De Facto (band)

De Facto
Omar Rodríguez-López, Jeremy Michael Ward, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Isaiah "Ikey" Owens
Background information
Origin	El Paso, Texas
Genres	Dub, electronica, reggae, salsa
Years active	1998–2003
Labels	Various
Associated acts	At the Drive-In, The Mars Volta, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Group
Past members	Cedric Bixler-Zavala Omar Rodríguez-López Jeremy Michael Ward Isaiah "Ikey" Owens

De Facto was a dub reggae band which included Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Omar Rodríguez-López, Isaiah "Ikey" Owens and 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 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.