By Melissa W. Sais

This article first appeared in New Mexico Magazine, July 2009, pp 64-65.

Riding the Rail Runner from Los Lunas to Santa Fe with his wife and three young kids, Shawn Kiehne looks like any other thirty-something dad in his jeans and baseball cap.

As Kiehne (pronounced KEEN-ee) steps off the train, a group of other riders approaches him. “Are you El Gringo?” they ask in Spanish.  “Sí,” he replies. Picture posing and autographs ensue.

The gringos (a term describing people from the United States that usually denotes non-native Spanish speakers) from the train look on, wondering who this white guy with such a Mexican following could be. If things go as Kiehne plans, they soon may not have to wonder any more.

Kiehne, 35, known as El Gringo, is making a name for himself in Mexican regional music with a unique blend of norteño, banda and country sounds and with the distinction of being the first and only Anglo on the norteño scene.

“In New Mexico our audiences are a combination of New Mexicans and Mexicans,” Kiehne says. “But on the road the crowd is almost 100 percent Mexican. And then in some places Anglos show up and say, ‘I don’t understand your lyrics, but I saw you on TV or read about you and I just had to come out and see you.’” Kiehne hopes for more of that. “I really want to help bring norteño and banda into the mainstream". Norteño music is distinguished by the accordion and bajo sexto (12-stringed bass guitar) sounds. Banda has the backing of a horn section.

For now Kiehne dons his black cowboy hat and boots and opens for major Mexican acts. Playing what Latino University magazine described as “Garth Brooks playing lead vocalist for Los Tigres del Norte,” in 2008 he joined a tour that ranged from Seattle to Manhattan.

The crowds love him because, while he may be El Gringo, he is a fluent Spanish speaker and has heartfelt connections to Mexico. Born into a New Mexican ranching family with German immigrant roots, he was raised in Bosque Farms. As a teenager he was shipped down each summer to his family’s ranch near El Paso, Texas, and put to work. His Spanish lessons began as he bounced along ranch roads in pick-up trucks with Mexican vaqueros. First he learned the cuss words and the slang. Then he started to pick out words from the norteño songs on the radio and ask for their meanings. Add to that a college semester spent in Sinaloa, Mexico, studying the language, traveling, and meeting his future wife, Ada, and El Gringo’s Spanish got pretty good.

He says he's been fluent in Spanish for at least ten years now. “I feel now I speak Spanish as well as I do English.” At home in Los Lunas Kiehne and Ada speak a mixture of Spanish, English and Spanglish to their three bilingual children, Brett (9), Tyler (6), and Kamila (2).

Since taking a dare to perform in a high school talent show in 1992, Kiehne had been singing with Albuquerque country cover bands and winning talent shows and karaoke contests. Looking to move to the next level in 2003, he received some advice at a Nashville vocal seminar: Develop what you have to offer that’s uniquely your own.

“That got me thinking,” he says. “I was talking about it with my wife’s brother. He said, ‘You speak Spanish, you sing in Spanish, you could be the Eminem of norteño.’”

Kiehne started to consider the possiblity seriously when his brother-in-law suggested the name El Gringo. “I trademarked the name and started writing in Spanish,” he says.

He began playing parish fiestas and clubs in places like Taos and Las Vegas, where people said to him things like, “You can’t even tell you’re not a native speaker. Are you really white?”

Working for his parents’ Centerfire Real Estate company, in Los Lunas, in 2005 Kiehne funded the production of his first CD, Cervesas, Fiestas y Senoritas, and answered a call for new talent from Mexican music manager Martin Fabian in 2007. “Within two hours of my email, he called,” Kiehne says.

That began to open doors outside of New Mexico. El Gringo's music is now played by Latin radio stations around the country and his 2007 debut on Univision Records, Algo Sucedio, has sold 30,000 copies -- a respectable number for the genre.One of his love songs, "Tocame," appeared on the soundtrack for the indie flick Quinceanera (2006). Kiehne wrote five of the songs on Algo Sucedio, and it’s writing that is now his focus.

“Writing is becoming my passion,” he says. “I set aside about two hours every day to write. I figure if I write a thousand songs, I might get five or ten hits" -- songs he hopes will soon hit the mainstream in his home state.

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Melissa W. Sais, a freelance writer based in Los Lunas, dances to every ranchera she can. Her work appears in New Mexico Magazine and the Albuquerque Journal, and she blogs about raising kids in a digital world at www.melissasais.com.