South Florida isn’t exactly known as a hotbed of country music. One local musician is sure he can change that. After all, with a nickname like the “Hialeah Hillbilly,” how can he lose?

Ricky Valido, singing: “We are living the swamp life, out in the glades/deep in the sawgrass, with the gators and the rattlesnakes. Yeah, we’re doin’ the swamp stomp.”

Country music fans, meet your hometown hero, Ricky Valido.

Ricky Valido: “Well, I am a country music singer/songwriter/performer. I’m mainly from Hialeah, Florida. This is where I was born and raised.”

Ricky says his SoFlo roots are a plus when it comes to his career.

Ricky Valido: “I think that that’s made kind of a point into what differentiates me from maybe the stereotypical country singer, country artist.”

The love of music runs deep in Ricky’s family.

Ricky Valido: “My great grandparents, they moved here to Hialeah in the ’60s from Cuba, and they brought a lot of that Cuban folk music with them, the guajira music.”

Grandma and Grandpa also brought the sounds that would turn their grandson into a full-time country fan.

Ricky Valido: “A lot of them were in English. They were country/western records — you know, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, George Jones, even — and I think, by listening early on to those records, it inspired me to continue going down the rabbit hole of listening to more country music.”

He’s still working on perfecting his own personal style.

Ricky Valido: “More of a hybrid between country-rock and blues and folk and a lot of what I call western folk.”

When he’s not performing solo, Ricky hits the stage with his band, the Hialeah Hillbillies.

The group’s name has been around a long time.

Ricky Valido: “So what started off as a nickname in high school, the Hialeah Hillbillies, I kept that for such a long time, and it still is the name of the band.”

Apparently, anyone can be a Hialeah Hillbilly.

Ricky Valido: “You have to have a love for the country music world. It’s more of a conversation piece and a comedy because, obviously, there is no hills in Hialeah, but I feel it’s all an attitude, so you have to have the attitude.”

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