Ramona and the Holy Smokes
Bio
Based in Central Virginia and with family roots in South Texas, Ramona and the Holy Smokes represent a new generation of honky tonk music. With powerful female vocals that cover an emotional range from determined to comic to vulnerable, and a talented backing band steeped in classic country and western styles of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the band’s repertoire includes lush emotional ballads, quintessential two-step dance numbers, gritty country-rockers, and a unique blend of honky tonk and traditional Mexican styles that the group describes as “Mexi-tonk.” Drawing on the Mexican-American heritage of lead singer and songwriter Ramona Martinez, recognized by Wide Open Country as one of the "15 Latino Artists Shaping Country Music," Ramona and the Holy Smokes are simultaneously rooted in the traditional sounds of country music but unafraid of pushing boundaries and highlighting the connections across border cultures. Their self-titled debut LP offers the group the opportunity to explore this diversity of sounds, leaning into an authenticity and resiliency in songs that chart life’s ups and downs from the perspective of a female voice seeking to maintain a sensitivity and sense of wonder in a twenty-first century world filled with emotional highs and lows.
Formed in 2022, Ramona and the Holy Smokes have seen their star rise in the region and beyond. The band–which includes Kyle Kilduff (electric guitar), Brooks Hefner (pedal steel), Jay Ouypron (bass), and Porter Bralley (drums)–had built a rapport playing together before joining Ramona, and in their time together have brought their talents to Ramona’s songs and song ideas, shaping and arranging these for a signature honky tonk sound. The band has performed regularly in the region, appearing at several Americana festivals including Red Wing Roots (2024), Rooster Walk (2025), and Bristol Rhythm & Roots (2025), and has opened for touring artists like Margo Cilker, Colby Acuff, Willi Carlisle, Redd Volkaert, Joshua Hedley, Donna the Buffalo, and Kashus Culpepper.
After recording a 7” single in 2023 and a four-song EP in 2024, Ramona and the Holy Smokes were ready to draw on a large catalog of original material for their first full-length album, which they recorded over the winter of 2024-25 at Spacebomb Studios in Richmond, Virginia. Produced by Kai Crowe-Getty and guitarist Kyle Kilduff and engineered by Alex De Jong, the album features guest musicians Blake Baines on harmony vocals, Colby Pegg-Joplin on fiddle, Jeffrey Miller on piano, Matty Metcalfe on accordion, and Antonio Romero on strings. Ultimately, these recordings are anchored by Ramona’s inspired songwriting, much of which she credits to the “honky tonk angels” who help generate her song ideas. The album is dominated by themes of heartache and struggle, of what it means to get stuck in unhealthy situations and to yearn for ways to escape them, and of balancing the need for love and companionship with the need for independence and creative freedom.
At the center of the album is the question of desire and fantasy, dreaming about making it out of the circumstances–financial, emotional, psychological–that are holding you back. The album’s opening track, “Gonna Be Mine,” is a cheeky song that rides the fine edge between authentic longing and satire, with crisp guitar and steel parts that support a satirical vision of having “a white Pekingese” and “drinking Chardonnay.” The high-octane anthem “Drunk After Work,” an outlaw country-rocker with blistering honky tonk solos and an exhilarating crowd favorite at live shows, describes what it means to cope, self-medicate, and dream about making it out of a dead end job: “Someday I’ll leave this life behind/but I just don’t know when.” Ramona had about $45 to her name when she wrote “Down and Out,” which opens with a zany riff before the lyrics paint a darkly humorous picture of what it means to be a struggling artist trying to maintain integrity. The lyrics invite Jesus to the gambling table, a last-ditch effort (with a nod to the band’s “holy” name) of “going all in.”
Another group of songs on the album chart the emotional turmoil of relationships and breakups. The infectious “This Little Heart” features a mid-century sound with a nod to western swing. Written by Ramona ten years before the band got together, this song has evolved from a vision dependent on unrealistic fantasies about relationships into a more empowering breakup song. The dark and ethereal “Even in My Dreams,” the last song written for the album, features a dreamy arrangement that came together in the studio. It is a nod to the kind of melancholy crossover ballads that might appear in a David Lynch film, and its themes–of what it means when even dreams go sour and fantasies turn out to disappoint you–make it the darkest song on the band’s album. The two-step number “1000 Little Heartbreaks” leans into the motif of heartache and suffering. Inspired by both her honky tonk angels and Patsy Cline, Ramona’s lyrics describe a love gone wrong, but one that is nearly impossible to leave.
The song “Esta Herida” (which translates to “This Wound”) expands these themes of romantic heartbreak and represents the band’s unique “Mexi-tonk” sound in an up-tempo bilingual fashion. With an arrangement inspired by Norteño music and bands like the Texas Tornadoes and lyrics co-written by Ramona and her friend Laura Davila, the song does not shy away from the violent melodrama of classic mariachi and other Mexican music: “I’m bleeding to death,” she sings in Spanish, “because you are no longer here.” Equally dramatic, the song “Somedays, Sometimes”--which the band describes as “the saddest song in our catalog”--details an emotionally abusive relationship, with the verses showing the fleeting promise of happiness and the chorus puncturing this illusion and asking if it’s worth trying to save. With a lush arrangement inspired by the country-pop ballads of Judy Collins and Patsy Cline, “Somedays, Sometimes” draws on themes of how and when to settle and how it might be possible to get unstuck from emotionally damaging situations.
While much of the album focuses on disappointment, heartache, and struggle, each side of the LP ends with a note of defiance, a breakup song that offers the possibility for something better. The sardonic “Goodbye & Good Riddance” is a confident and cutting farewell to a bad relationship, as much a breakthrough song as it is a breakup song. The stripped down arrangement gives this the feel of an old Hank Williams or Kitty Wells tune. And the song’s confident rejection of a terrible partner (“you think you’re a cowboy, but you’re just a clown”) places it in a long line of country recordings depicting female empowerment and the successful escape from toxic relationships, from Kitty Wells and Loretta Lynn to Carrie Underwood and The Chicks. Finally, the closing track “Trouble” is a sassy, uptempo number that channels Loretta Lynn at her most empowered in its bold rejection of a partner that is simply too much trouble to be bothered with. Having been gaslighted and blamed for the problems in their relationship, Ramona asks sarcastically, “you think that this trouble is coming from you…?” The song’s upbeat interplay between the guitar, pedal steel, and fiddle propels the themes of freedom from heartache–and trouble–that enable the album to end with the possibility of emerging more powerful and defiant from our heartbreaks and our struggles.
Ramona and the Holy Smokes continue to perform and write new music, building off of this promising debut album. Seeking a sound that is simultaneously vintage and timeless, they have made believers out of many skeptical audiences by emphasizing an emotional honesty and enduring, organic sound. "While we are heavily inspired by twentieth-century country music,” Ramona notes, “there is definitely something modern about our sound. I don't know if I can pinpoint exactly what it is, but what I do know is that even those who claim to not like country music can connect with us. Perhaps that's because country music, done right, is sincere. And I think everyone can connect with music that's sincere."
