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It was a cold night in early December, and the Guevara family home in north Houston was buzzing with Christmas cheer. Mom and dad – Blanca and Agustin Guevara – hung lights on the backyard fence, green and gold ornaments went up on a leafless tree, and large candy canes marked the edges of the impromptu outdoor stage.

Soon after, the seven members of Houston’s EZ Band took their positions, decked in cheerful Christmas outfits ready to do what they do best: turn a popular song into a norteña.

“La navidad pasada te di mi corazón, pero al dia siguiente, lo regalaste,” sang Jaime Guevara, the family’s youngest son, while playing the six-string bass flanked by his father on the sleigh bells and his older brother, Aldo Guevara, on the accordion.

Blanca Guevara jumped on visuals, holding a gimbal to take steady video footage of the band members who have all become part of her family – Dulce Arellano on vocals, Johnny Ramirez on guitar and vocals, Rigo Nuñez on the drums, and Lalo Reynaga on bass and keyboards.

“Este año, para evitar el llanto, lo daré a alguien especial,” Jaime Guevara continued in the band’s Spanglish norteño version of the holiday classic “Last Christmas,” originally by the 1980s duo Wham!. 

This Mexican regional music genre is known as norteño for its origins in the northern part of Mexico. Similar to Tejano style, it features the accordion, a 12-string bass guitar known as the bajo sexto, as well as the traditional guitar, bass and drums.  

Over the last few years, Jaime Guevara and EZ Band have unapologetically transformed popular music songs into Spanish-English norteñas, blowing the minds of those who never would have thought of a particular song in that style, and introducing many to either the norteño music world, or the original version of the song.

From the Killers to Adele, and from Taylor Swift to the Smiths, no song and no style is off limits to the creative collision of musical worlds happening inside Jaime Guevara’s mind.

In his renditions, he also adds other Latin American flavors such as cumbia, ranchera, or whatever he feels like the song needs to fully adapt to his musical world.

He said he often hears a song and just starts wondering, “How would the drums sound if it was a norteña?” Then he turns to the bass, the accordion and the guitar. And if it all works out, he takes this blueprint to the other band members for their feedback.

The band then records and performs the song together, just like that December evening, to put up on social media and eventually on their Spotify and YouTube channels.

Days after uploading a portion of the “Last Christmas” cover onto TikTok and Instagram, the video had gathered nearly 100,000 likes combined, and had hundreds of thousands of plays and hundreds of comments.

“I love it,” Jaime Guevara said with a smile. “I feel like I’m connecting worlds, especially for young Mexican-Americans who grew up listening to this music, which was maybe part of their parent’s type of music. But they grow up and they realize they like it. And then I’m adding songs that are also part of their childhood… I get a lot of people telling me, ‘You are putting our worlds together.’”

El Todologo

“Qué tal, Delilah. Aquí estoy si te sientes sola, no temas a la distancia escucha otra vez esta rola,” Jaime Guevara sings in the EZ Band cover of “Hey There Delilah” by the Plain White T’s.

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Music – especially norteño style – runs in the Guevara family bloodline.

Father Agustin Guevara has played in ensembles most of his life. The entire family proudly remembers a time when he took to performing songs for tips aboard city buses back when they lived in their native Monterrey, Mexico.

The family moved to the U.S. more than 20 years ago, and they continued the musical adventure, this time catering to Latinos from all over who paid to hear the songs that reminded them of home.

Both Jaime Guevara and older brother Aldo Guevara continued this tradition alongside their father with a band called Enzzamble. They played weddings, quinceañeras, and all types of events for hire. But the idea to do more than just straight covers of the expected Latin songs buzzed in the back of Jaime's mind.

Aldo remembers recording a Bruno Mars song cover with Jaime about 10 years before EZ Band’s staple style was born. But it wasn’t an immediate hit, and there weren’t many avenues to promote it beyond playing it live at events. 

“These are his ideas,” Aldo said in Spanish, referring to Jaime. “He would tell me, ‘I want to record a song this way, and this way.’ And I would tell him, ‘I really don’t understand what you are telling me.’” 

Jaime had learned how to play the drums at the age of 12 when he joined his father’s music group and performed in events around Houston. He then learned how to play the guitar, the accordion and, later, the bajo sexto, which became his favorite instrument. 

In the eyes of his brother, Jaime is a “todologo,” or an “everything man,” due to his ability to learn everything he sets his mind to.

Jaime later figured out how to mix sound to produce music in the studio his family built behind their house. He also taught himself how to record and edit music videos, and he even acts as a one-man-band when recording some of the covers that have gone viral on social media.  

In 2021, he posted a video of him playing a norteño version of Adele’s “Easy on Me,” with the question, “How would Adele’s ‘Easy on Me’ sound as a norteña?” He overlaid the video of Adele singing live with his rendition of the song on the drums, bajo sexto, guitar and accordion. 

The response was overwhelmingly positive, the brothers recall, and people started suggesting other songs. This confirmed Jaime’s suspicion that there are more music lovers out there who grew up between cultures and between musical worlds, who were curious about these worlds colliding.

“I didn't do that song thinking, ‘Oh, it's gonna go viral,’” Jaime said. “I just did it because I thought it was cool. … I think that's when things happen: when you're just having fun and you just create.”

The song gathered so much attention that he received calls for interviews from publications in Mexico, he said. He took it as a sign to do what he had been thinking of for many years.

“Now I tell my brother, ‘Everyone who was born [in Mexico] and then grew up here can identify with your music, with what you are doing,’” Aldo said. “But I even have friends from Central America, Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, and we hear a little bit of everything … we can all enjoy music together.”  

Blending worlds

“Grito, lloro. Qué dolor. Hare que todo cambie de color. Espinas en el corazón. Cara a cara y digo, ‘Oh my God! Ella quien es? Con celos yo me vengaré,’” Dulce Arellano sings with Jaime in their cover of Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space.”

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That December evening, during the recording of “Last Christmas,” Jaime rushed in and out of the family’s studio, calling on each band member to sing and play their portion of the song. He sat behind the computer and the mixer, directing and checking off each section from his mental to-do list.

A signed copy of the norteño/tejano band Intocable’s X album, released in 2005, sits right behind his desk chair, resting atop a framed copy of a famous 1960s photo where The Beatles are getting their hair done during a break in the filming of A Hard Day's Night.

In Jaime’s music world, these two bands hold perhaps the same importance – one a 1990s norteño band that started in Zapata, Texas, and the other, a 1960s rock band that started in Liverpool, England. 

He leans into the mix of cultures and sounds that he grew up in for inspiration. And the outcome resonates with many other Houstonians and listeners from around the world, who relate to his experience.

Listeners have become part of the inspiration by suggesting the songs they would like to hear transformed. Taking suggestions feels like a great challenge, Jaime said, and it gets his mind going.  

EZ Band’s first full album, which is available on Spotify, is appropriately titled “Make it Norteño, Vol. 1” and starts with an instrumental cover of “Way Back Then,” a theme song in the popular Korean television series Squid Game. It then dives into many of the popular covers they’ve come up with so far, and that more than 800,000 listeners have collectively streamed more than 3 million times, according to Spotify’s annual report.

This fall, the band and their mission to bridge cultures was also featured by The New York Times and NPR.

Jaime, however, makes it a point to clarify that he doesn’t feel any different from before their songs went viral. He is still the same guy playing around with sounds and styles, having fun blending his music worlds, living in the same north Houston neighborhood where he grew up.

“I’m very proud to be here from Houston, even though I wasn't born here in Houston, I mean, I've been here most of my life,” Jaime said. “And obviously I'm from Monterrey. So I'm always repping Monterrey.”

EZBand still books weddings and quinceañeras. They perform around the city and at Houston stadiums during halftimes. 2024 will also mark the second year EZ Band is tapped to play at the Houston Rodeo.

It’s hard to know exactly what the next year, or the next five, will have in store for the band. There might be more travel at some point, and maybe some original songs, Jaime said. But their intention is to continue having fun creating a collision of music worlds that is resonating with many listeners in one of the country’s most diverse cities.

“I feel like I’m exposing our music and culture to people who would otherwise have never been exposed to it,” Jaime said. “Lots of events that we go to, I see a lot of white people, a lot of Black people, a lot of Asian people … so I feel really proud that I kind of get to be a voice for the norteño style of music, too.” 

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Hola! My name is Danya Pérez, one of Abdelraoufsinno’s diverse communities reporters. I cover Latino/Hispanic communities here, including those who are mixed race or mixed status. ¡También soy México-Americana y hablo español! ¿Qué notas te gustaría leer? What topics or stories would you like to see me cover? Email me your ideas at [email protected]

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