SteelRadio.org launches new Austin Steel Guitar Fest

SteelRadio.org is launching a new Austin Steel Guitar Fest, a three-day event running October 1 to 3 at the Austin Marriott South, Saving Country Music reported on August 18, 2026. The outlet framed the launch as part of a broader comeback for the steel guitar, an instrument it called nearly wiped out by the Bro-Country era before a recent wave of new players and organizing revived interest in it.

The festival will feature two stages of performances, showcases, jam sessions and seminars, along with vendors and vintage gear sellers, and it will also host the 2026 Steel Guitar Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. Steel guitarists Lucky Oceans and Junior Brown, along with the late David "Feet" Rogers, will be inducted during the event.

More than 50 steel guitar players are scheduled to perform across the three days, from veterans like Lloyd Green, Lynn Owsley, Dave Biller and Rose Sinclair to newer names including Caleb Melo, Jake Penrod, Kevin Skrla and Pedal Steel Noah, with Lucky Oceans and Junior Brown themselves also playing sets alongside their induction.

SteelRadio.org, the nonprofit behind the event, has streamed steel guitar music online around the clock since 2022. It traces back to a station that launched at KWRP.fm in Decatur, Illinois in the mid-1990s, drawing a worldwide audience before it was sold in 2016 and shut down the following year; Ted Smouse later revived it as an online nonprofit, and the Austin festival is set to become its flagship event.

The festival and the station both cover more than straight country: blues, Hawaiian, jazz, sacred steel and western swing music all factor in, with tickets available for the full three-day run, single days or just the evening performances, and its full lineup now tracked on the festival tracker.