Meet José Arredondo of Defacto Productions

Today we’d like to introduce you to José Arredondo.

Hi José, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I started out as a musician while growing up in South Texas in 2005 or so when my dad gifted me a handmade classical acoustic guitar from Paracho, Michoacan in México near his hometown of La Piedad, Michoacan. I am originally from Guadalajara, Jalisco in México as well as my mom. I grew up in Guadalajara for most of my childhood along with my grandparents whose heritage is from Spain.

I started playing classical acoustic guitar when I was 13 years old. I got my first show at Hastings, the coffee shop part of the store, and shortly after started a band with other classmates. Growing up in South Texas I heard a lot of regional Méxican music and country music all around me, but before then my parents had raised me in a Rock en Español and US Top 40 Hits from my parents’ days. My mom introduced me to my biggest influence, Maná, also from my same hometown of Guadalajara and my dad brought in all the classic rock music that the US was getting on the radio. So by the time I was in middle school and high school in Texas all the music I was hearing around me was new to me. I found a few other kids who liked the kind of stuff I was getting into and we kept playing in bands throughout high school. I went through a punk rock phase, played emo, pop rock, indie rock and had a solo singer/songwriter project of my own. Finally, my senior year of high school, the last band I was playing guitar in was an instrumental band heavily influenced by Explosions In The Sky. That band recorded an album in a studio, played paid shows and toured around Texas. Eventually we were discovered on Myspace and signed but by then I had already decided to go to college and leave the band.

Just before that last band, I had started my company, Defacto Productions, as a made up concert promoter on Myspace to book my old band shows. No one would book us so I took a chance on us, rented a venue, a PA, ran sound, manned the door and played the show. We packed the room and I kept doing more and more shows until I graduated high school. Through starting this company and playing in bands I had learned how to build a website, code in HTML (thanks Myspace), design simple flyers, learn the basics of a sound board, photography, photo editing and a few tricks with video editing and began home recording mine and my friend’s songs in my bedroom at my parents house.

When I got to Texas A&M I was studying engineering so I put music aside for a couple of years until I decided to make my hobby into a career and began promoting concerts, managing bands, working for SXSW and working on various other festivals’ productions and talent buying and ultimately opening my own music venue with a business partner in Bryan, TX called Grand Stafford Theater. After graduating from A&M I stayed in College Station, TX while tour managing some songwriters from Nashville and after a few years I left the music venue to do artist management full-time and move permanently to Nashville completely broke.

It’ll be 10 years since that move this July 2025 and I continue to manage some of my dearest friends as artists, musicians, producers and even moving across industries to film & TV. I’m no longer broke and it’s been a great ride and it continues to be a life-giving passion of mine to help independent artists whom the rest of the industry has decided to pass on only to grow them to help shape the industry in their own way. In 2005 no one would take a chance on my band until I did. In 2025 I still take chances on artists and bands I believe in and along the way I hope to inspire the next generation of creatives.

I’ve since worked on music industry ideas and start ups at Stanford’s Startup Garage, but my current and latest passion project has been to help the Latin artist & industry community in Nashville through an organization I started this year called Los Otros Nashville. We are just getting started but I strive to serve as a lighthouse to guide and connect industry with artists and artists with creatives within the Latin community and with the rest of the greater music industry in Nashville and beyond.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It hasn’t been a smooth road and I wouldn’t have wanted it to. The struggles along the way helped shape me into who I am today and for that, I am thankful.

The first struggle that got me started in all of this was not getting booked to play shows when my band was first starting out. We couldn’t get booked at venues because we didn’t have fans and we didn’t have fans because we couldn’t get booked for shows. So that was the impetus to start what was initially just a fake company to make it seem like other concert promoters were interested in booking my band and my friends’ bands. It became real very fast and while doing that I discovered I was better at making money from the business side of things than the performing side of things. Adjusting to that realization was eye-opening in a self-discovery kind of way but hugely insightful. I don’t know if I would’ve figured it out in the same way without that struggle along the way. I still miss playing shows, but I stay creative on my side of the business.

I’ve come to believe what Rick Rubin argues for in his book, The Creative Act, that we are all creative no matter what we do or what our profession is. We can all be creative while doing business. We are all creators, not just the artists.

As you know, we’re big fans of Defacto Productions. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
I was very young when I started Defacto Productions, still a teenager. I remember reaching for the dictionary when looking up a word for what I wanted to call what I was about to start and landing on de facto from the Latin for “the fact” however the dictionary entry gave the definition: “to actually exist but not officially be recognized.” When I was starting my company it was to address a need for my band to get booked to play shows. I remember thinking, we exist, but no one officially knows of us. Instinctively, I knew this was the name to use for all my future creative endeavors in music. Later, it would fit in more ways in my life.

Defacto Productions has been a concert promoter, a talent buyer, a publicist, a tour manager, a booking agent, a venue manager, a stage manager, an artist manager and an artist development company. Today we’re also distributing music as a partner in a label. We’ve only worked with independent artists, all who probably at some point fit that paradigm of existing but not officially recognized or been widely recognized. We usually root for the underdog, the indie, the DIY and the oddball, not doing things traditionally and those not staying in their lane out of necessity.

We try to stay behind the scenes too, do good work and keep going. This interview is already the most “press” we’ve done in about 5 years. We try to let our work do the talking within the industry. And outside the industry if you’ve seen our work and didn’t know it was us then we’re doing it right.

As I’m about to become a dad I want to more than ever help inspire the next generation. Hopefully, if my story can motivate or inspire someone young to go after what they want despite or in spite of the odds being against them, being at odds with the business side of creativity, being an immigrant, an entrepreneur, a musician or anything else that they can see in themselves, then I’d like to contribute that to the community and bring in creative thinkers to the industry.

By the way, we offer internships with and without college credit: [email protected]

Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
In short, I would say treat everyone you meet as a potential mentor. If you approach every new interaction as a potential to learn something new, you’ll never be short on mentors. Everyone around you can teach you something new.

In the more traditional sense though, I can’t stress enough the need to intern. Inter, intern, intern – if needed even after college. This is what worked well for me. I still keep in touch with all my managers and agents at all my music industry internships and they’re all still great mentors to me even 15 years later. I’m lucky enough to have some of them in Nashville, so I can ask them for advice more often but I also call some of them. Finding a way to keep in touch is crucial and putting in the work to keep in touch is important. I interned almost every Summer during college in different areas of the industry and this served me well. Now I have contacts in several different areas of the music industry and it’s done wonders for me. It has been the best way to learn, get ahead and get connected in the industry for me.

To network I have one piece of advice: Get curious and ask people for advice. You’d be surprised how often and how much people genuinely want to help.

Contact Info:

• Website: defactoproductions.com and losotrosnashville.com
• Instagram: @defactoproductions @losotrosnashville