LP, a ‘weird animal facts’ quiz game and lots of great ‘snake’-themed song selections, including a choice by Jesus le Jesus, who was originally intended to appear on this show but will be popping up at a later date. You also get a listen to one of Adam's early bands, Planet Uranus, whose work will also be popping up on Witchpolice some time before the end of the year.

A milestone! We've hit 50 episodes! To celebrate the occasion, we've put together an unintentionally slapdash episode that ended up being really, really solid. Due to a last-minute scheduling conflict with our anticipated guest (who will be on a later show, so stay tuned), we turned to past guest Sam Koulack of the Wet Bananas, who also happens to be co-host Jon's roommate. Sam was, thankfully, available, so he took on the job without any advance preparation for the "pyramid" theme this week. If that wasn't enough, we also tried out a major new initiative this week and had a guest on the show from all the way in Montreal: Doug Feaver of Corona Ferox and Dead Future. Doug called in to the show and talked about his recent touring, recording etc., and the ability to talk to non-Winnipeg guests (very clearly and in high quality, too) opens up a lot of doors for the next 50 episodes of this show.

Things mellow right out this week with Anne-Marie and Patrick from the excellent franco-folk group Chez Willi, who showed up with accordion and upright bass for one of the best live performances we’ve had on the show (see video below) and a good discussion. This week’s theme is “snow,” determined, as usual, by our trusty random word generator.

After last week's special UMFM Pledge-o-Rama episode, we're back to our regular programming with episode #48 (which is what it should say on the image above). This week, our guests are Terrance Williams and Devin Bray of "Winnipeg's Worst podcast," Couch Surfin'. They joined Sam and Jon to talk the "Satan" theme in a fittingly Halloween-friendly episode. It was our first time meeting these guys, and while that situation is always potentially disastrous, I think it worked out pretty well. When you have a bunch of people in a room who willingly spend most of their spare time talking shit into a microphone, it's hard to go wrong.

This week's theme is "gunslinger," but it might as well have been "wrestling" as our guests -- pro wrestler "Outlaw" Adam Knight and rapper Employee of the Month -- found a lot in common on that topic. In addition to 19 years in the rasslin' biz, the Outlaw is also a published author, with a new book on the e-shelves, Cowboy Ending. Employee, who records for our pals at DEAFWISH, has a new wrestling-themed album out, Thunderslutpunch. He also performed a live track from that record at the end of the show (see below).

This week, it's a Sam solo-host job, with three guests: the brain-wizards behind DIY t-shirt manufacturers/filmmakers Big Flaming Pile. In a rare remote show, this time from BFP Headquarters in Winnipeg's West End, the trio of Derek Heaman, Alex McPhaden and Brian Griffith talk band merch, rural metal shows and this week's randomly-generated theme word: polar. These guys are best known today for their merch biz (highly recommended), but they started out doing no-budget filmmaking way back in the 1990s, including such gems as Cop Fiction. For the past 10 years or so, they've been moonlighting in the rarely-performing punk rock group the Damn Dirty Apes, whose 2004 debut Mixed Ape can be downloaded from Witchpolice. They also performed live at the end of this episode.

Jon, solo-hosting this week, is joined by two Jesses: returning guest Jesse Matas of the Crooked Brothers and Jesse Warkentin of Mahogany Frog. They talk the "sushi" theme and listen to a ton of crazy Japanese music. Matas, of course, is a long-time friend of the show who appeared on a two-part episode of the podcast earlier in the summer, and has a bunch of music on the blog. Warkentin, on the other hand, is a member of Jon's favourite local psych-y/rock-y/synth-y band.

This week's episode comes to you from deep in the toilet (doo deep doo) of Winnipeg punk rock. Our guests are Adam Parsons of local band Up n' Atom alongside "Fuck Face" of amazing Winnipeg hardcore monsters Terrorist. We talk about skateboarding, going to local shows, Canadian horror movies and this week's theme: "cube." Adam -- who performs a live song at the end of the show -- is actually the fourth member of Un'A (although the only current one) who has appeared on the show, following in the footsteps of Johnny Perrin, Drew Diduke and Steve Jowsey.

After the success of our special Wu-Tang episode, Witchpolice Radio is straying from the usual random-theme format again this week. For episode #42, Rob Crooks pulls a solo-host job alongside guests Elliott (Nestor Wynrush) Walsh -- threepeating here as the guest with the most appearances -- and fellow Winnipeg rap artist Yy. This time, the focus is on Winnipeg's Gruf the Druid, a mainstay of the local hip-hop scene dating back to the 1990s, and someone the host and both guests know and have worked with on a personal level. They're all big fans of his music, though, and that's what makes this such a great episode. If you're a nerd about Winnipeg rap, or Canadian underground rap in general, there's a lot for you to take in here. Whether you first heard Gruf's music on a Frek Sho album, or on the Fermented Reptile CD, or as a member of Sound Barriers, or never at all... you'll dig this.

This week's episode features a couple of out-of-town guests, former Winnipeggers Goldwyn Millar and James Requeima. While they're now in Ontario and Quebec, respectively, doing math-related work (hence the theme of "mathematics"), these fellas started out back in the late 1990s as members of Grandpa's Army (with Witchpolice Radio co-host Sam and a million other people), and Goldwyn went on to play in The Mouth-Boat (with Sam and co-host Jon) and Shoshaku Jushaku (with Jon, but co-hosts Sam and Rob appear on the record). ...so, as usual, everything is very interconnected.

40 episodes! This week, the fellas talk to Darryl Reilly of CKUW's venerable Peg City Groove and excellent band the Guerrillas of Soul about the "Agitator" theme (easily confused with "Alligator").

If you've been listening to this show for a while, you may remember our guest from episode #26, Pip Skid. He's back again, as a fill-in host this time, and he forms like Voltron with our own Rob Crooks to talk with this week's guest, filmmaker Mike Maryniuk, about the "soldier" theme. This trio has worked together before, kind of, on Pip's "I Never Knew" video, but Mike's best-known work is probably his involvement with the excellent (seriously, watch it) Winnipeg Jets/psychedelia documentary "Death by Popcorn," which he talks about at length on the show.

This week, Rob and Jon talk about the "bumpy" theme with local musician Sam Koulack of the Wet Bananas and Bronze Kneecap. Sam (not to be confused with Witchpolice Radio's co-host Sam, who is wasn't there for this episode) happens to be Jon's roommate, so this one was probably a little easier to schedule.

This week's li'l slice o' Witchpolice magic features Rob and Jon talking about the "alley" theme with Winnipeg filmmakers Aaron Zeghers and Rhayne Vermette. Lots of discussion about poorly-attended shows, sunglasses, etc. Jon makes an ill-advised decision to read some poetry. You know. The usual. Aaron may be familiar to some of you as 1/5 of Sit Down Tracy, but films are the name of his game these days, and you can check out his handiwork on his website, the Cineflyer blog, his Vimeo page or the Winnipeg Underground Film Festival's site. Rhayne's work can be found at her Vimeo page and at the MB Cold Storage Tumblr.

If there's such thing as a "very special episode" of Witchpolice Radio, this is it. When we realized #36 was coming around, we temporarily scrapped the regular format of a randomly-generated theme word and decided to make a one-off (for now, anyway) episode specifically about one group: the Wu-Tang Clan. To help us nerd out about the Wu, we invited past guests Elliott Walsh, a/k/a Nestor Wynrush, (who first appeared on episode #19) and Ultra Mega frontman JD Ormond (episode #13) along for the ride. What you get here is about two-and-a-half hours of Wu-Tang love, plus some awesome song choices from throughout the career of the group and its many, many offshoots. Despite the length of the thing, the Wu mythology (and discography) is so deep that we barely scratched the surface.

It's the long-awaited Jesse Matas episode! Jesse, whose music is on Witchpolice as a solo artist, as a member of The Pookies and as a member of his current group, The Crooked Brothers, was at the top of our must-have guests list when we started this show. We've all known him (and played music with him) since at least 1995, so this episode went extra-long. As a result, we had to split it into two parts. (You can also check out an interview with Jesse about his classic "Rollin' in the Juicebox") Here's part one, which includes a live performance by Jesse as one of his song choices inside the show proper (first time that's ever happened) as well as some very interesting discussion about that week's theme, "train."

We're back to full strength this week, with all three hosts and guest Rob Nay of the excellent Winnipeg garage rawkers Microdot (who just put out the also excellent Middle Age Dating on Dub Ditch Picnic)! Rob talks tape labels, Saturday morning cartoons and the mid-90s with us as we get "groovy" with our randomly-generated theme!

Jon's back as co-host this week for the first episode in a while. For #33, we talk "tapes" with Simon Thibaudeau, a/k/a Winnipeg-by-way-of-Montreal noise artist Kvik. This episode marks the first major technical difficulties we've had in the show's history (not bad for 33 episodes), where the memory card on the recording unit conked out partway through a key part of the show. As a result, an entire section is missing, and it happens to be the part where we discussed, at length, one of my all-time favourite bands, Alien Hybrid. Thankfully, I enlisted Rob Crooks to record the intro with me even though he wasn't present for this episode, and we talked Alien Hybrid tapes awhile at the beginning of the show. Tragedy averted? Maybe? Anyway, Simon was a very interesting guest, coming from a very DIY/tape-heavy scene himself, and this is probably the most "out" of any of our shows thus far in terms of content...which is great!

Our pals at DEAFWISH are represented on Witchpolice Radio for the third consecutive week, this time in the person of Drew Diduke, a member of Deafwish band Up n' Atom. He joined hosts Sam, Rob and fellow guest Steve Jowsey -- ex-Up n' Atom drummer and current member of Clipwing and Prophet) to talk about the "hostage" theme. The result is a totally gnarly high-five pop-punk fest, dudes. Check it out.

Here's the second Deafwish episode in a row! This week featured Deafwish CVO (Central Victory Officer) Rock Trembath (a/k/a DJ Found Dead) as a last-minute guest when one of our scheduled people had to cancel. He joined guest Natalie Haines-Wallace to talk about the "tomb" theme... something that worked out pretty well, considering the rushed circumstances. It's also the third episode in a row with one host and two guests, as Rob and Jon were still in Montreal when we recorded this.

We managed to (unintentionally) arrange things so we have three weeks in a row of guests connected to Winnipeg's Deafwish record label, kicking off with episode #30 and Michael "White Dawg" Johnson, a/k/a Durrt Dawg a/k/a Dirt Swan, hypeman for Deafwish artist Employee of the Month, spelling bee champ and all-around good guy. He's joined by Kent Davies, who is very familiar to most of Witchpolice's readers thanks to the Tales From CKUW section on this website and the countless times he's allowed Dynamo, The Mouth-Boat, Galactus, Rob Crooks and other combinations of this program's three hosts to appear on his Peg City Groove CKUW program (he also hosts Amateur Hour).

Our guests: Sandy Taronno, a/k/a indie-pop wizard Indicator Indicator and frontman of the on-hiatus Quinzy. He was also in the mighty Del Paxton and many other projects, dating back to the mid-90s or so. Jenny Henkelman is a CKUW radio host ("The Book of Right-On," Thursday afternoons), a podcaster ("Fatties on Ice"), a Polaris Prize jurist and a past editor of Stylus Magazine. This week's theme was "hospital" and Sandy played a song at the end. We talked about science fiction, French Immersion, being a teenager in the 90s, and more! Very little discussion about the actual medical profession, now that I think of it.

For episode #28, Winnipeg filmmaker, music video director and DJ Damien Ferland stopped by the basement to talk about the "tooth" theme. This was another four-person episode, and it was a pretty animated discussion. Lots of talk about Bjork. Damien, apparently, loves Bjork. We talk about other things too, of course, including a whole lotta tooth songs.

I've been a fan of Greg Milka Crowe's music since way back in the 1990s when he was the frontman of Winnipeg ska legends Whole Lotta Milka, so we were really excited to have him on the podcast -- especially since he did a live performance at the end of the show. Greg's currently a member of The Scarlet Union, but he's been involved in a ton of other local ska bands, including The Wedgewoods and The Racketeers (briefly). He's also worked as a producer and co-wrote a ska musical that actually hit the stage here in Winnipeg. We talk about that, about meeting Jamaican legends, about the early days of Stomp Records, and more.

This week, Pip Skid chatted with the fellas about "faith." Not to be confused with episode #2's theme of "spiritual," this one runs the gamut from atheism to childhood church experiences to philosophical musings on love and life. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to be a part of this episode, so it's the first Rob + Jon + guest show. They acquit themselves quite well without me. Hopefully we can get this guest back for another show in the future, because as mentioned in the intro, I've enjoyed his records for a very long time (I think I saw Farm Fresh live around '97).

This week: we talk with graphic designer extraordinaire Allan Lorde about paranoia. This is probably the most rap-heavy episode we've done so far, but Al provided solid bookends at the beginning and end of the show with some filthy garage mayhem. It's a rambler of an episode, though. Right from the get-go, we start talking completely off-topic and eventually meander our way back on point. Although most of our guests are local musicians, Mr. Lorde's longtime involvement with the local scene from the visual art side of things definitely fits in with Witchpolice's unofficial "we promote cool shit cool people are doing" mode. If you live in Winnipeg, you've seen this man's art. Seriously. It's been on a pole or a bulletin board near you at one point or another.

This week on Witchpolice Radio, we tackled songs about lawyers with our guest host Garrett Everett. Garrett is familiar to regular Witchpolice readers as one of the people behind the Orange House shows, all of which he's performed at, including the recent Dish Aid. I also played a bunch of loud music with him last summer that never resulted in any serious recordings or shows, but it was good times nonetheless. There's a clip of some garage recordings tacked onto the end of the intro, and although we were ostensibly a doom metal band (or at least that's what we were inspired by), the sample you'll hear isn't that representative of the genre. Garrett also does his own singer-songwriter thing, and he performed a tune at the end of this program.

This week's guest, Jessika Ellement, was the drummer in Filtered Reality way back in 1995 -- the first real band co-host Rob Crooks and I were ever members of. I've known her even longer, though, since way back in kindergarten, so it was awesome to have her on the show to talk about the (randomly-generated) "bleeds" theme. Jessika doesn't play drums anymore, but she's still muscially inclined, backing up other local artists, and she performed a song at the end of the show as part of our Live Exclusives series.

This week, the fellas were joined by the one and only John Draper Perrin IV, who stopped by the basement to discuss the "thief" topic. You may know Johnny from his involvement in such local bands as Grandpa's Army, the Brat Attack, TBA, Den of Iniquity, and most recently, Up 'n Atom. Despite being a last-minute guest, Johnny's appearance was actually one of our better episodes, with some legitimately interesting discussion about the recording process (who knew?) We also watched "Hockey's Hardest Hitters" on VHS from 1992 (on mute) while recording the show, which becomes obvious partway through the program. Lots of fun this week.

Our old pal Allan Koehler stopped by the basement to talk about "prostitution" (randomly generated word of the week) songs, eat some "pink goo" and generally hang out. If you don't know Al, he was the dancing robot for the Mouth-Boat, pretty much the fourth member of the band. He sheds a bit of light on this program about the "Sebastian the Robot" silliness -- basically saying he knows nothing about it, but that the costume is still intact and in his possession -- and I tacked part of the ransom note to the beginning of the intro.

This week's episode features guest host John Kendle, former editor of Uptown magazine. It's a really good listen -- pretty heavy on old war stories about the Royal Albert and Winnipeg's scene back in the mid-1980s. Of course, all of this ties in (somehow) with this week's randomly-generated theme, "Chicago." Despite Uptown's format change, John's still involved in the music journalism thing and occasionally interviews touring acts at the WFP News Cafe these days. Also, if you listen to this week's intro, there's a clip from an episode of Australia's Reaction Podcast (a podcast that reviews other podcasts) discussing our episode #15. Pretty cool.

This week's guest is Nestor Wynrush (aka Elliott Walsh), a familiar face (and voice) in the local music scene. Elliott helped us -- in another four-host show -- talk about the "Paperback" theme. This episode is a little more sprawling and off-topic than usual, but it's pretty great, and is one of my personal favourites of the year so far. Get literary with Witchpolice Radio. If you're unfamiliar with Elliott's music, which he kind of downplayed on the show, you should definitely check it out, especially his excellent free live album on Marathon of Dope.

As we inch ever-closer to 20 episodes, Winnipeg filmmaker Ryan Simmons stopped by the basement to discuss the "Cannibal" theme. This is another three-hosts-n'-a-guest format, and I'm really liking the way these ones are sounding. Ryan has been working on a new video for Witchpolice Radio co-host Rob Crooks, but he's also done videos for local bands like KEN Mode and This Hisses that we all know and love

Behold! The Witchpolice Radio train continues a-chuggin' down the tracks (and a day ahead of schedule, too!) with our 17th majestic episode, this week featuring a live performance by our guest host, local rap impresario Birdapres. Perhaps you are familiar with some of the multitude of releases Bird (government name Dane Goulet) has appeared on, dating back to the mid-90s (seriously, the man's credits -- per Discogs -- are insane). If you're not, perhaps you should look into that. Immediately.

Witchpolice Radio continues in guest mode with this week's instalment, featuring none other than Mas Steve in Jon's usual spot. Rob Crooks is back from Europe, too, and the three of us put our heads together to create a pretty grim episode of the show. When the theme is "traumatic," it's not like there's much of a choice. Steve played a new original song at the end of the show, "Lowdown Manitoba Blues."

Our guest this week was Damian Purdy, whose excellent album as Ripping Hammer has been consistently popular here on Witchpolice and is one of my personal favourite recordings on the entire site. Download it. Seriously. It's great. This week also marked the first four-host episode, with the original three (me, Rob and Jon) back together again alongside our guest. Expect more of this, as we're moving from a "guests sometimes" format to a "guests every episode" format.

While last week's excellent episode -- the most-downloaded Witchpolice Radio show to date -- focused mainly on old-school country, this one, featuring the inimitable Ryan Sanders (Knifeinmyback, the Brat Attack, a bunch of other cool bands), is somewhat... louder. Aside from Jon's opening selection, everything here is fairly heavy n' distorted. It's a really awesome playlist, coupled with one of the better discussions we've had on the show. Give it a listen. You'll learn a lot about coffee, ill-advised drug rampages, and how Ryan is just a regular criminal, not a hate criminal as one might interpret from one of his early remarks. Oh yeah, and the theme this week is "Fuel." In keeping with our live guest performances, Ryan did a brief spoken-word piece at the end of the show:

As Rob Crooks finishes off his European tour, Witchpolice Radio soldiers on with yet another guest host. This time, it's JD Ormond of the redoubtable Ultra Mega. JD joined us for a chat about "Failure," which resulted in a lot of old-timey country stuff getting played, and he capped off the show with an excellent solo performance of Ultra Mega's "Hamburglar Blues."

This week's episode is all about being "Dependent." Along with guest host **Shauna Alcorn** , Witchpolice Radio regulars Sam and Jon discussed synth music, record collection, Jon's innate ability to encourage others to drink to excess, and more. Oh, and we played some great songs, too, based on the randomly-generated theme.

Since Rob Crooks is still in Europe, we brought in another guest host this week -- Tim Haverluck of local bands The Stabs, the Smash Brothers, the Red River Ramblers, and awesome back-in-the-day punk bands like Kirby and Gherkin. In a first for this program, Tim performed a live song at the end of the show. It was meant to illustrate a particular guitar style he was talking about, but I really like how it turned out, and I'm going to encourage all of our future guests (assuming they're muscial) to do the same. This show, somehow, also marks the first time we've ever played a local band on-air, as KEN mode's "The Hammer Party" fit the theme. And yes, Tim, that's "KEN mode," not "Keb Mo'."

This week's episode of Witchpolice Radio features special guest host Greg Arcade (filling in for Rob). All kinds of madness ensues. The theme for episode #9 is "Ruined," which seems weird until you realize it can from a random word generator. We try our best to associate songs with the theme and ended up playing some really good stuff. Lots of reminiscing about the good old days on this one

Jon couldn't make it to the recording session, so he was temporarily replaced by Mr. Dave Halcrow, of local bands like The Brat Attack and Talk City (who had one song on the Be Our Friend compilation, but I'm hoping to get more of their music on here.) Dave was a good substitute, and played stuff that neither Rob nor I would have otherwise listened to, so it was cool. Expect more guest hosts in future, as our schedules are such that getting all three of us in a room at the same time isn't always a given. Rob is going to Europe soon, so we'll have some fill-in hosts while he's gone as well.

The fellas and I took a break from Witchpolice Radio over the holidays, so our loyal listeners (all 10 of them) had to go without the dulcet tones of our voices for two whole weeks. I imagine the withdrawal must have been terrible. Anyway, we return with episode 7, themed around fire. If it sounds like we're just getting these themes from a random word generator... well, we kind of are. As usual on the show, we all pick songs that are loosely based on the one-word theme, and this week turned out to be a pretty awesome selection. We did get a little sidetracked by a series of long rants about neck tattoos, mind you.

This is the police episode. It's a little long, rambly and off-topic, but I think it's actually a pretty solid program. The song selection is great, and although we tend to go way off-topic on this one, there's some pretty interesting stuff, including a rant about third-wave ska, a critique of Paul McCartney's "Nirvana" performance and some discussion about the local rap scene. This'll (likely) be the last episode for 2012, as the holidays mean we're going to be hard-pressed to record and post anything until the new year (although who knows, maybe it'll happen).

This week the theme is New York, a city none of us have ever visited. There's a massive range of songs about NY, so we had a lot to choose from, but the show ended up being one of the most aggressive we've done to date, with a lot of short, loud n' fast numbers.

Here's the latest episode of the Witchpolice Radio podcast. This week's theme was "Drugs," which proved to be a little difficult, since it's such a prevalent topic in music. It wasn't hard to find songs, it was hard to choose the best ones to play. As usual, there's a short (one-hour) version as well as a longer, more rambling version, but the extended one gives you more discussion about straight-edge, hating the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the ethics of eating meat, television and other off-topic turns. I think this is one of our better podcasts to date, just in the music selection alone, but you can be the judge of that.

In this, the third weekly episode of Witchpolice Radio, Rob, Jon and Sam tackle the latest theme: Diseases. As with episode #2, there's a full-length version coming in at just over an hour and half, plus the concise, edited one-hour version. This time, my editing wizardry has improved, so both include all nine songs.

Episode #2's theme is "spiritual music," which, like the other themes we're going to do, is totally up to the interpretation of the show's three hosts/selectors. Since the first episode ended up being well over two hours in length, we tried to keep things a little more concise this time around, but it still wound up being over an hour and a half. If you want to hear the full version, you get two extra songs and a lot more discussion, but if you'd prefer a tight one-hour podcast, there's an edited version available as well.

So we finally got around to doing a podcast. I've been talking about this idea for years, and it came to fruition a few days ago when I sat down with Jon Askholm and Rob Crooks ** ** and recording a rambling, over-long 'radio show'. The format, if you want to call it that, was that we would each play records and discuss them, and despite a slow start, it actually started working out. We'll be ironing out the kinks in subsequent weeks (it's going to be a weekly show), cutting the show down to an hour and having a weekly theme... but here's the raw, unpolished debut episode of **Witchpolice Radio**.