GIVING VOICE

When the pandemic hit in 2020, an Irish touring drummer locked himself away for six months, got sober and emerged as “angry, one-man-operated punk band" Meryl Streek, with a mission to address injustice through music. Here, he traces his touring days and writes about his creative transformation

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My name is Meryl Streek and I'm an angry, one-man-operated punk band from Dublin, Ireland. Having recently figured out how to make my music through [music program] Ableton, recording sessions and mixing music by myself, I've been flat-out learning and teaching myself more every day that goes by.

Before that, I spent 15 years of my life touring and playing in bands as a drummer for punk and psych outfits in Dublin and North America before eventually realising I was in the wrong game.

Back in 1980s Ireland, my father was in a band called Guernica. It was fronted by a singer called Joe Rooney, who later turned comedian and starred as Father Damo in Father Ted (“It’s only a bleedin’ whistle”). I remember waking up to the sound of drums coming from the downstairs living room in my granny’s house most weekend mornings. My dad was an exceptional drummer, and that’s not me saying that because he’s my dad. He was trained in a drumming school here in Dublin from a very early age alongside Larry Mullen from U2, and just had the natural rhythm built into him. When I was 10, I wanted to do the same as my dad, and I remember being taught simple rolls on the tops of tables – and the top of literally anything, to be honest. My dad was only short of playing rudiments on top of my granny’s head if he thought he'd get away with it. Naturally, it was built into me too.