SARGENT HOUSE

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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Omar Rodriguez Lopez keeps his creative throttle set to interstellar overdrive. He doesn’t bask in the achievements of his previous band, At the Drive-In, his ten-years-and-counting blockbuster The Mars Volta, his production company, or any of his myriad film scores or solo releases. Rodriguez Lopez is always fully engaged, generating off-balance riffs, cosmically effected tones, and mind-bending song arrangements.

This year saw the release of Telesterion [Rodriguez Lopez Productions], a sprawling collection of all things Omar outside of The Mars Volta. Its seemingly boundless range spans everything from ear-melting monolithic rock to what sounds like salsa music on acid to intergalactic battle scene soundtracks. Subtlety is scarce. You might think that such a dedicated artist would have mountains of information about the material he creates and produces at his fingertips, but the Puerto Rican native and current Mexico City resident has difficulty detailing past tracks. He uses everything around him as inspiration for the day’s music. The next day, he clears his internal Etch A Sketch, and begins anew.

This interview took place in the wake of a GP Presents event with the Omar Rodriguez Lopez Band at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall—and another show when the Mars Volta opened up for Soundgarden.

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2. Le Butcherettes:

Sargent House’s spaz-blast rock outfit Le Butcherettes have had us by the musical throat for over a year, and we’re chomping at the bit to see them in the blazing desert. Led by fireball vocalist/guitarist/pianist Teri Gender Bender, Le Butcherettes’ songs & untethered energy evoke early-era Yeah Yeah Yeahs, with the seductive energy of The Kills in an explosive minimalist package. To see them live is to be equally inspired, adrenalized and disturbed. Find us in the pit.

Check out a video for “New York”:

we love this list that also includes: At the Drive In, Refused, fIREHOSE, Radiohead , Cat Power and a lot of the same stuff we will definitely be checking out at Coachella this year.

SEE ALL TEN CHOICES HERE - by Johnny Firecloud for Crave Online

Will be a busy Coachella for Omar Rodriguez Lopez who will be playing the first At The Drive In show in 11 years and who will also be playing with Le Butcherettes.  Both bands play both Sundays of this years Festival - We Can’t Wait!!!!!

“Meet Zechs Marquise, one of the most badass bands to come out of the Southwest since At The Drive-In. Now let me tell ya, these guys experienced albums like “Acrobatic Tenement” first hand. In fact, two of the dudes in Zechs - Marcel Rodriguez Lopez and Marfred Rodriguez Lopez -are the younger siblings of the infamous ex-ATDI/Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez Lopez (it should also be noted that Marcel plays percussion in the Volta as well). These gentlemen, along with their childhood chums Matt Wilkson and Marcos Smith, have joined forces to create an instrumental aphrodisiac for your ears that will make your mind cream its medulla.” CLICK TO VIEW FULL ARTICLE