Bracketville, Texas is a very small town. Since my parents have businesses there, everybody knew us. The whole town knew we were the Lopez kids, and that my parents were Ignacio and Juanita. Anything we did, if we ever dared to do anything, we knew that somehow somebody was going to find out because everybody knew us. So we really couldn’t do much. My parents were very strict. We really didn’t go out to like parties or house parties or anything like that. We could never go to sleep-overs, nothing like that, and it was usually just to practice whatever sport we were in and then back home, our chores at the business, which was washing dishes or sweeping the floors and all that stuff, and back to school.

Eventually I told my mom,“You know I need to start getting my own band because I’m not exposing myself like I should be.” We knew one musician and from there we went on looking for anybody else that he knew. So we were able to put the band together through him. We started gigging in Del Rio, the border town in Mexico, which was like 30 minutes away from where I lived. So that’s how I eventually started to get my own band. We were together for like seven, eight years.

At that time when we were living there, Mexico wasn’t that bad. Every weekend was, “Oh, let’s go to Mexico and party.” It was cool because everybody knew me in Mexico. Anywhere I went I would get to go in free and get VIP treatment. I t was cool being in a border town. It just gives you the freedom of going over there to have fun, have a good time with friends or whatever and not have a curfew. Not unless you had a curfew from your parents, but in Mexico you don’t have a curfew.

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