The air conditioner struggled to cool the crowd crammed into Billy Bob’s Texas to see Midland, one of country music’s unlikely success stories, play a sold-out summer show. But a rapid trade in Shiner and Dos Equis kept the fans chilled until the members of the Dripping Springs–based trio, generally considered too traditional for country radio stations and a little too slick for their Americana counterparts, swaggered onstage in their signature retro-rhinestone, cowboy-chic attire. After admitting to partying until 5 a.m. following a performance the night before, Mark Wystrach, Jess Carson, and Cameron Duddy forged ahead with a slew of classic-sounding, dance floor–ready honky-tonk tunes.
One song, though, stood out from the rest: a now-iconic arpeggio was all it took to get the crowd to scream, raise rapidly warming beers, and sing along to the band’s 2017 debut single, “Drinkin’ Problem.” The triple-platinum hit has become a contemporary country classic—and, more surprisingly, a crossover standard with Tejano audiences and artists. The crowd at Billy Bob’s, for example, was a more accurate representation of Fort Worth’s population, which is 35 percent Hispanic or Latino, than one typically sees at country concerts—a welcome anomaly in a genre that’s been criticized for decades of systematic exclusion.
“I have always felt very proud that you can’t put a finger on what a Midland fan is,” said lead singer Mark Wystrach, sitting on a beat-up couch in the green room at Billy Bob’s before the show. Covering the walls were the autographs of acts who had played the storied venue, including a few Latino country artists, such as the Mavericks, Johnny Rodriguez, and Rick Trevino. “You’ll see it tonight,” Wystrach continued. “Five thousand, five hundred people of all ages, all walks of life.”
Midland released its fourth studio album, Barely Blue, on September 20. But the group has already reached a much wider audience than most of its peers, thanks in large part to “Drinkin’ Problem.” The song lives now as not only the band’s biggest single and one of the canonical country songs of the 2010s, but also as a go-to cover for bands around Texas and beyond—bands that span the country music spectrum as well as a variety of regional Mexican music genres, including cumbia, norteño, tejano, and more. The trio released its own Spanish-language version, “Drinkin’ Problem (Brindemos),” featuring Mexican superstar Jay de la Cueva, in 2018, though the move only boosted a crossover phenomenon that was already happening.
“As soon as Midland came out, bam,” says Roc D, DJ and host of Super Tejano Saturday Show, on Dallas community radio station KNON. He was getting requests for “Drinkin’ Problem” long before it became “Brindemos,” which put Midland in the same league as icons like George Strait, who’s long been beloved by the station’s audience. (The King reached out to Texas’s Spanish-speaking country fans with his take on Vicente Fernandez’s “El Rey,” which Strait performed with a full mariachi band in San Antonio.) “It’s that classic country sound they have,” Roc D says of Midland. “Mellow, smooth, and gets you in that mood.”
The story of the song and its Spanish-language version goes all the way to the band’s beginning, at the sprawling Sonic Ranch recording studio, which sits in the middle of a pecan farm outside El Paso. The guys were working with Irving-born producer and artist David Garza, who’s also produced records for artists such as Fiona Apple, Juliana Hatfield, and Ozomatli. De la Cueva, a family friend of Garza, was recording at Sonic Ranch at the same time. “It was just a really fast friendship,” Wystrach said. “He might pound for pound be the best musician I’ve ever met,” added Carson.
Midland became a fixture in the national country scene almost as quickly: “Drinkin’ Problem,” the group’s debut single, reached number three on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart and was certified gold by the RIAA within six months of its release. To try to extend the song’s life on the charts and also tap into their friendship with de la Cueva, the band members formalized an idea that they had been toying with: “Drinkin’ Problem” en español. “During sound check, I used to mess around and try to sing it in Spanish,” says Wystrach, who grew up in a tiny town on the Arizona border and learned Spanish along the way.
Once they’d elected to record the song in Spanish, the band members entrusted the preparation to some pros: Garza and de la Cueva crafted the lyrics, with an assist from Garza’s mother, who works as a translator. “It’s kind of like, ‘F— it, cheers,’ ” Wystrach says in translating the song’s Spanish title, “Brindemos.” The band recorded it at Asleep at the Wheel founder and front man Ray Benson’s now-defunct Bismeaux Studios, in Austin, churning out a one-off that wound up helping shape their careers. “I don’t imagine that all translated songs work well,” Wystrach says. “But it seems like this one really resonated.”
The surprising part about the song was not only that the band’s very first single became its biggest hit, but also that, much like Chris Stapleton’s mammoth “Tennessee Whiskey,” the tune has continued to percolate—never really going away, moving with a slow burn that’s been aided by the embraces of Latino country music fans and, increasingly, Latino artists. La Zenda Norteña, a popular norteño group from Mexico, was among the first Spanish-language artists to cover the song, recording its take for its 2020 album Cuarentena (yes, that means “quarantine”). Numerous others followed: San Antonio’s Cachas De Oro and Vinny Tovar; Magno, from Monterrey, Mexico; Los de la Noria, from Mexico City; Waco’s Marcus Daniels, and Brownsville’s La Lexxión, to name just a few. Many sing in English or with a combination of English and Spanish lyrics, using the music to set their takes apart.
Jesus Venegas, front man of La Lexxión, added “Drinkin’ Problem” to his band’s repertoire in part because the group was already playing honky-tonks, in part because he’d heard La Zenda Norteña’s version, and in part because it just felt right. “We are from Texas—we love country, and we also love Mexican music,” says Venegas. “Blending those two is basically just who we are. That’s why we do it.” His take is what he calls country cumbia—a marriage of the regional Mexican style and the country tunes that are, increasingly, the most popular no matter who his audience is.
“It does feel like a trend, and it’s not just regional Mexican that’s crossing over,” Venegas says, alluding to other Texas artists like Post Malone and Beyoncé reimagining country in their own images. “I’m a big Morgan Wallen fan: He’s a country artist, but his songs are a little more rap.”
“Drinkin’ Problem” may be the most recognizable recent example of this particular kind of Latino-country crossover, but it’s far from unprecedented—and it also seems like it might have just been the beginning of a new wave of particularly Texan genre fusion. Dallas-based regional Mexican label Azteca Music Group, for example, recently launched a Texas country–focused subsidiary called Azteca Ranch Music. “Sure, I want the core country audience to accept what we’re doing,” says Carlos Alvarez, a Latin Grammy–winning producer and head of A&R for Azteca Music Group. “But it seems at least over here in Central and South Texas, there’s this—I don’t want to say hidden, but this country Latino audience.”
He attributes the growing appetite for this and other kinds of genre fusion to the changes in the music industry that have taken place since the coronavirus pandemic started. “Before COVID, there were lines you couldn’t cross, and if you tried, you were kind of just shunned,” says Alvarez. “Rick Trevino had success, and then he launched those kind of Spanglish versions of his stuff, and that stopped him in his tracks. Acts like the Texas Tornados were the rare exception.”
The story of Latino country artists and fans goes back to the genre’s roots, especially in Texas, with all those iconic names that line the walls at Billy Bob’s. But there are no Latino artists in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Though crossover music is now embraced a little more (and has more supporting infrastructure, via labels such as Azteca Ranch), there’s still some pushback, in spite of how popular country covers of songs like “Drinkin’ Problem (Brindemos)” have become with Spanish-language acts and audiences. “We get a lot of support, but we have some haters,” Venegas puts it. “There’s the super, super Mexican crowd, which is like, ‘You should do just Spanish music.’ And there’s white folks that are like, ‘You should stick to your genre.’ ”
More often, the covers are greeted enthusiastically—prompting more and more new, inventive takes on country songs from all eras that blend sounds too often imagined as disparate. “I swell with pride when I think of how I can walk into a cantina and hear all my primos in South Texas or my homies in New Mexico singing it—because that has happened,” Garza says.
The members of Midland are grateful to be able to play “Drinkin’ Problem” to gleeful crowds and thrilled every time they hear about a new cover, or just another person who heard a ukulele version at a resort in Hawaii (the song is big there too). “ ‘Drinkin’ Problem’ itself is a little bit of an anomaly,” says Wystrach. “It’s pretty rare that your first single is—well, I hope it’s not going to be our biggest song, but most likely it will be. It’s a testament to the song, the complexity of the song and how it seems to really cut across cultures.”
“Drinkin’ Problem” might be Midland’s (mostly) unintentional entry into Texas country’s long history of Latino and Mexican American roots and connections. But it’s one that the band members hope helps foster more openness, more inclusivity, more crossovers that look unlikely on the surface but, upon closer examination, make all the sense in the world.
“The pendulum’s swinging in country,” says Carson. “It’s really happening this time. It’s felt like it was happening at different times throughout the music’s history, but right now, it’s undeniable that there’s change.”
