the merle

Formed at Warren Wilson College from a clique of liberal arts school punks, The Merle was my first original band. With songs like “Chun-Chun”, “Chun-Chun-Chun” and “Hippies In a Saab”, Merle was exciting, funny and frightening. On stage we would terrorize the campus coffee house with nunchuck displays and a roaring motorcycle at full rev. Before this I was in a psyche-blues band with Merle’s drummer, Will Chatham (Crain), called The Blind Pigs. He and I were writing weird punk rock songs and recording them on a Tascam 4-track machine. Joining projects, what we ended up with was something like an MC5-Butthole Surfers love child.

We toured up and down the East Coast a few times, usually with a couple of dogs, in a big Dodge van named “Izabella”. Not particularly commercially ambitious, we mostly stuck around the Southeast US. Our sandbox, Vincent’s Ear coffee house, provided a center of gravity for an innovative arts scene that kept us from wanting to stray too far from home.

Fun fact: After several incarnations as “Umbilical Whip” and “Pre-cum Tea“, the band settled on “Merle“, named after a friend of drummer/bassist Jamie Stirling (DrugMoney) from Sewanee, TN. That Merle would let you shoot at him with a shotgun for $50 from 100 paces. He was also rumored to threaten neighbors with a buzzing chainsaw attached to a rope which he would swing wildly around his head when drunk and angry.

THE MERLE MANIFESTO
by guitar/bassist Christopher Yountz

THE MERLE IS A GODDAMN BAND who have received the word, the calling of the ROCK AND ROLL DEMON in their souls. For many years they believed, even as they succumbed to the will of WHITEY. For many years they persevered despite the LIES and MEDIA MANIPULATIONS of THE MAN and his WICKED FALSE REALITY.

The Merle was formed in an act of GREATER DESTINY, its members collectively dedicating their wretched lives to the public conjuration of the CLEANSING BEAST, developing a musical ritual in which they surrender their ego to the will of ROCK AND GOD DAMN ROLL, so that the TRUE WORD may be spread to audiences everywhere. The Merle share a faith in the FUTURE OF YOUTH, but in this mathematic age, community is illusion. The fault lies with THE MAN, whose evil will to dominate our souls through the destruction of meaning must be subverted!

The Merle have been chosen to liberate youth from the evil moralities of commercialism and entertainment by creating a TRUE REALITY OF HOLY FUN. The Merle wishes to empower each member of its audience with a sense of his/her own individual truth, for this is THE WORD in subverting the FALSE REALITY OF WHITEY.

THE MERLE IS A BARREL OF A LOADED .44 PRESSED BETWEEN THE EYES OF THE MAN. Witness The Merle for it is only through the strength of fellow true believers that the trigger can be pulled once and for all, GODDAMMIT.