Dios

Of all the articles written about Dios thus far, three specific things about the band members are always mentioned: They hail from Hawthorne, once home to The Beach Boys; they’ve been named NME’s band to watch in 2004 after only having been a band for a year-and-a-half; and their fanatical admiration for the Brothers Wilson is rumored to have driven them to sign their record contract in the exact same diner the Beach Boys used to sign theirs with Capitol.

Brothers and songwriters Joel and Kevin Morales attended nearby El Camino college with keyboardist Jimmy Cabeza de Vaca, bassist J.P. Caballero and drummer Jackie Monzon. And for these five musicians, there’s no place like home. On the way to a Denny’s in San Diego, just down the street from The Casbah where they were to play later that night, Jimmy stops to snap a photo of the Hawthorn Street sign with his point-and-shoot. “I gotta get a picture of this,” he says.

The story of Dios actually goes back six years to when Kevin and Joel started writing songs at home. (“50 Cents,” from the band’s self-titled debut actually has its roots in this period.) Jimmy, J.P. and Jackie joined a couple years later to round out the band’s sunny psychedelic-folk sound and start playing some gigs.

Since then, the band has shared bills with Grandaddy and Beulah, and played major festivals like Coachella, but their earliest gigs were in the most unlikely places.

“We’d play anywhere that would let us,” says Joel. “We played at coffeehouses, bars, an arcade in Fullerton—anywhere, basically. The thing is, four years ago, we weren’t really trying to play shows. We’d play shows maybe, once every six months.”

Back then, Dios was known simply as God. But, says J.P., they decided to change their almighty moniker after seeing a CD by another band called, “God” when they played a session at underground L.A. radio station KXLU. Joel replies, “I just thought it was because it was a stupid name. Dios is a little less stupid.”

Now, however—thanks to the arrogance of a well-known metal icon—the band has been threatened to change its name, again.

“We got a letter from Ronnie James Dio’s lawyer that said ‘Ronnie James Dio is a legendary heavy-metal vocalist,’” says J.P. “‘Over twenty multi-platinum records sold worldwide.’”

“Now we’re going to change our name to Malmsteens,” Jimmy jests, taking a jab at ’80s neoclassical guitar-shredder Yngwie Malmsteen.

“I guess it’s cool, though,” says Joel. “[Dio]’s heard of us. But we can argue that we’re Mexican and its Spanish.”

So with a name decided on, and a plentiful supply of songs (the band reportedly has three albums worth of material backlogged), it came time for Dios to record an album. The band’s debut—an epic amalgam of Neil Young folk-rock, Beatles-style harmonies, Wilco-esque grit, Flaming Lips head trips and Floydian psych-epics—was finished by the beginning of last year. Not yet inked to Star Time International, who currently signs their advances, the fivesome recorded the bulk of the music in J.P.’s garage, his own home studio. And how did he finance this studio? Sales of highly sought-after bootlegs on eBay.

Gesturing to J.P., Joel says, “He likes to wheel and deal and undercut everybody.”

“He’s an eBay pirate,” Jimmy adds.

“You made a killing didn’t you?” Joel asks his subdued chum.

“I’m not gonna say how much I made, but it’s in the ballpark of one dollar to ten grand,” J.P. says between bites of his club sandwich. “It skews high, though.”

Caballero’s investment must have been a wise one, because the quintet has done all its recording up to this point on his equipment. It was good enough to sell their debut to Star Time and, according to the band members, it’s their chosen method of recording in the future.

“We’ve done everything on our own,” says Joel. “We just don’t have that kind of money. And we don’t have the patience to deal with people who don’t know what we want. We know we’re limited by what we have. And we don’t need super hi-fi equipment.”

The inside cover art of the band’s heady self-titled pop masterpiece of a debut, depicts the Foster’s Freeze where The Beach Boys reportedly penned “Fun, Fun, Fun.” This fact may have been the source of the rumors surrounding their supposed quest to be signed in the same diner that Capitol signed the Beach Boys in. But Joel contends this is merely a myth.

“We went to the diner,” he says. “They probably ate there, but it was across the street from the Foster’s Freeze, where they used to hang out and either wrote a song there or heard their song on the radio for the first time or something.”

Joel pauses to dip a french fry in a glob of ranch dressing.

“I don’t know who made that one up.”