De Facto (band)

Biography

The band began as small jam sessions after At the Drive-In shows. The original band consisted of Omar, Cedric, and Jeremy playing local shows around their home town, El Paso, Texas. Cedric said, "Yeah actually we used to be called the Sphinktators, that was early De Facto, just more rock." Omar was actually the singer of the Sphinktators and remembers, "We used psychedelic sounds, Cedric played the bass, Jeremy played guitar, and Ralph Jasso played drums."

For their first recording they brainstormed the name De Facto Cadre Dub, which was later shortened to De Facto. The lineup of the band was switched around: Cedric played drums like he did before in his earlier bands Foss and Los Dregtones, Omar played bass, and Jeremy ran samples, sang and did the sparse guitar work. Ralph Jasso moved to keyboards but soon quit the band. The self-titled recording was released as a very limited vinyl pressing in 1999; it would be re-released in 2001 as How Do You Dub? You Fight for Dub. You Plug Dub In. through Headquarter Records, now known as Restart Records. Omar met Ikey Owens at a hip hop show. They exchanged numbers and then Ikey met up with them during one of their shows and joined De Facto as their keyboard player midshow. After relocating to the west coast, Ikey joined the band full-time.

Following the break-up of At the Drive-in in 2001 Omar and Cedric switched their focus on De Facto. That year eventually saw all the band's releases come out, starting with 456132015 EP produced by Mario Caldato Jr. De Facto's first full-length album, ¡Megaton Shotblast! was released on the Gold Standard Laboratories label, and received moderate success, probably in part due to the popularity of At the Drive-In. Légende du Scorpion à Quatre Queues, which would be the last De Facto album, followed the same year, released through Modern City Records. Both albums combined band's studio recordings made in 2000 with live recordings from the European tour in 2001.

Break-up and possible rebirth

In 2001, the members of the band teamed up with bassist Eva Gardner and drummer Blake Fleming to form The Mars Volta. Despite this, they continued to play numerous live shows in the following years. During that time, Omar met John Frusciante at one of the shows and the two became friends; Frusciante once joined De Facto on stage as a guest guitarist. The band however did not put out any new material, and following death of Jeremy Ward in May 2003 due to drug overdose, any future re-groupings of De Facto appeared highly unlikely.

In a radio interview conducted by Radionica Colombia on 28 October 2008, Cedric Bixler-Zavala revealed that after returning from the South American leg of the current Mars Volta tour, new De Facto material may possibly be recorded. In the same interview, Bixler-Zavala also stated that he will be returning to the drums for the production. To date, it has not been confirmed if the sessions actually happened.

Since 2001 the only new De Facto release had been the live footage from the January 3, 2001 show at The Smell, Los Angeles, included on the Gold Standard Laboratories DVD GSL Lab Results Vol. 1 Live in 2007. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez however mentioned the possibility of releasing a documentary from the band's European tours, as well as previously unreleased tracks from Mario Caldato Jr. sessions.

Ikey Owens died of a heart attack in 2014, while on tour with Jack White.

Influences and genres

De Facto's general style was instrumental dub, influenced by the heady sounds of the likes of King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry. However they also dabbled in electronica, Latin and salsa music, and jazz fusion. The band's writing process was largely improvisational, based on an exchange of ideas using drum and bass rhythms as the songs' spines. A lot of those ideas led to what would become the members' next band, The Mars Volta.

Band members

Albums

EPs