TONBANDGERÄT - 20 Jahre Tonbandgerät - Tour 2027

TONBANDGERÄT - 20 Years of Tonbandgerät - 2027 Tour

20 YEARS OF TONBANDGERÄT – TOUR ANNOUNCEMENT

From the very beginning, Tonbandgerät wanted to capture snapshots of life through their songs—of how life feels in the moment. When the band was founded 20 years ago, the big questions were different: Will I pass my high school graduation exams? What comes next? What does first love mean? And what happens when all your friends suddenly move away? No one could have known that these snapshots would one day span 20 years.

And that’s perhaps the most amazing thing about this story: The band has grown up alongside its members. Or perhaps the members have grown up with the band. For the longest stretch of their lives, they were part of this little universe of music, friendships, and shared stories. What began as a young band taking its first steps on small stages in Hamburg—where a handful of friends hoped for free drinks—has grown into countless concerts throughout Germany, the U.S., China, and Israel, and a shared musical life spanning over two decades.

This also applies to the people in front of the stage. Many have been following Tonbandgerät for years—or even since their very first concerts. They tell stories of songs that played at their weddings, of friendships forged at Tonbandgerät concerts, and of song lyrics that have remained on their skin as tattoos. Sometimes, this is hard even for Tonbandgerät to comprehend. And perhaps the greatest gift a band can receive: realizing that their own snapshots have long since become part of other people’s life stories.

“I press Record, never Pause” was the motto for their tenth anniversary. In fact, the band didn’t take a break until after 19 years together. Otherwise, the phrase still fits surprisingly well.

Because, of course, a lot has changed in 20 years. The band itself. Life outside the band. Bassist Isa left Tonbandgerät in 2022. The others have gotten married, have children and dogs, and after concerts, they now drink significantly more non-alcoholic beer than they used to. The questions that arise in the songs have also changed.

Nevertheless, a common thread runs through their music: new beginnings and goodbyes, euphoria and nostalgia, the search for one’s place in the world, and, time and again, the question of who one actually is and who one wants to be.

Perhaps that’s also why the old songs have never grown old. Tonbandgerät was never a band that wanted to leave its earlier songs behind just because their own lives have changed in the meantime. On the contrary. The songs are snapshots in time. Precisely because they come from a specific era, they’re allowed to remain. They don’t become any less true just because life has moved on.

Sometimes it’s even the other way around. Then the band plays an old song today and realizes there’s something in it that they couldn’t have known back then. Something you can only sense in your early twenties and suddenly understand years later.

“We once swore we’d never grow up,” the lyrics in “Sekundenstill” go. In our mid-twenties, that sounded romantic. Ten years later, guitarist Sophia wouldn’t write that line the same way. After all, growing up isn’t something you have to fight against. It can be a beautiful thing. The important thing is just to stay curious.

And so the story of Tonbandgerät isn’t a nostalgic look back at a time that’s gone. It’s an ongoing conversation between who you once were and who you’ve become in the meantime.

In 2027, Tonbandgerät will turn 20. Of course, we’ll be celebrating live. First with two sold-out birthday shows at Große Freiheit 36 in Hamburg. Due to high demand, one show turned into two. And those two evenings eventually turned into a birthday tour through 13 cities. And there will likely be a lot of people singing along to every lyric again.

Because what still works after 20 years is pretty simple: Tonbandgerät loves being on stage. And that joy seems to be contagious.