Background and career
Omar Alfredo Rodríguez-López (born September 1, 1975) is a Puerto Rican guitarist, songwriter, record producer and filmmaker. He has formed or played in several bands, including The Mars Volta, At the Drive-In, Antemasque, and Bosnian Rainbows. He was the bassist for the dub band De Facto. He is also known for his extensive solo career, which includes over fifty individual releases, and is frequently described as experimental, avant-garde, or progressive. He has also collaborated with numerous artists, such as Damo Suzuki, John Frusciante, Hans Zimmer, Buzz Osborne, Lydia Lunch, Zach Hill, El-P, Mon Laferte and Calle 13.
Rodríguez-López was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in El Paso, Texas, and spent some of his childhood in South Carolina. He began playing the bass at age 12, but then switched to guitar at 15 because he "needed more strings". It was during this time that Rodríguez-López met Cedric Bixler-Zavala while practicing with friend Paul Hinojos. Since then Rodríguez-López has spent most of his career living and working with his close friend Bixler-Zavala. During this time, he frequently collaborated with his friends and future bandmates from El Paso, which included people such as Paul Hinojos, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, and the late Julio Venegas and Jeremy Ward. He attended Coronado High School in El Paso.
Rodríguez-López dropped out of high school at age 17 to go on tour with Startled Calf, an El Paso, Texas, hardcore punk band, as their vocalist, and was left stranded in Berkeley after the rest of the band were arrested. The band formed in 1991 and featured Ralph Jasso on guitar, Jimmy Hernandez on bass, and George Fraska on drums. The band broke up in 1992. Hernandez died of cancer some time after.
At 17, Rodríguez-López left El Paso to hitchhike around the country for a year in the early 1990s, during which he acquired an addiction to opiates. Eventually he got in touch with friend Cedric Bixler-Zavala who suggested he come back to El Paso. With the help of Bixler-Zavala, he was able to return to El Paso where he could begin to reclaim his life from addiction and join At the Drive-In as backup vocalist and bass guitarist. After receiving a record deal with Flipside Records and recording Acrobatic Tenement with the band, he became their full-time bassist before switching to guitar. After several years and two more critically acclaimed albums, for a variety of reasons, Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala left At the Drive-In and the band went on "indefinite hiatus". The remaining members, Paul Hinojos, Tony Hajjar, and Jim Ward went on to form Sparta while the duo focused on other projects. On January 9, 2012, At the Drive-In announced that they were reforming for a tour. The band released their fourth album In•ter a•li•a in 2017 before going on an indefinite hiatus in November 2018.
Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala refocused their efforts on the dub outfit called De Facto, which also included Jeremy Ward and Isaiah "Ikey" Owens, and which they had started years before while still in At the Drive-In. Eventually the same collective of musicians in De Facto would be expanded into Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala's new band, The Mars Volta. Once again starting from scratch he wrote and toured with the band which consumed almost all his time and money. On May 25, 2003, less than a month before the release of their first full-length album, De-Loused in the Comatorium, bandmate and close friend Jeremy Ward was found dead of a heroin overdose. This event, coupled with the memories of the suicide of his friend Julio Venegas years earlier, finally convinced both him and Bixler-Zavala to quit using opiates. Since then he has been clean and credited his newfound musical work ethic on his new lifestyle. The Mars Volta's second album, Frances the Mute, would later be dedicated to Ward. During the early years of the band he also worked on a low budget movie called A Manual Dexterity which starred Jeremy Ward. The soundtrack A Manual Dexterity: Soundtrack Volume 1 was released in 2004. The release of the second volume, which was originally planned for Spring of 2005, and the film were both delayed indefinitely due to legal problems. Conflicts over ownership of certain footage and Rodríguez-López's reluctance to revisit the project which featured his late friend Jeremy Ward were both cited as reasons for the delay. However, Rodríguez-López stated that he does intend to release both Volume 2 and the film at some point in the future. On February 8, 2009, he and his fellow Mars Volta bandmates won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. On January 23, 2013, The Mars Volta officially announced that they had broken up, following a series of tweets posted by Cedric Bixler-Zavala stating that he had departed the band. Their future was uncertain at this point, although Rodríguez-López did not rule out the possibility of reuniting in the future. On June 18, 2022, The Mars Volta revealed the coordinates to a location in Los Angeles, California, where fans were allowed to preview new music from the band. This was followed up by the release of the single "Blacklight Shine" and a tour announcement, marking both their first new music and first live shows in ten years. The band subsequently announced their first album in 10 years, The Mars Volta, which was released on September 16, 2022. The Mars Volta has remained active ever since.
In 2005 Rodríguez-López relocated to Amsterdam, where he eventually wrote and recorded four separate albums. His first solo project was the "Omar Rodríguez-López Quintet". Rodríguez-López played several live shows in Europe with his quintet, which in 2005 also included three members of The Mars Volta Group (Juan Alderete, Marcel Rodríguez-López and Adrián Terrazas-González) and Money Mark. The songs featured on this tour later appeared on the album Omar Rodriguez. It was characterized by long, improvisational songs with Dutch titles and no lyrics. The Quintet also performed live with Damo Suzuki, parts of which were recorded and incorporated into a 25-minute EP titled Please Heat This Eventually, which was released in 2007. During this time Rodríguez-López was also working on The Mars Volta's 2006 record Amputechture and composing the score to the film El Búfalo de la Noche simultaneously to his work with the quintet. On May 29, 2007, Se Dice Bisonte, No Búfalo was released. It was the third full-length solo album by Rodríguez-López. It featured performances by Mars Volta members Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Marcel Rodríguez-López, Juan Alderete, Adrián Terrazas-González as well as cameos by Money Mark, John Frusciante, and Jon Theodore. It was written and recorded between 2005 and 2006 in California and Amsterdam. The Quintet later resurfaced in 2007, now known as "The Rodríguez-López Group" to perform on the "white" stage at the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan on July 28. Performing with the group for the first time were singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala and drummer Thomas Pridgen.
