| Jeremy Ward | |
| Birth Name: | Jeremy Michael Ward |
| Birth Date: | 5 May 1976 |
| Birth Place: | Fort Worth, Texas, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Instrument: | Guitar, vocals, effects |
| Genre: | Experimental music, dub, noise, reggae, salsa, ambient |
| Occupation: | Sound technician, vocal operator, musician |
| Years Active: | 1994–2003 |
| Associated Acts: | The Mars Volta De Facto Omar Rodríguez-López |
Jeremy Michael Ward (May 5, 1976 – May 25, 2003) was an American musician, best known as the sound technician and vocal operator for The Mars Volta and De Facto.
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.
Less than a month before the album was released, Ward was found dead of an apparent heroin overdose on May 25, 2003. Bixler-Zavala and Rodríguez-López have stated that Ward's death inspired them to kick their own addictions.[5] Ward had also worked as a repo man, 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.[6] Some of Ward's experimental recordings were used posthumously on later albums by The Mars Volta and Omar Rodríguez-López, and Lopez created the full-length album Omar Rodriguez Lopez & Jeremy Michael Ward from such compositions in 2008.