Eva Gardner, La bassista del primo Ep

How did you come to join The Mars Volta? You were originally a part of that group, weren't you?

Yeah, yeah. When they had first started out... At The Drive-In had broken up, and Omar (Rodríguez-López, guitar) and Cedric (Bixler-Zavala, vocals) wanted to start a new project. I knew "Ikey" (Isaiah Owens), who was just the keyboard player, and I knew him from just living in L.A. We just became friends. I actually went to high school with his younger brother, who's also a bassist. He brought me in when those guys were forming another band. That's how I ended up doing that.

What are your memories of the recording sessions for the 2002 EP 'Tremulant'?

The sessions? Umm... where were we? I think we were in Long Beach somewhere, and it was a really exciting time because it was just this new music. It was a new project for these guys, so they were almost really excited about it. It was great. We did three songs, and it was so fun for me too because it was the first time I had actually been in a more professional... I had done recordings before, but it was just home studios with friends and stuff. This was a more established group. It was fun to be in a professional studio, and to play with really, really great musicians.

Why did you part ways with The Mars Volta?

It was a tough time for me. My father had passed away while I was on tour with The Mars Volta, and that was obviously a really, really difficult time for me to be going through. It just got to be a lot, and wasn't really working anymore.

So just bad timing really, then?

Yeah. The timing was just all off. It was hard to be gone too when he passed - my family was all at home having a tough time. Yeah, the timing was really rough.