Jeremy Ward (musician)

Jeremy Ward was born in Fort Worth, Texas and later moved to El Paso.^[1] He was a cousin of Jim Ward and was loosely associated with Jim's band At the Drive-In since its formation in 1994.^[2] After that band split for the first time in 2001, members Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López invited Ward to contribute vocals and electronic effects to their interim project De Facto, and then their more permanent band The Mars Volta.^[3] He contributed to that group's debut album De-Loused in the Comatorium,^[4] and his experimental sound manipulations have been cited as integral to that album's sound.^[3]

Less than a month before the album was released, Ward was found dead of an apparent heroin overdose on May 25, 2003, aged 27.^[3][5] Bixler-Zavala and Rodríguez-López have stated that Ward's death inspired them to kick their own addictions.^[6] Ward had also worked as a repo man,^[7] and an anonymous diary that he had found while repossessing a car became the basis for the lyrics in the next Mars Volta album, Frances the Mute.^[8] Some of Ward's experimental recordings were used posthumously on later albums by The Mars Volta and Omar Rodríguez-López. Lopez created the full-length album Omar Rodriguez Lopez & Jeremy Michael Ward and Minor Cuts and Scrapes in the Bushes Ahead from such compositions in 2008.^[9][10][11] In 2021, The Mars Volta released Landscape Tantrums as part of La Realidad De Los Sueños box set. The demo album features a notable amount of vocal and sound effects which are characteristic of Ward's work.^[12][13]