De Facto (band)

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DeFacto
Background information
Origin	El Paso, Texas
Genre(s)	Dub, Reggae
Years active	1993–2001
Label(s)	Various
Associated acts	At the Drive-In, The Mars Volta
Former members
Cedric Bixler Zavala Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Jeremy Michael Ward Isaiah Ikey Owens

See De facto for the Latin expression.

De Facto was a dub reggae side project of Cedric Bixler Zavala, and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of At the Drive-In, keyboardist Isaiah Ikey Owens, and sound manipulator Jeremy Michael Ward.

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 says, "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." After their first recording they brainstormed the name 'De Facto Cadre’ Dub', which was later shortened to De Facto. That recording became How Do You Dub? You Fight For Dub, You Plug Dub In, which they released on Headquarter Records, now known as Restart Records. Omar met Ikey at a hiphop show and 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 the first album the lineup was switched around. Cedric began to play drums as he had before in his first band the El Paso Pussycats Omar played Bass as he had when he first began to work with At The Drive-In. Jeremy, At The Drive-In's sound manager and cousin of guitarist Jim Ward, ran samples, sang and did the sparse guitar work. Guitars became far less common in their music when Ikey joined.

Their next album, Megaton Shotblast! was released on the Gold Standard Laboratories label, and received instant success, probably in part due to the popularity of At the Drive-In. The group's general style was instrumental dub, but they also dabbled in electronica, Latin/salsa, and jazz. These new ideas led to what would become their next band.

When At the Drive-In broke up, De Facto eventually evolved into The Mars Volta along with bassist Eva Gardner and drummer Jon Theodore.

Any future re-groupings of De Facto now look highly unlikely due to the death of Jeremy Ward in June 2003. Though in 2007 Cedric hinted at possible new material, though it is unknown if it is just unreleased recordings or new recordings. De Facto was most recently featured on the GSL Lab Results Vol. 1 Live DVD in 2007.