“Martinez has at least one other big plan in mind on her yellow brick road to country music stardom. Rather than moving to Nashville like so many songsters, she hopes to help Charlottesville develop its country scene into “a new Bakersfield,” referring to the late ’50s-era home of honky-tonk. Along with her own burgeoning band, she says acts like Charlie and the 45’s, who frequent Honky Tonk Karaoke at Holly’s Diner, and John Shanesy and The Accommodation, which skews toward the outlaw side of the honky-tonk spectrum, are poised to drive the growth.

And while Charlottesville has a few musical miles to go before it’s the new Bakersfield, Martinez figures the current zeitgeist makes the time right. Renaissance, after all, follows the plague, she says.”