How did music enter your life?

My father would literally put the back of the acoustic guitar to my mother's stomach and play songs for me while I was in her stomach. So it's always been there. Being Puerto Rican, music was always such a big part of my upbringing and culture -- everyone in my family plays something. Anytime we get together, we're playing music and singing improvisations about what's happening in the room or what kind of food we're eating. I started to learn to play the bass when I was nine and moved to guitar when I was fourteen or fifteen.

Have you ever stolen any musical equipment?

Oh, yeah [laughs]! When I was growing up in El Paso [Texas], I got into skateboarding and punk rock, and Cedric and I were hanging out with older musicians. There's a place called White's Music Box in El Paso, and one night they parked their van outside the store, threw a rock at the window and went in and grabbed as much stuff as they could. I was a skater, I had baggy clothes, so I'd steal little things like effects pedals. And there was a place in the West Side shopping mall where we'd steal box sets, trade them in for cash and buy musical equipment. It was all a bit dishonest.

If you were going to outer space and could bring only one record, what would it be?

It would be Electric Harlow, by the Orchestra Harlow. That's probably what my dad played the most when I was in my mom's stomach. That record was in '71. One of my first concerts was the Fania All-Stars, and I remember seeing Larry Harlow playing piano with them. I was sitting on my dad's shoulders, and he said, "That's Harlow on the left!"

What gig of yours did the fewest people show up for?

The first four years of At the Drive-In we continuously played to ten people. I remember the first time we played New York. We were booking our own tours and our own van -- we were so excited. "Wow, we're finally going to play New York! There's so much history here!" We played the Continental. There were two people: the bartender and the guy who we booked the show with, who also ran the door and did the sound. He felt so bad about it, he bought a record.