PRESS

Tank! is an instrumental trio from Madison, Wisconsin: guitar, upright bass, and drums. Guitarist and composer Matthew Nelson started the band in 2005, taking the name from a Yoko Kanno piece he had arranged for the first quartet. That group played its first show at the Hemingway Lounge & Cigar Bar in Fitchburg, and appeared at Café Montmartre and Jazz at 5 the same year.

The early book leaned on contemporary noir writing alongside Henry Mancini. The Mancini survived. Over the following two decades the writing moved toward its postwar sources — bebop, jump blues, swing, Latin rhythm, and the harmony of film noir — and the book was rewritten for a trio without vibraphone. In 2023 Nelson began eighteen months of study with Stephen Ulrich of Big Lazy, a period audible in the current material.

The compositions take up migration, displacement, and cultural collision. Nelson spent an itinerant childhood moving through the South, and the writing comes out of it: Elegy for Clark Street, The Driftless Highway, Desolation Street, Mano Gacho. He came to Madison from Chicago in the early 2000s after a decade of road work with R&B bands, including dates with Freddy "Big Fred" Terrell and Bobby Hendricks of the Drifters. He also leads Mo' Onions, a Booker T. and the MG's tribute that has staged an annual Otis Redding show since 2023.

Gary Chin, an original member of the band, plays upright bass. Jay Hughes plays drums.