Shawn Kiehne, aka El Gringo, is apparently big with a certain demographic, not that I knew this fact until Sunday.

But according to The New York Times, he’s gaining popularity among Mexican and Mexican-American audiences, a U.S.-born 30-something who sings in Spanish and plays his version of Norteno music, replete with all the accordions and 12-string bass guitars.

Here’s another thing I didn’t know: El Gringo is from Los Lunas, N.M.

Here’s what the Times wrote:

In 2003 after leading a string of local country bands in New Mexico, Mr. Kiehne began to write and sing his own songs in Spanish, performing around Albuquerque to Mexican and Mexican-American audiences. “The reception was 100 percent positive,” he said. “People were amazed that when I sang, I didn’t really have an accent. They were like, ‘Are you really a gringo?’ ”

The initial idea was to perform using the name he earned down on the ranch — Shawnito — but his Mexican brother-in-law convinced him otherwise. “He told me, ‘Man, you should be the Eminem of Mexican music,’ ” said Mr. Kiehne. “’Don’t call yourself by your name. Call yourself El Gringo. People will see it on the marquee and say, ‘We have to go see what this guy is up to.’ I trademarked the name before I even had any songs.”

The Times goes on to examine the cause of El Gringo’s popularity and how he broke into a small sub-genre of traditional Mexican music. The Times says:

In the history of regional Mexican music — the clunky catch-all for traditional styles ranging from folkloric rancheras to the honking brass of banda sinaloense — there’s never been a figure quite like Mr. Kiehne. While white artists like Joe Ely and Doug Sahm have infiltrated the world of Tex-Mex music and nearly every generation of African-American music has inspired its own cadre of white imitators, regional Mexican has been hermetically sealed from outsiders.

The Times story is interesting. You ought to check it out.