Ahead of their new album ‘The Last Balloon,’ the collective continues to reconnect with the city that started it all.
Tank and the Bangas have always carried New Orleans with them, no matter how far their music travels. Long before the awards and global tours, the group took shape inside the city’s open mic circuit, where poetry, performance, and live instrumentation collided in real time. Lead singer Tarriona “Tank” Ball found her voice in those rooms, while her bandmates (which currently includes Norman Spence, Rob Kellner, T33ny, and Devin Trusclair) matched her vocal energy with their unique sound.
After meeting at Liberation Lounge in Algiers on the West Bank of New Orleans in 2011, the group released Think Tank two years later. In 2017, their breakthrough moment came when they won NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest with a viral performance. The win gave them increased popularity, opening the door to national attention and eventually a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist in 2020. Since then, the band has continued to build a catalog that blends soul, hip-hop, jazz, and poetry into something distinctly their own.
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