Anyone who's familiar with the El Paso, Texas music scene knows the name At The Drive-In; the iconic band that spawned The Mars Volta, Sparta, and SEVERAL other side projects. One of them was a band that Omar Rodriguez-Lopez & Cedric Bixler Zavala formed in 1998 along with Jeremy Michael Ward & Isaiah "Keys" Owens. A reggae band called De Facto. And it was announced earlier this week that after 2 decades of hiatus, De Facto WILL be performing at SXSW in 2024.

If you've never heard De Facto's music, here's a brief recap of their history.

The band was formed in 1998 & were originally a "jam band" that would do small shows around El Paso; Omar would play bass, Cedric on drums, Isaiah on keyboards & Jeremy on vocals/synthesizer. After the break up of At The Drive-In at 2001, the guys would dedicate their time to making music for De Facto. They would make a total of 2 albums & 3 EPs. The band would break up after the death of Jeremy Ward on May 25, 2003. After that Omar & Cedric would put their focus into making music for The Mars Volta. And the rest is history…

Cedric appeared on The Trap Zone podcast & went into great detail in the history of his life in El Paso as well as his past projects, which included the history of De Facto.

In addition to De Facto making an appearance at SXSW, Omar & Cedric will be debuting the North American release for “Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird”.

There are no talks for future shows for De Facto after their SXSW appearance but it’s great that they will be at least making one more appearance for an iconic piece of El Paso history.

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