De Facto (band)
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De Facto (alternatively spelt as DeFacto) is an American dub reggae band which has included Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Omar Rodríguez-López, Isaiah "Ikey" Owens and Jeremy Ward.
Biography
The band began as small jam sessions after
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: Bixler-Zavala played drums like he did before in his earlier bands Foss and Los Dregtones, Rodríguez-López played bass, and Ward ran samples, sang, and did 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. Rodríguez-López met Ikey Owens at a hip hop show. They exchanged numbers, and then Owens met up with them during one of their shows and joined De Facto as their keyboard player midshow. After relocating to the West Coast, Owens joined the band full-time.
Following the break-up of
In 2001, the members of the band teamed up with bassist Eva Gardner and drummer Blake Fleming to form The Mars Volta. Despite this, De Facto continued to play live shows in the following years. During that time, Rodríguez-López 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 after 2001, and following the death of Jeremy Ward in May 2003 due to drug overdose, any future re-groupings of De Facto appeared highly unlikely.[citation needed]
In a radio interview conducted by
Since 2001 the only new De Facto release was live footage from a January 3, 2001, show at The Smell, Los Angeles, included on the Gold Standard Laboratories DVD GSL Lab Results Vol. 1 Live in 2007. 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
In February 2024 it was announced that De Facto would be making a surprise return after more than 20 years to play at the
Influences and genres
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. Many of those ideas later led to what would become the members' next band, The Mars Volta.[5]
Band members
DiscographyAlbums
EPsSingles
Appears on
See alsoSee alsoReferences
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