The Story As Told By Simon Streep

We never sat down and decided we were going to form a band. It just sort of happened. A bit like the discovery of penicillin. Except we haven’t saved as many lives.

At the end of 2005 Dylan and I sat down to watch the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou, and inspired by the soulful crooning of George Clooney and the harmonies of the Soggybottom Boys, we thought we’d test out some new home recording equipment and see what we could create.

If you listen to our first recording, a cover of Kumbya, you’ll understand why most press releases include the words ‘from humble beginnings’. Once we’d had enough of massacring perfectly good songs by pretending we were an unruly choir, we took to writing some original material, and about a year later, we found ourselves having enough songs to release our debut album It Couldn’t Have Been Miss Scarlett, She Was With Us At The Time.

At first we were mainly concerned with making each other laugh, but the more we shared our music with our family and friends, the more we realised we were onto something unique and good, especially as there weren’t many people in Cape Town and even South Africa who were doing what we were.

Playing as a duo was working in venues suited for comedy, but it wasn’t quite cutting it in some live music venues, so near the end of 2008 we brought in a full band so we’d be able to do both elements justice. Extending the family were Tim S on keys, Richard on bass and Tim P on drums.

On the 6th June 2009 the launch of our website would mark a new era for Streep and become a catalyst for things we could have never dreamt of. Our website, designed by Tim P and developed by our good friend Hugh, was our attempt to reach more people through blogs, songs, videos, podcasts, and our social media portals. Our first viral success was with The Steri Stumpie Song, and this probably would have been our highlight of the year, until a couple of months later the Graham Norton Show found our song about Anna Paquin, and we ended up playing it to her on the show via Skype.

Our next project was our debut full band album, Suitable For The Whole Family – a collection of our favourite songs from our past five years of being a band. Recorded with Matt Allison at Dreamspace Recording Studios, the album captures the energy of our live performances, but with all the crispness that comes with doing a professional studio album.

The album has been released just in time for our run of duo shows at the Gilded Balloon as part of the Edinburgh Comedy Festival at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, after which we’ll begin work on our sitcom Jobs Your Uncle and on our next musical ambition, a pirate musical.