They've been called "the best kept secret in San Francisco". The Meek is comprised of Patrick Maley (guitar, vocals), Josh Miller (bass, backing vocals), and Bill Hansen (drums). Patrick Maley and Josh Miller have been playing music together since the late 1990’s when they were both students in Santa Barbara. While the times demanded noisy and experimental, they baffled audiences with their direct, satirical, and occasionally surreal songs about J. Robert Oppenheimer and angry Cherubs. After several years, a move to San Francisco, and a few line up changes, including the addition of Rory Keefe (concertina and guitar), the Meek formed as a drummer-less acoustic group and began to play shows in San Francisco, baffling and delighting (often on the same night) entirely different audiences. This formation produced one 5 song EP. With the addition of Bill Hanson on drums, the Meek began to shed the folk influences and moved in the direction of hook-heavy, rhythmic, and occasionally jazzy Rock & Roll. In 2004 they released A Whole Different Country, an album of melodic and often somber material which features some of Maley’s best compositions including Saturday Night (and it’s the end of the world) (“an exploration of indecisiveness”), “Til the Dog Day’s come” (“an American credit card collector and a Hungarian nun dream about trading places”), and “The Contractor’s Wife” (“a portrait of suburban life”). Songwriting is the key to the Meek’s appeal. Maley’s clever, humorous, and almost obsessive lyrical detail combine with strong melodies to make for music that rewards repeated listening. Though their music is intelligent, it is never pretentious (though Patrick insists he doesn’t want to paint himself in a corner. “I reserve the right to be pretentious should the occasion arise!”) The melodic material and crooning baritone vocals have earned them comparisons to Orange Juice, the Magnetic Fields, Pulp, and Station to Station-era Bowie. Reforming under the name Trust, they have recorded a new album samples of which can be heard at http://www.myspace.com/trustthetrust.