Ramona & The Holy Smokes – The New Honky-Tonk Sound
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There's something almost rebellious about Ramona Martinez wearing bangs. Not the subtle kind—the blunt, fashion-forward statement that looks like it was stolen from a Waylon Jennings tribute show and never quite given back. It's this same spirit of purposeful reclamation that runs through everything Ramona and The Holy Smokes do. They're not trying to resurrect honky-tonk music so much as prove it never actually died; it just needed the right people to remind us why we loved it in the first place.
Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, with family roots stretching back to South Texas, Ramona Martinez fronts a band that represents something genuinely rare in contemporary roots music: a new generation of artists making classic honky-tonk sound urgent and alive. This isn't nostalgia dressed up in tweed and sentiment. This is music that understands the DNA of 1950s and 1960s country—that clarity, that emotional precision, that unflinching vulnerability—and somehow makes it speak to now.
What immediately strikes you about Ramona's approach is how deliberately she's constructed her aesthetic. During a recent conversation about hair and fashion, she traced the lineage of her look with the precision of someone who understands that presentation and sound are inseparable in country music. The bangs came from dressing as Waylon Jennings for a tribute show last October. The turquoise jewelry, recently acquired on tour, layers over pearl snaps and mini skirts in a mashup that draws equally from 18th-century fashion, leopard-print boldness, and the effortless bombshell aesthetic of Penélope Cruz in Pedro Almodóvar films. It sounds chaotic on paper. On stage, it apparently coheres into something striking enough that the band's visual uniformity—the boys in matching pearl snaps, Ramona standing apart in dress and carefully assembled detail—becomes part of the music itself.
This is the kind of intentionality that separates genuine artists from people just playing dress-up. Ramona talks about travel products like dry shampoo and pink pig pomade not as trivialities but as practical tools for maintaining an image while living the grinding reality of touring. She mentions wearing almost no jewelry for years before the road changed something in her approach. These aren't calculated choices made in a boardroom; they're the organic evolution of an artist discovering who she is through repetition and exhaustion and the particular clarity that comes from playing night after night in front of real people.
We're a mashup of Fran Drescher from The Nanny and Marie Antoinette merged together.
The band's music carries that same authenticity. With powerful female vocals that move fluidly between determination and vulnerability, with a backing band steeped in genuine knowledge of classic country and western styles, Ramona and The Holy Smokes have managed something critics keep comparing to Patsy Cline: clarity and sincerity. Those words might seem old-fashioned—maybe they are—but in a musical landscape often cluttered with irony and detachment, sincerity has become genuinely transgressive.
What makes this story even more compelling is the independence underpinning it all. Their debut record, dropping September 26th with ten tracks that navigate the space between past and future honky-tonk, was funded entirely through Kickstarter. The band raised twenty-three thousand dollars from fewer than two hundred people, most of them from Virginia. That's not just a funding strategy; it's a statement about community, about building something real with actual believers rather than banking on algorithmic algorithms or major label machinery.
Ramona and The Holy Smokes represent what happens when artists decide that honky-tonk music isn't some museum piece to be carefully preserved but something worth fighting for, worth modernizing without apologizing, worth pouring genuine creativity into. They've got one foot firmly planted in the tradition—those 1950s influences, that emotional vocabulary—and the other reaching toward whatever comes next. In a roots music landscape increasingly populated by pastiche and tribute acts, that balance feels revolutionary.
I'll help you. I'll help you start a [music] revolution for this Monday morning love situation. >> So, this is Cam aka the Honky Tonk Hair Machine and we're here in Vigilante Hair Care, my hair studio, and I have a very special guest with me today. >> Hi, I'm Ramona Martinez. I'm the front person for Ramona and the Holy Smokes, a honky Tonk band based in Charlottesville, Virginia. >> Thanks for coming to talk with me today, Ramona. just have a few questions about hair and fashion for you. >> Awesome. >> So, with your hair, what are some of your must-have travel products with you? >> So, the two travel products I use are uh dry shampoo. I believe it's I don't know if it's the ordinary, it's the silver can. Um I got to check that. But that's uh I usually wash my hair only once every two weeks. Okay. >> And that will keep me going from looking like a raga muffin on the road because it can definitely look greasy if I let it go too too long without something. So, and then the other one is the raisil. >> Okay. >> Uh pomade rusel pomade. The pink. >> That's right. You like the one with the pink pig on it. >> The pink pig pomade. Yes. >> Okay. So, who were some of your earlier fashion icons when it comes to hair? who did you first see and you're like I want to try and borrow from that as much as I can. >> So I actually have always had bangs growing up my entire life and like sometimes pretty blunt bangs. >> I was doing the Vidal Sassoon bob for a while in college because my hair is so straight that it's kind of like perfect for that 20s like blunt chop. Um but for a long time I didn't have bangs and that was a huge mistake. And now uh the first time I got bangs was last October when I was doing a Whan Jennings tribute show and dressed up like him and had a mustache and everything. >> Love it. >> So that's uh Whan gave me this hair. >> Fantastic. >> Yeah. And now um Cam, you've kind of like ripped on it so it's a little more punk. We got like the shag and the more micro bang look and I think it's awesome. >> That's right. So tell me a little bit about your shirt. You said you just acquired this shirt on tour. >> Yes. Um, so I wear a lot of pearl snaps. I usually don't actually wear a lot of pearl snaps on stage. The boys wear matching pearl snaps and I'm usually in like a dress or skirt or something like that. Um, I love actually like 18th century fashion and that definitely comes into play. >> Um, and like leopard print. So like kind of a mashup of like you know Fran Dresser from The Nanny and like Maria Twinette sort of like merging. Um, and then yeah, I I think like western fashion is like so cute. I I definitely do like the pearl snap tied a lot with like a mini skirt and definitely boots. Um, these are Justin boots. Uh, I think they're Buffalo Ropers. So, yeah. And then during the summer, the other big fashion influence I have is um Penelopey Cruz in Vulv by Pedro Almodavar. >> Very cool. >> Al Modavar. Alavar. I I can't remember where the accent is, but she has this just kind of kind of like effortless and I know that her character was based on like bombshells from Fellini movies or Italian movies or like Sophia Luren sort of just this kind of like effortless sort of like sexiness kind of like bombshell on a budget kind of look >> that's like a lot of like crocheted sweaters like cleavage like gold saint metals and like Spanish espadrills. >> Yeah. accessible but yet put together in a way that looks really eye-catching. >> Yeah, for sure. >> It's really cool. Now, you also have some bead work on your earrings and your necklace >> on your bolo. Tell us a little bit about what you have going on. >> So, I have been wearing a lot of turquoise lately and I I almost never wear jewelry and on tour I really wanted I was given this bolo tie before I went on tour and I just started kind of layering stuff and um yeah and so now I'm I'm rocking the turquoise. I got a cuff on too. You can't really see, but um I yeah, for a while didn't wear any jewelry and now I'm enjoying wearing a lot of it. >> Well, you look fantastic. You have an awesome and unique look and I think when you front your band, you really stand out and I do love the uniformity of it. You guys look awesome. Um now, you have >> some music coming out. Tell us about that. >> We are going to have our debut record come out this September 26th. It is called Ramona and the Holy Smokes. Um, and there will be 10 tracks. And if you haven't heard our band before, I would say it sounds like it could be, well, no, let me rephrase it. We're very 1950s and60s influenced, but there's definitely something modern about it. >> It kind of has a foot in the past and future of Honky Tonk, I'd like to think. So, >> I love it. Now, is is this an independent release or >> It is. We are an independent band. We raised the money to produce this record and promote it on Kickstarter. Um, we raised $23,000 from less than 200 people. >> Um, and most of them were from Virginia. So, we're really proud to be so supported by our fellow Virginia country music lovers. And, um, >> I think this record is going to be, I hope, really well received. >> Yeah. And hopefully we'll see you on the road, see some heavy touring behind this album. And Ramona, you know, I love you. So, look forward to seeing you again soon. Thanks for talking with me. >> Thank you. Bye.
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