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Free Nationals – whom you might know as rapper Anderson .Paak’s backing band – recently performed a short jam at the virtual guitar show Guitar.com Live over the weekend.
On Friday (October 2), guitarist Jose Rios and keyboardist Ron “T.Nava” Avant played an exclusive, intimate three-song set of tracks from their 2019 debut album ‘Free Nationals’, jamming on record standouts ‘Gidget’ and ‘Beauty & Essex’.
Watch the 15-minute performance below:
Free Nationals were just one of many guests at Guitar.com Live, the three-day virtual guitar show by media brand Guitar.com which featured appearances from Carlos Santana, St. Vincent, Holly Humberstone, Jason Isbell, Joe Bonamassa and many more.
Revisit Guitar.com Live and its various panels, masterclasses and performances here.
Free Nationals’ appearance at Guitar.com Live follows the June release of the instrumental version of their 2019 album.
‘Free Nationals’, which the four-piece band released last December, featured a number of guests, including Daniel Caesar, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Syd of The Internet. It also included a posthumous feature from Mac Miller on ‘Time’, and Anderson .Paak appeared on ‘Gidget’.
NME rated ‘Free Nationals’ four stars, with reviewer Sam Moore commenting, “Proudly wearing their influences on their sleeve – the band are long-term scholars of Stevie Wonder, Parliament-Funkadelic, Herbie Hancock and many more – that sense of familiarity thankfully doesn’t descend into unbridled pastiche over ‘Free Nationals” 41-minute run time. Instead it adheres to the band’s long-touted party line that they wish to pay homage to the music greats of the past, albeit with a modern-day spin.”
[Editor’s note: Guitar.com is owned by BandLab Technologies, which also owns NME.]
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