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Meryl Streek
With Special Guests: Soapbox
Born and raised in Dublin, MERYL STREEK remembers his childhood in Ireland fondly. “Growing up it was great,” he says. “I had a lot of family around me and things were good, we were a working class family of independent screen printers.” During the leaner and more difficult years that followed, he grew up and the world changed around him. He lost several family members, and austerity closed in on the country.
As the recession hit and work became steadily thinner on the ground, he moved to Canada—a 7 year experience that shaped MERYL STREEK both as a person and as an artist, as he explains, “Seeing how countries work outside of Ireland, and seeing how unfair Ireland's work ethic and living situations are, I came back here fuelled to try and make a change.”
With his father a talented drummer in his own right, and the call of punk rock’s ethics and morals so strong, it was perhaps an inevitability that he would eventually fall into that same world. “My dad was an unbelievable drummer, I was raised being around punk bands like Crass and anarcho-punks Rudimentary Peni. I remember seeing him play growing up as a kid and that was the start of my growth as a musician.
Following in these parental musical footsteps, MERYL STREEK began in earnest when he finally quit his former band to try and give a voice to those he saw struggling in his home country. “I just said ‘I need to do my own thing’ and try to help the ordinary people in Ireland who've been suffering,” he says.
“I do it for my father who has now passed on. I know what it’s like to feel betrayed and hurt, and I want to devote my life to helping others as best I can. The music may sound vicious to some, but times are changing and the government here in Ireland aren’t.”
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