Finding his way: German musician Mariam Funke found a home on the New Mexico range

By Ollie Reed Jr.

SANTA FE COUNTY — If you know anything about Western music and have seen Mariam Funke play guitar or mandolin, you’d probably bet he could have hung with the Sons of the Pioneers or any of those other classic cowboy bands. Maybe even taught them a string or two.

Funke is about as fine a practitioner of Western music as it is possible to find these days.

In 2022, the International Western Music Association selected Funke as instrumentalist of the year.

His work with musician colleagues has been twice recognized with National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum Wrangler Awards — in 2017 for traditional Western album and in 2021 for original Western composition.

And The Cowboy Way, the trio made up of Funke, Doug Figgs and Jim Jones, has been named IWMA group of the year five times.

Funke is up for instrumentalist of the year and The Cowboy Way once is again nominated for group of the year at the 2023 IWMA Convention, Wednesday, Nov. 8, through Sunday, Nov. 12, at Hotel Albuquerque, 800 Rio Grande Blvd. NW.

So, there’s no doubting Funke’s cowboy music cred. That’s why it is difficult to believe he was born in and grew up in Germany.

Of course, it was West Germany.

Finding his way: German musician Mariam Funke found a home on the New Mexico range

‘Bonanza’ in GermanFunke, 70, was born in Cologne, Germany, and grew up in Muenster.

But he has lived in New Mexico — Santa Fe, Socorro, Lemitar, Magdalena — for 30 years. These days, he resides south of Santa Fe, between Eldorado and Lamy. He became an American citizen a few years ago.

On a recent afternoon, sitting behind a desk in the music studio of his home, Funke explained that the American West has had a hold on his heart since childhood.

“In the ’50s and the ’60s, when I was a boy, the romanticized image of the cowboy was very popular in Germany,” he said. “I watched these Western TV shows in Germany. ‘Bonanza.’ Hoss talking German. I watched John Wayne movies and Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.”

He read German novelist Karl May’s adventure stories set in the American West and featuring Winnetou, an Apache chief, and Old Shatterhand, Winnetou’s white blood brother. Funke said there were detailed and accurate maps of the American West in the back of May’s book, which he studied closely.

“Because of those maps, when I first saw Santa Fe (in the late ’80s) I felt at home,” Funke said. “I drove into Santa Fe and there were all these blue skies and wide-open spaces.

“I know those are cliches, but when you are from these old-world places, the Southwestern landscape just explodes on you. You never get tired of it. Pecos, Los Alamos, Abiquiú, Taos and the Enchanted Circle. Those places inspire me.”

Riding the booniesFunke plays guitar, bass, mandolin, piano and drums. In addition to Western music, he’s performs rock, pop, country, jazz and the blues.

He received classical music lessons from a number of private teachers from an early age before attending the Music Conservatory of Muenster, where he studied piano, classical guitar, flute and trombone. He also attended four semesters of law school at Wilhelms University of Muenster. But he discovered he did not have the discipline for school.

“I was too much of a free spirit,” he said. “I wanted to get on the road and play music.”

He got hired as a bass player for a Dutch singer who was making a world tour. The tour died out before making it around the world, but it got Funke to Australia and South Africa, far enough to introduce him to other countries and make him realize he wanted to explore the world beyond Germany.

So, he ended up in the American Southwest, the land of his youthful cowboy fantasies.

“I picked up horse riding working on farms and ranches and on some trail rides,” Funke said. “I had two Arabian horses for a time, and enjoyed riding in the boonies around Santa Fe.”

He was at one point a guide for a trail-ride business in the Glorieta-Pecos Wilderness area.

“I would hear German tourists speaking German, and I dared not open my mouth because they thought I was a real cowboy,” Funke said. “I was open to learning more of the cowboy trade, but I realized you need to be born into it. Besides, I didn’t want to lose a finger or two in a roping accident, because I knew I would never be as good a cowboy as I was a musician.”

‘Go West’Funke teaches music lessons on various instruments. He said his students range in age from 7 to 75. He met his wife, Teresa, in Socorro when she came to him for drum lessons.

He also produces music — for other artists, his own solo instrumental albums and work he does with other Western music artists.

Funke met Doug Figgs, a Lemitar farrier and Western music performer, when Figgs went to Funke for help in polishing up his guitar work. The two started performing together in the Socorro area.

“The Socorro music scene is quite amazing,” Funke said. “There is a lot going on in little clubs. Then Doug asked (veteran Western musician) Jim Jones to join us at a show at a restaurant in Socorro. We were doing cover songs, and, on the spot, we found our three-part harmony.”

That’s when The Cowboy Way was born. The group turned out its first CD in 2016 and has done two more since then.

Funke said that, besides their compatibility as musicians, something that glues the trio together is their common interest in the real history of the West, as opposed to those Western TV adventures that hooked Funke when he was young.

He points to “Go West,” the title track of The Cowboy Way’s second album, as an example of how history affects the music the trio makes. The song is about immigrants making their way into the Western frontier.

“There were all these immigrants on the trail to Oregon, many German and Slavic people,” Funke said. “This is a country of immigrants looking for a better way of life. I’m an immigrant. When we wrote the music for ‘Go West,’ it was a wonderful experience.

“Jim and Doug brought some lyrics. I’m not a lyricist. I’m not comfortable with that. I twist the music around and try to come up with an amazing idea. We all gathered around the piano. Sometimes songwriters work forever on a song. And sometimes songs fall out of the heavens. We made the demo that night.”