Alejandro Escovedo had an unlikely path to fame. Though he comes from a musical family—brothers Coke and Pete played with Santana and niece Sheila E. is a well-known pop star—he did not begin playing music until his mid-twenties, when he worked on a film about a band that couldn’t play. His music has defied genre, with influences from garage rock, country, punk and traditional Mexican music.

His fans know him as a rocker and a musician, but Escovedo now has another identity to his name: hepatitis C survivor.

Escovedo was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1996, and his illness intensified—and was brought into the spotlight—when he collapsed on-stage in 2003. At the time of his diagnosis, Escovedo was unaware that hepatitis C is one of the leading causes of liver cancer. More than 40,000 Americans will be diagnosed with liver cancer this year and hepatitis C will cause at least 50% of those cases. Hepatitis C is especially dangerous because it does not always present signs and symptoms until someone has been infected for a long period of time. By the time Escovedo collapsed on stage, he had advanced cirrhosis of the liver, as well as tumors in his abdomen and varices in his esophagus.