Tank and the Bangas Explain their "Friend Goals"

Tank and the Bangas

The New Orleans R&B/hip-hop/funk/pop band talk about their upcoming EP.

What is self-care, especially during a time like this? In addition to the kind of gentle treatment we all need to allow ourselves in 2020, it’s the title of the first single from the upcoming release from Grammy-nominated music Tank and the Bangas. Recently, Tarionna “Tank” Ball, Joshua Johnson, Norman Spence, and Albert Allenback conducted an online press conference to discuss their new song and video, “Self Care,” and the new EP, Friend Goals, due out November 20. Ball says. “It will keep you moving.” They riffed and joked with each other in an energetic, sometimes silly hour that shed more light on the band’s vibe than the songs. When asked what their friend goals are, they came up with “friendly,” “fantastic” and “goals.”

Since “Self Care” is the band’s current release, they talked a lot about it. When asked what “self-care” means to them, Ball said some found through quarantine that their schedules needed to slow down, while others found that they were not truly paying attention to themselves. She watched what she ate and also what she said. According to Allenback, “Self-care during quarantine for me personally has been having the time to step back and actually look at the type of person I am and refuel spiritually.” 

The “Self Care” music video features Ball, singer Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph, and singer Jaime Woods quarantined in their own distinct, wild rooms. Each musician is separated from the other and doing personal activities such as dancing, cooking food, and even bathing. The quarantine is the obvious implied context for the video as the musicians act out, cooped up in their rooms. Ball said that making the music video was fun, and it looks it, not only because of the band’s energy, but because of the dramatic, colorful rooms seen in the video. 

“I love the way each girl was in their own room,” Ball said. “I wanted everybody to want to be in one of the girls’ rooms.” 

“Self Care” started, according to keyboard player Norman Spence, with a beat that Allenback created while at home isolated with COVID-19. In fact, the band created their new music during quarantine, which does not sound ideal, but it may had a silver lining because they had the time to fine-tune Friend Goals. They had the time to get tracks right because they couldn’t tour and, like most of us, couldn’t do the things that were such a part of their day to day lives. 

They would periodically meet at their studio where they would capture performances and work on refining them, but they also devoted themselves to working independently at their respective homes. They felt creative boosts when working and thinking alone. 

To Ball, it was a “challenging and exceptional process.,” but Allenback thinks that, what each member made alone was different than what they would have made if they were together. Drummer and musical director Joshua Johnson though the mixing process was the best part of it all. The band had the time to make sure that their acoustics and music were going to sound fabulous to all ears, so they tested them as many ways as they could.

“When we did the mixing process, we ended up doing it on all different kinds of speakers – small speakers, car speakers, laptop speakers,” he said.

Tank claims that it was therapeutic for them to not only play music together, but also alone. Working alone would improve the band’s individual productivity and creativity, but it was a form of self-care to have a project to work on.

“We really needed this time to get together and create music,” Ball said.