Culture interviews with memory, craft, and feeling.
Q with Tom Power treats culture as lived experience, not just release-day promotion. Conversations with musicians, actors, writers, performers, and choreographers move from a song, role, play, or stage piece into the personal history that shaped it.
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Q with Tom Power is an arts and culture interview show with a patient ear. It likes the revealing detail. A conversation can start with a hit song, a television comeback, a ballet premiere, or a new stage adaptation, then settle into the quieter question underneath: what did this work cost, and what did it make possible? The recent episodes move across music, theatre, dance, television, mythology, children’s literature, and Canadian performance. The range is wide, but the method is steady. The show gives guests room to tell the story in their own order, then uses short follow-ups to sharpen the emotional shape of what has been said. Carol Pope’s episode is not only about Rough Trade or Anti-Diva, The Carol Pope Confessions. It becomes a story about pushing against agents, expectations, and a culture that wanted safer songs. Amy Lee’s conversation uses Evanescence’s early recordings and family memories to make the familiar sound newly human. Jack Inanen’s appearance turns a discussion of Adults and Big Mistakes into a funny, tender portrait of nervousness, manners, and finding one’s footing. Sandra LaRonde’s segment frames She Holds Up the Stars as both a children’s story and a larger claim about Indigenous stories, land, family, and belonging. Orr Schreiber and Bobby Jean Smith’s episode treats choreography as a shared journey rather than a fixed destination. The show can be playful. It can also become grave quickly when the work demands it. Its best moments come when a guest is asked to revisit an old performance, an early room, or a difficult transition and explain what they understand now. Listeners get context without a lecture. They get warmth without flattery. Most of all, they get artists talking about art as something rooted in childhood, place, community, loss, ambition, and the uneasy decision to keep going.
Made for: For listeners who want arts interviews with emotional patience, cultural range, and enough context to care about a guest even when they arrived for only one song, show, book, or role.
What sets it apart: The show stands out by starting from concrete artifacts — old footage, a role, a song, a premiere — and patiently tracing them back to the rooms, pressures, and personal histories that shaped them.
Five days a week, Tom Power brings you candid conversations with the artists shaping our culture. Whether he’s chatting with A-listers or rising stars, his disarming warmth and meticulous research always gets below the surface, bringing us deeper into the art and lives of today's most compelling musicians, writers, actors and filmmakers. As a Canadian institution, Q has attracted the biggest names in the world. But it's never been about the fame. It's always been about the art. Since becoming the host of Q in October 2016, listeners have come to know Tom for his in-depth interviewing style (asking founding Wu-Tang Clan member RZA what was inside his teenage notebooks), his mischievous sense…
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Detailed artist interviews connect finished music to the memories, pressures, and early creative choices behind it.
Q with Tom Power treats an artist interview as a route into the decisions and pressures behind a career. Conversations with Carole Pope and Amy Lee move through early influences, industry expectations, performance, and the experiences that shaped their music, with questions that…
A Canadian sorry law meets Zelda horses, and suddenly you are hearing the person behind the work.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Carol Pope's story lands as Canadian music history with the friction left in.
Tom Power's conversation with Carol Pope follows how Rough Trade's front woman moved from a shy, bookish start through Yorkville and the New York underground into a more audacious public persona.
Amy Lee revisits choir roots, radio history, and the path into Evanescence.
Amy Lee spends this Q conversation revisiting the roots of Evanescence, and the details give the story real shape: choir friends from high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, the pre-Fallen shows, and a father who spent 30 years on the radio as John Lee.
A tired chem read leads to a funny, thoughtful conversation about acting, Canadian politeness, and the fear of taking up space.
Jack Inanen's talk with Tom Power turns audition nerves into a thoughtful look at how a life can slip into a role. Inanen remembers being so tired during the Adults chem read that he finally stopped overthinking it, then traces why Paul Baker first seemed easy to play and how…
An oil-can guitar leads into Wesley's Haitian musical inheritance and the community that helped him keep playing.
Wesley's father's guitar sits at the center of this Q conversation, turning a family warning about food and school into the start of a musical life.
Ashton James reflects on Youngblood, grief, and the director whose belief reshaped his sense of the role.
Q's conversation with Ashton James frames Youngblood through an actor still measuring what the role came to mean. James looks back on entering the audition without knowing the film's place as a remake of the 1986 hockey classic, and without feeling fully secure on skates.
Joe Wong interviews drummers and musicians about craft, history, and the working musician's life.
Records, careers and arguments, weighed by people who listen closely.
Tom Power interviews the band Good Kid about how they built a fanbase online through gaming and streamers, and discusses the implications of AI for music.
Tom Power interviews Phil Lord and Christopher Miller about their creative partnership and career, from The Lego Movie to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
Director Oliver Laxe discusses his Oscar-nominated film Sirât, shot in Morocco, which explores the rave scene and a mythical journey.
Guest host Talia Schlanger interviews Juno-winning musician Wesley about his latest album 'Makaiah'.
A profile of reggae legend Leroy Sibbles, highlighting his pivotal role in The Heptones and Studio One records.
Actor Ashton James discusses his lead role in the hockey film Youngblood, a remake of the 1986 cult classic.
On Q, Jill Deakin interviews Darlene Love about the documentary “I Know Where I’ve Been” and the voice behind hits credited to other performers.
Q guest host Jill Deacon interviews Calgary magician, comedian, and fire eater Carissa Hendricks about leaving home at 16 and turning circus skills into paid performance work.
Weird Al Yankovic explains how a Billboard Hot 100 listing changed his life while he was still working in a Westwood One mailroom.
Jill Deacon opens by placing Carol Pope before KD Lang, before Peaches, and before the Riot Grrrls.
Ali Hassan sits in for Tom Power and opens the conversation with Evanescence's My Immortal.
Guest host Ali Hassan introduces a recorded conversation Tom Power had with actor Jack Innanen at the Banff World Media Festival, where the Cambridge, Ontario-born TikTok star discusses his rise from viral videos to roles on FX's Adults and Dan Levy's Netflix show Big Mistakes.
Tom Power interviews Sarah Chalk about the success of Scrubs and its 'no a-hole' policy.
Tom Power interviews Sandra LaRonde about her children's novel 'She Holds Up the Stars' and its stage adaptation, exploring Indigenous storytelling as part of Canada's identity.
Tom Power introduces a re-airing of an interview with Maren Morris about her album 'Dreamsicle', which she describes as more than just a divorce album.
Tom Power interviews choreographers Orr Schreiber and Bobby Jean Smith about their collaborative process and upcoming debut with the National Ballet of Canada.
Lang Lang says a piano teacher in Beijing fired him, leaving him ashamed and unwilling to play.
A preview of an interview with folk trio The Pairs, highlighting their captivating performance at a folk festival despite disruptive sound checks.
Tom Power interviews the indie rock band Good Kid about how they built their audience online through gaming and streaming communities, and discusses the implications of AI for music.