SARGENT HOUSE

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s former bands the Mars Volta and At the Drive-In are the sort of acts that fans get tattoos of. But unlike the permanent nature of inking yourself, he’s moved on to another project with his new four-piece  Bosnian Rainbows. On the band’s debut (out next month), we find Rodriguez-Lopez exploring a punchy goth sound with Le Butcherettes frontwoman Teri Gender-Bender, drummer Deantoni Parks and keyboardist Nicci Kasper of Dark Angels. Hive recently caught up with Rodriguez-Lopez before the release of their debut album to talk about the “virgin” experience of playing with a new band, why the At the Drive-In reunion was emotionally tough and the Mars Volta breaking up over Twitter.

The Mars Volta and At the Drive-In are bands that people are really passionate about. Is it a different experience for you touring with a band that nobody’s ever heard?

Totally. You can’t pay for the specialness of what it is when you just go play music when nobody knows anything about it. It’s that initial experience. I hate to use the word “virgin” — it’s so dumb — but it is like doing it for the first time. Just like when At the Drive-In went out for the first time, or the Mars Volta. People have no clue what to expect, and there’s that excitement about it. You’re just playing music, and there is no expectation, really.

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With At The Drive-In’s reunion tour now a passing memory and the recent acrimonious split of his mind-bending prog crew, The Mars Volta, prolific noodler Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is currently putting most of his energy into new post-punk-influenced outfit Bosnian Rainbows, who release their self-titled debut next month. Whereas he called all the shots for a decade in Mars Volta, he’s now happy to be sharing the creative load with his new band mates. Q sat down with him ahead of the band’s recent appearance at London’s 100 Club to discuss self-expression, his relationship with Cedric Bixler-Zavala and what really happened during the At The Drive-In reunion shows…

How does it feel to be part of a collaboration again?
“It’s amazing, it’s liberating and it’s invigorating. It all sounds so dumb. There’s nothing like the feeling of getting schooled by the band. That’s the main thing; that’s the only way you get better.”

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Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is a restless creative force, with endless musical projects as guitarist and producer, his own label and an accelerating sideline as an experimental filmmaker. In the past, he’s walked away from popular bands just to follow his muse into some unexpected directions, but says a brief reunion tour last year with At the Drive-In mattered more to him than many of us will ever know.

The raging, hard-rock quintet grew up together in El Paso, Texas, recorded for Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal label, traveled the world and had a frenzied radio hit with “One Armed Scissor” before breaking up in 2001. Their reunion tour was short, but the band is active in other ways. This week came the wide release of reissues of ATDI’s 1996 album debut, Acrobatic Tenement, and the career-defining (and final release) Relationship of Command on their brand new label, Twenty-First Chapter.

At the Drive-In – which also includes singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala, guitarist Jim Ward, bassist Paul Hinojos and drummer Tony Hajjar – have scattered to other projects, leaving the future unknown. The Mars Volta, the post-ATDI post-punk/prog act led by Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala, is officially broken up, too, but the guitarist is already deep into Bosnian Rainbows, his band with singer Teri Gender Bender of Le Butcherettes. Next week, Bosnian Rainbows begin a European tour with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (plus a few dates in Texas and California) and release a self-titled debut album on June 25th.

Rodriguez-Lopez spoke with Rolling Stone about his new band, making music and movies and his eternal attachment to At the Drive-In.

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(Source: Billboard)

At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez has unveiled the first track from his new band Bosnian Rainbows. The track is titled ‘Torn Maps’ and you can hear it below


Rodriguez-Lopez, who announced in late 2012 that he and At The Drive-In frontman Cedric Bixler had placed The Mars Volta on hiatus, is joined in the new outfit by drummer Deantoni Parks, keyboardist Nicci Kasper and singer Teri Gender-Bender, who is also a member of noise experimentalists Le Butcherettes.


Speaking to NME about his new band, the axeman revealed that the band’s debut album was recorded in Germany in late 2012 and will be released later this year. He said: “We recorded the record over in Europe, we did a tour across Europe and we recorded the album in Hamburg, Germany. It’s been done for a while and we’ve decided to put it out this year. We’re really happy with it.”

Rodriguez-Lopez has previously collaborated with Gender-Bender on his 2012 solo album ‘Octopus Kool Aid’ and has also recorded extensively with Kasper. Speaking about this, he said: “I’ve collaborated with all three of these artists before. I worked with Teri from Le Butcherettes on a solo record of mine, maybe a year or two ago. I also worked with her on the second Butcherettes record, I realized just how wonderful a musician she is.”


He continued: “I invited Deantoni Parks into The Mars Volta as our drummer, as a hired musician. But, as I got to know him, I realised ‘Wow, this guy is a brilliant composer’. He works as hard as me and he’s got thousands of songs in his catalogue. We must have made six records together over the years. It’s the same thing with Nicci Kasper, we all love writing music. It’s really something else.”

The guitarist also spoke about the different approach he has taken when it comes to writing material with his new band, compared to his days in The Mars Volta, adding: “It’s the classic thing, you stick with one way of doing things for so long that you start to crave a different way of working.”
He continued: “I did eight years in At The Drive-In being in a collective, so after that I wanted something where I was in charge and no one asked me any questions. After 11 years then in The Mars Volta of doing that, I found myself feeling very lonely and I felt like I abandoned my friendships, so I’ve decided to focus on this band.”

Rodriguez-Lopez also spoke about Bixler and revealed that the singer is currently working on his debut solo album, which will mainly consist of acoustic. Asked if he was missing working with Bixler, who he has worked with for almost 20 years, the guitarist said: “It’s been very strange being without Cedric. It’s one of those bittersweet moments, it’s great for both of us because he’s making this great solo record, which is more of an acoustic thing. I’m really excited to hear another side of him and to work on music without me. He’s composing all the music, playing all the instruments, literally doing everything himself, rather than just singing over the top of my songs.”

Bosnian Rainbow’s as yet untitled debut album is due for release later this year. The band are set to tour extensively in support of the record.

SEE ALL TOUR DATES HERE

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Zechs Marquise stopped in to the Laundromat while in LA right after their tour with At The Drive In and aired their dirt to Dirty Laundry TV.

DON’T MISS ZECHS MARQUISE ON TOUR NOW

El Paso-based prog band Zechs Marquise released Our Delicate Stranded Nightmare in 2009 and the much tighter and more original Getting Paid on On Rodriguez Lopez Productions via Sargent House in 2011. Getting Paid received appreciative reviews but the band was often written about in terms of the bassist and the drummer’s older sibling Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and his prog-rock band The Mars Volta. Zechs Marquise contains keyboardist Riko Rodriguez Lopez,  bassist/vocalist Marfred Rodriguez-Lopez and drummer Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez, who also plays keys in The Mars Volta.

It’s no coincidence that both bands have similar influences. “We get a lot of comparisons to Mars Volta because of our relation or whatever, but the main difference is that Marcel and I were heavily influenced by hip-hop, where our brother Omar was influenced by punk rock, and salsa. We were influenced by hip-hop and salsa. So, it has that dynamic. We were all in the same house growing up listening to the same music. You influence each other, living together for so long. You develop each others tastes in a weird way,” Marfred Rodriguez-Lopez says over the phone.

One might wonder if there could be any sibling rivalry among this clan of intense prog fiends. In a word: nope. The Rodriguez-Lopez members of The Mars Volta and Zechs Marquise tour with each other and gig with each other. Zechs Marquise opened when Omar Rodriquez Lopez’s earlier band At the Drive-In played a hometown reunion show. When they get done with all of that they take a break, in order to hang out with each other.

They are, in fact, doing exactly this when Marfred Rodriguez-Lopez answers his cell for the interview. The brothers are driving back to Texas with their dad after a weekend spent going to baseball games in Los Angeles. “All of us spend our fair share of time away from home, so it’s nice to get to have these last-minute trips with our dad,” says Marfred Rodriguez-Lopez. Empirically speaking, it is the sweetest thing ever.

Lately, reviews of the Zechs Marquise live show and the slow-building recognition for Getting Paid have be taking the band from status as the little brother of The Mar Volta to a known quantity in its own right. Note to aspiring indie rockers: a little touring had something to do with that. Also, Getting Paid is some fine music. The twelve instrumental tracks fuse funk and prog-rock without being tedious or anachronistic. Cerebral and psychedelic it might be, but it’s also brash and pugnacious: Old music for young heads by young heads. Rodriguez-Lopez confirms the secret ingredient is hip-hop.

“We were listening to these old hip-hop records that we hadn’t listened to in years. You know these bangers where you kind of nod your head and tap your foot? I like the feeling of a lot of these songs. A lot of hip-hop songs have that. That was one of the ways that hip-hop influenced Getting Paid. We liked that swing, that groove,” he says in a phone interview.

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Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Teri Gender Bender & Lia Braswell of Le Butcherettes in their trailer at Coachella.

Inside a small trailer backstage at Coachella yesterday, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez was trying to cool down after his first performance of the day, and the dressing room wasn’t much cooler than the triple-digit heat outside. Rodriguez-Lopez pulled double duty on both festival weekends in Indio, California, playing lead guitar with the reunited At the Drive-In on the main stage just hours after a full set on bass with Le Butcherettes, the fiery garage-punk band whose next album he is currently producing in Los Angeles.

Rodriguez-Lopez is a full permanent member of Le Butcherettes, and during the trio’s raging 45-minute set, he stood back with a smile as Guadalajaran singer-guitarist Teri Gender Bender roared through anxious pop hooks with sharp edges, at one point tossing a big Casio keyboard into the moshing crowd. New drummer Lia Braswell slammed a heavy beat from stage left and fans waved Mexican flags, as they would again later for At the Drive-In. Soon after, Rodriguez-Lopez sat with Le Butcherettes for several rounds of bottled water and talked with Rolling Stone about their busy Coachella week.

Is playing two sets a day a challenge?
Rodriguez-Lopez: No, it’s a blessing. Go play music all day? I should be so lucky. Last weekend we played, then we cooled off, we ate, and then just when you really feel like you’re winding down, “Oh, it’s time to play.” It’s perfect.

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Last summer I had the privilege of seeing Zechs Marquise in their infancy. The show was expansive, proggy, and thought provoking. The crowd was interested, but to say blood and fists were pumping would be a stretch. This past Monday, Zech’s opened for At the Drive In and their new material has lifted their live show to a completely new height. To say it’s simply the new material would be insufficient. The band’s whole energy has found a new plane. Zechs played with a new found confidence that amped the already bristling crowd. Marfred Rodriguez-Lopez (bass) mentioned toward the end of their set that the audience was most likely charged because of the first At the Drive In show in more than a decade, which was minutes away. However, this was a dose of misguided self criticism. Openers for big shows are never guaranteed an electric show, but the crowd got behind Zechs Marquise in a big way.

Most in attendance were not expecting much from a group many viewed to be simply the band with a bunch of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s (The Mars Volta, At the Drive In, etc.) little brothers. Of those around me in the crowd, nearly every person commented on Zechs with delighted surprise. A couple of guys next to me kept saying, “What the fuck! This is amazing!”. Zechs’ jazzy groove-prog hooks grabbed the crowd, and their energy shook them until their legs were convinced that it was, in fact, okay to dance at a prog show.

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Zechs Marquise just announced they will be playing with At The Drive In some shows in Texas before heading to Southern California also hitting Las Vegas on the way. In May they will head off to meet up with Maps & Atlases and Sister Crayon for 6 shows and a few of their own headliners to be announced soon. On May 26th they will play The Neon Desert Festival along side Rodriguez Lopez Productions label mates Le Butcherettes and Eureka The Butcher & Sadah Luna in Downtown El Paso, TX.

ZECHS MARQUISE LIVE
4/09  Austin, TX @ Red 7 with At The Drive In - SOLD OUT
4/10  Dallas, TX @ Trees with At The Drive In - SOLD OUT
4/12  Marfa, TX @ The Capri with At The Drive In - SOLD OUT
4/13  El Paso, TX @ Tricky Falls with At The Drive In - SOLD OUT
4/15  Las Vegas, NV @ Layla’s Garden
4/16  Fullerton, CA @ Commonwealth Lounge
4/18  Hollywood, CA @ Harvard & Stone
4/19  Palm Springs, CA @ Desert Days Moon Block Party

MAPS & ATLASES , ZECHS MARQUISE, SISTER CRAYON
5/14  Columbus, OH @ The Basement
5/15  Akron, OH @ Musica
5/16  Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern
5/17  Ithaca, NY @ The Haunt
5/18  TBA on 4/22

5/26  El Paso, TX @ Neon Desert Music Festival

Stay tuned for more dates to be announced soon. Follow @zechsband for news.
And check HERE for all show details and updates

Film maker  Omar Rodriguez Lopez sits down to talk with Alanna Raben for Details Magazine about his new film “Los Chidos” and the At The Drive-In reunion. Shot in Austin, TX at the Driskill Hotel during SXSW 2012.

See the first part of the interview: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Is a Real Bastard

Our music feature this week focuses on Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, a giant of the progressive rock and post-hardcore scenes who seemingly wants nothing to do with them.

The mastermind behind The Mars Volta and At the Drive-In tries to tell us he’s not a musician, for all kinds of deep and philosophical reasons. He might start out talking about how many hours of sleep he gets nightly, and end up describing the principles of some ancient religious text. In other words, he’s one deep human being. Below are excerpts from our meandering interview.

On doing interviews:
People get bummed out or consider it arrogant when they ask me what are my influences and they want me to talk about records. I could care less about records. I’d rather talk about how my influences were my mother, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, Roberto Clemente’s life. Those are the real things. Because that’s music. 

On his own “music theory”
People who go and they buy the same amp Jimi Hendrix had or they play the guitar upside down — you ain’t never gonna sound like him because that’s not his music. His music was the fact that had a tumultuous relationship with his father that he never got figured out. His music was the fact that had a brother that he absolutely loved and wanted to be with all the time but he was in and out of jail. His music was the fact that he wanted to be accepted by the black community but he wasn’t until the very end of his life. That’s his music. The other stuff is just a vehicle.

Passion’s the only thing that’s going to make you good at anything. You can learn the technical aspects of anything but that ain’t going to make you necessarily good or tasteful. Look at how many awful musicians come out of Berklee and all these music schools — just faceless, mindless musicians that are being churned out under the concept of, like, ‘Well, you know all the theory so there you go, you’re good to go. You excel at theory.’ Like, big deal.

On why he doesn’t think of himself as a musician:
Musicians definitely get stuck in this pitfall of having to think about things in terms of theory and how theory fits together and why that can work or why it doesn’t work. I have absolutely no interest in any of that. I’m only interested in the simple element of does it move me or not. Because at the end of the day all I’m here to do is to express myself. I have to stay true to that. Any deviation from that path is treated like a dagger pointed at my heart.

I’m basically in most peoples’ eyes just a product, they know me as the At the Drive-In guitarist, The Mars Volta whatever. It’s funny to be diminished to just a guitarist, which I don’t even consider myself. It’s just one of many vehicles.

I had very informal music training. I had true music training, which is the fact that I come from a culture that is enveloped and surrounded by music. Everyone in my family plays music, none of them are musicians. When my ancestors were slaves, when they were conquered by the Spanish — I’m Puerto Rican, a lot of people think I’m Mexican — in any culture music and laughter is what gets you through any kind of trauma, you know?

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Omar Rodriguez-Lopez wears the same thing every day: teal-colored jeans and a fitted canvas jacket. His eyes are intent behind his glasses; his focus is acute. For the bulk of his 35 years he’s been consumed with expressing his creative vision. Relentless in the pursuit of his own voice, he has alienated friends and collaborators. By his own admission, he’s behaved like a dictator.

The brain behind Grammy-winning progressive rock group The Mars Volta, Rodriguez-Lopez has written all the band’s music, mixed the recordings by himself and fired musicians at will — sometimes without so much as an email to let them know.

“I’ve been a real bastard over the years,” he admits, perched on a couch in the top-floor sun room of his Echo Park production offices, looking out over L.A.’s sun-soaked Eastside hills. “All in the name of following my vision.”

Wiry thin, he has an Einstein-style wild mess of dark hair and big, round, smudgy spectacles. He’s the kind of guy who forgets to eat, shower or brush his teeth when he gets on a roll writing music.

He certainly has his admirers; devoted Mars Volta fans liken the band’s members to gods. They obsess over their innovative, genre-shattering, long-winded compositions, full of changing time signatures, singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s high-pitched howling vocals and Rodriguez-Lopez’s experimental guitar riffs.

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