Some artists begin their journey with a clear path and a defined ambition or a singular expression. Someone might want to pursue music, examine language, or explore their imagination through storytelling or their community through conversation.
But for someone like Santiago Ramones, music, language, storytelling, and conversation may actually all be one and the same.
An OKC-based composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, podcaster, digital animator, and web developer, Ramones wears a lot of hats, but he’s realized over time that they’re all in service of telling stories, whether that’s the deeply philosophical chats he leads with other creatives on his show Bit Depth or the lushly orchestrated, high-concept indie rock storytelling explored on his 2025 album “Hypothetical.”
Santiago Ramones: It's all storytelling. I want to help people tell their stories, and I think that it took a while for me to realize that, that this is what I do.
It's not just the songwriting, it's the stories surrounding it.
Brett Fieldcamp: The inspirations and origins of music and art have always fascinated Ramones.
Born in Venezuela and moved to the US as a young child, he was introduced to music and expression at the intersections of language, culture, and family.
Santiago Ramones: Yeah, those were happening simultaneously. We came whenever I was in first grade, and so I was learning English as I was also experiencing music.
So, like, from what I've seen even just other Venezuelans doing, like, culture is a part of a complete thing rather than just like “ah it's just a thing.”
Music is part of the water that they swim in.
Brett Fieldcamp: It came easy, then, for Ramones to dive into music himself, exploring classical and traditional music through school band and vocal choir, but simultaneously developing a love for indie-rock and electronic outlets.
Those parallel passions took him all the way through a master’s program at UCO’s Academy of Contemporary Music, where he studied everything from high-level composition and performance to studio engineering and production and even video game music.
Santiago Ramones: The idea was then just like, “okay, I just want to become a Swiss Army knife, and just like I can do any style of music in whatever way I can.”
It started in production that way, it's like I learned that like oh, the amount of classical knowledge that I have is a tool that makes me valuable.
You’ve got to diversify what you're able to do because you won't have every single dollar coming from just writing songs and performing them, like, you gotta do more things.
Brett Fieldcamp: But Ramones didn’t want to just play it safe or easy, so in order to diversify and to make himself indispensible to his community and his creative contemporaries, he looked back instead to the deepest late-night conversations and commiserations of adolescence, and he built a show around those same kinds of deep dives and difficult questions.
Now, more than 300 episodes later, his show Bit Depth has offered hundreds of artists the opportunity to discuss their own intersections and tell their own stories.
Santiago Ramones: I would always get rides home from friends, and in these late night times, we would just be sitting in the car in my driveway until like 3 a.m. having the deep conversations, and those were some of the best conversations that I had, and the best relationships that I made with people.
And the podcast was a way of capturing that feeling. No one told me to start a podcast. I just had this drive to want to talk to people in this way, and I think I've always just been a curious person.
Brett Fieldcamp: That curiosity is likely to remain the driving force behind everything that Ramones does, whether it’s continuing to experiment and explore new sonic territory in his music or continuing to invite other artists, musicians, and creative minds into his deep questions and into the ever-evolving story of the scene, even if he’s still writing his own way into that story.
Santiago Ramones: I don't know necessarily where I am in the community. I make the things that I make, and I enjoy them, and I share them in the ways that I have energy to do so.
But I like being a part of this community, and I'm glad, and I'm grateful for it, and I hope to keep being a part of that.
I hope to not just continue to tell my story, but to help other people to tell their stories.
Brett Fieldcamp: You can keep up with everything that Ramones offers, including scoring, mixing, and production work, as well as his own music and his But Depth podcast, by visiting santiagoramones.com.
———————————
KGOU relies on voluntary contributions from readers and listeners to further its mission of public service with arts and culture reporting for Oklahoma and beyond. To contribute to our efforts, make your donation online, or contact our Membership department.
