Singled Out: Union Duke's Coming In Clear

Alt-rock meets twang band Union Duke just released their new single "Coming In Clear", and to celebrate we asked Matt Warry-Smith (drums/vocals), to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

Let's seeeeeee. I wrote Coming In Clear during the pandemic. For most of my life I was a singer with no instrument and relied on my bandmates to write songs together because I didn't consider myself to be proficient enough with chords. During the beginning days of Union Duke I got a ukulele and started writing songs on that because 4 strings is easier than 6. During the first few weeks of the pandemic I made it a goal to learn the guitar at LEAST well enough to write on and to accompany myself singing. I borrowed a guitar from my uncle Eric, an old Seagull that he hadn't changed the strings on in like 20 years, and started playing every day until I felt comfortable enough to write songs on.

Honestly the first few tunes I wrote were huge bummers, maybe because the strings on the guitar were so old and it sounded really dark but more likely because it was 6 months into the pandemic and I was super depressed! Then the band agreed we should try to do something remote because content is king and we thought if we didn't maybe we wouldn't exist anymore. So I wrote up this slightly more optimistic tune about getting older and wiser and smarter and all that and sent it to the boys, it was my first decent, not-depressing song I wrote on the guitar. The song didn't really have an obvious hook, I mean it was catchy enough but there was no LINE that really brought it all home, nothing lyrically that stuck out as a thematic through-line which is where I usually pull a song's title from. For whatever reason, most likely because we're a bunch of dumb idiots, we started referring to the song as "Pinga Maringa".

We all recorded our own parts at home with the idea being to put it all together and release it but, of course, that never happened. After sitting on the proverbial shelf for awhile we all agreed as a band to just put some real recording time on the books with a real producer to try and galvanize some post-pandemic energy. We had been talking about working with Aaron Goldstein at Gold Standard for years and finally found our opportunity. We sent him something like 25 demos and asked him to pick his favourites and he very kindly spent an afternoon going through the whole batch and making notes. We ended up with 5 we wanted to record with Pinga Maringa among them. His only note was that it was a terrible title and we should come up with a new line that encapsulated the tune. We came up with the tag "now it's coming in clear" in the studio and suddenly the title Pinga Maringa was banished to hell where it belongs.

Epilogue: Recently Banjo Jim found an old list of songs with Pinga Maringa written on it and remarked, "What ever happened to Pinga? That was a good song, we should play it again". To which Ethan replied, "we do play it, it's called Coming in Clear".

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the band here

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