About the Band

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.