Nando Reis

The bassist who kept writing

José Fernando Gomes dos Reis was born in São Paulo on 12 January 1963. He had played percussion and sung with the salsa group Sossega Leão before Titãs, and turned up at the band's first public performance behind a drum kit; he moved to bass soon after and became one of its lead voices as well as one of its writers. He stayed two decades. He left in September 2002, giving as his reasons an incompatibility of thought and the exhaustion that followed the deaths of two people close to him, the Titãs guitarist Marcelo Fromer and the singer Cássia Eller, both in 2001.

The break was not permanent. Reis took part in the band's thirtieth-anniversary show in 2012 and returned again for the Encontro reunion tour of 2023–24, which put the classic line-up back on stage for the first time in a generation. Between those two dates he built the solo career that now carries his name on its own.

He has also run side projects that tell you something about his standing among peers rather than among audiences: Trinca de Ases with Gilberto Gil and Gal Costa in 2017–18, and PittyNando, a co-headline run with the rock singer Pitty in 2022–23. He has been abstinent from alcohol and drugs since 2016, a change he traces to a conversation with Gil. He once studied mathematics, supports São Paulo FC, and keeps an agroforestry plot at Jaú where he keeps bees.

The songs that went out under other names

For a long stretch Reis was better known as the author of other singers' hits than as a performer. The Cássia Eller catalogue is the clearest case: 'O Segundo Sol', 'As Coisas Tão Mais Lindas' and 'Meu Mundo Ficaria Completo (Com Você)' came to her in 1999, and 'E.C.T.', 'Luz dos Olhos' and 'Relicário' followed on the Acústico MTV record of 2001, which Reis co-produced. 'All Star', written out of small details of their friendship, reached the public in his own version in 2000 and again on Eller's posthumous Dez de Dezembro in 2002; it is the song most people attach to the pair.

Elsewhere he wrote 'Do Seu Lado' for Jota Quest, heard widely from their 2003 MTV ao Vivo album, and a long sequence of songs with Samuel Rosa for Skank — 'Resposta' in 1998, 'Sutilmente' on Estandarte in 2008, 'Esquecimento' and 'Ela Me Deixou' on Velocia in 2014. He contributed 'Ainda Lembro' to Marisa Monte's Mais in 1991 and wrote 'Onde Você Mora', which Toni Garrido and Cidade Negra took to a mass audience. He also produced records for Eller and for Monte.

That volume of writing translated into money as well as reputation: he was among the ten highest earners in Brazilian author royalties in 2012, and in 2016 ranked fifteenth for royalties and sixth for live-performance earnings.

A solo catalogue, then a four-disc swing

Reis's own discography started while he was still a Titã with 12 de Janeiro and gathered pace once he had a band of his own, Os Infernais, formed in 2000. Para Quando o Arco-Íris Encontrar o Pote de Ouro arrived that year, then Infernal (2001), A Letra A (2003), Sim e Não (2006), Drês (2009) — which carried 'Pra Você Guardei o Amor', a duet with Ana Cañas — Sei (2012) and Jardim-Pomar (2016), which won the Latin Grammy for best rock or alternative album in Portuguese in 2017.

Then nothing new for eight years, and after that a very large object. Uma Estrela Misteriosa Revelará o Segredo was issued in stages from 23 July 2024 and completed on streaming on 20 September 2024: four discs — Uma, Estrela, Misteriosa and a Revelará o Segredo bonus disc sold only inside the vinyl box — running one hour and fifty-four minutes across 26 new songs and four re-recordings. It came out on Relicário and was produced by Barrett Martin and the bassist Felipe Cambraia.

Most of it was cut in São Paulo in the second half of 2022 and finished in Seattle in March 2023, which explains the guest list: Peter Buck of R.E.M. on guitar, Martin of Screaming Trees on drums and synthesiser, Duff McKagan of Guns N' Roses on bass and Moog, Krist Novoselic of Nirvana on accordion, Mike McCready of Pearl Jam and Matt Cameron of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, and Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group. The title nods at Tintin's The Shooting Star; the writing deals with sobriety and with relationships, and it is the first record Reis has made entirely sober.

Reviews treated the scale as a deliberate provocation in a streaming market built on singles. G1 gave the first disc five stars and the set as a whole four and a half; Pop Fantasma scored it seven out of ten, admiring the finish but finding passages repetitive. The São Paulo art critics' association, APCA, put it among the fifty best albums of 2024. That October a star in Capricornus was named after him.

Where he stands in October 2026

The current tour is a deliberate narrowing. Announced for a premiere on 8 August 2026 at the Espaço Unimed in São Paulo, Pra Você Guardei o Amor takes its name from the Drês duet and puts only the romantic end of the catalogue on stage: career hits, songs from the 2024 album and re-readings of love songs he gave away to other people. Rolling Stone Brasil listed sixteen Brazilian cities running to 20 November, and promoters have since added dates beyond that — Cuiabá on 31 October at Musiva, João Pessoa on 8 November at the Teatro Pedra do Reino, Rio de Janeiro on 13 November at Qualistage, and Fortaleza on 18 December at the Arena RioMar.

The band is a fresh assembly rather than a reconvened Infernais: Lan Lanh, a friend of long standing, on percussion; Walter Villaça on guitar; Felipe Cambraia, who co-produced the album, on bass; Alex Veley on keyboards; Eduardo Schuler on drums; and Reis's son Sebastião on acoustic guitar. Sebastião and his brother Theodoro also record as the duo 2Reis. Artistic and visual direction is by Batman Zavareze, whose brief has been to find images for the writing rather than to decorate it.

Pricing on the current run is mid-market by Brazilian arena standards. For the Goiânia date on 24 October 2026 at the Centro de Convenções da PUC Goiás, tickets ran from R$100 in the upper tier to R$350 for the front gold section, with half-price and solidarity tickets available; doors at 8pm, stage at 10pm.

Two hours, tables on the floor

The São Paulo premiere ran about two hours and twenty-five songs including the encore, in front of a floor and mezzanine that were close to full. The room was laid out with tables rather than as a standing pit, which suited the material even when the band pushed hard. A review of the night read the set as two halves: Reis spends the first anchored to an acoustic guitar, then puts it down and works the stage and the front rows unencumbered for the second.

Zavareze's visuals do more than wash the stage in colour — one song set children's drawings against black-and-white war photography, a jolt that cut across the romantic framing. The setlist on the night took in 'Rio Creme', 'O Segundo Sol', 'Luz dos Olhos', 'O Mundo É Bão, Sebastião', 'Marvin' and 'Relicário'. The only complaint logged was a twenty-minute late start.