{"id":52775,"date":"2025-11-17T10:59:32","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T10:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/52775\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T10:59:32","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T10:59:32","slug":"radfest-plans-to-be-houstons-next-great-music-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/52775\/","title":{"rendered":"Radfest Plans to Be Houston\u2019s Next, Great Music Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

The organizers of the all-new music festival dubbed Radfest<\/a> recognize two glaring needs in Houston\u2019s music scene. We met with them one recent evening at Axelrad Beer Garden and they chatted excitedly about the promise of the event while an experimental jazz band played under a clear, fall night sky in the heart of Midtown.<\/p>\n

Their hope is the day-long event featuring 30 bands and slated for Saturday, November 22 will fill some holes and bolster Houston\u2019s music community for years to come. The festival is a partnership between School of Rock<\/a> and Axelrad<\/a>, the event\u2019s host. When more than two dozen bands and music lovers descend upon the venue for the festival \u2013 which features headliners Daikaiju, Los Skarnales, Swimwear Department and The Final Riot \u2013 they think it will be the start of the city\u2019s next great multi-genre music festival.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, we miss Day for Night and having these amazing\u00a0festivals. Like Free Press (Summerfest) was a thing that I think my entire generation\u00a0grew up on. And it was something I look back on and miss so deeply because you\u00a0have locals that are able to play with Interpol and just these bands.\u00a0It\u2019s something that\u2019s a culture and identity that ACL has for Austin and\u00a0Houston hasn\u2019t had that for years,\u201d said David Sosa, event coordinator and production manager at Axelrad.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have anything\u00a0like that anymore. And I think we want to build that up because Axelrad is an absolute mecca now of the Houston culture and how many bands we have,\u201d Sosa continued.<\/p>\n

\"\"Radfest\u2019s Dream Team: Back L to R: Luke Shiflet and Tom Guth; Front L to R: Monte Large, Whitney Grant, Nicole Starch and David Sosa. Credit: Jesse Sendejas, Jr.<\/p>\n

To Sosa\u2019s point, nearly every band on the bill has local roots, many of them entwined with School of Rock, the festival\u2019s co-producer. The renowned music education school has more than a dozen Houston-area locations and students and staff from all of them will be participating in Radfest. According to Nicole Starch, general manager at School of Rock Katy and a Radfest organizer, guiding the next generation of Houston musicians into viable and safe music spaces is the two-fold reason for Radfest.<\/p>\n

\u201cLuke and I run music schools where we\u2019ve got kids that are graduating\u00a0and going into the Houston music scene. Post-Me Too, post-COVID, a lot of festivals\u00a0shut down, a lot of bars that played live music shut down, and we wanted\u00a0to cultivate relationships with the local scene, build the local scene for the local musicians, but also create a\u00a0space for our kids to be able to graduate and go into the music scene\u00a0in a safe way, into the kind of places that we hoped that they would\u00a0play at, not the icky places,\u201d Starch said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, personally, the first place I thought of when we\u00a0started saying where should we do this? You know, me and Nicole were talking.\u00a0I said, Axelrad\u2019s the place. Axelrad is absolutely the place,\u201d said Luke Shiflet, general manager of School of Rock Kingwood. \u201cThere\u2019s a sense of community here. There\u2019s a sense of the culture\u00a0is amazing, where it\u2019s located, the people that work here, the way you feel\u00a0when you\u2019re here. You know, I\u2019ve played here and I love this\u00a0place. And so, to me, there was no better place to start\u00a0this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, we love hearing this\u00a0from musicians and booking people and, you know, people that like music and the\u00a0community. Because that\u2019s why we created it. I mean, it means the world to us\u00a0that others would say that about this space,\u201d said Monte Large, one of Axelrad\u2019s founding partners. \u201cI love music, live music. I feel the same way about Houston,\u00a0about, you know, losing these gems like Free Press Summerfest, and all these different music festivals. And we wanted to slowly\u00a0build a community space that was able to house a lot of that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"YouTube<\/p>\n

Large grew up in Houston and recalled long-gone establishments like The Silver Slipper and Fifth Ward\u2019s Zydeco Ballroom. He said Axelrad was built with those venues in mind and, over more than a decade, has steadily grown to three stages, including one installed just this year. He sees Radfest as a chance to keep growing Axelrad\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

Whitney Grant is the general manager at Axelrad and she said folks coming from all over to the fest are going to catch the venue\u2019s vibe pretty quickly, the things that put the \u201cRad\u201d in Radfest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s something I\u2019ve been\u00a0really proud of, especially as a new parent, too. I can bring my kid up here and\u00a0relax and have a good time,\u201d Grant said. \u201cGetting new people out here to check it\u00a0out and,\u00a0I mean, the events we\u2019ve had with School of Rock in the past have been so cool.\u00a0Just such an experience to see the kids play, all the parents having a good\u00a0time. It\u2019s the best, so I\u2019m really excited about this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom Guth is music director at School of Rock Kingwood and is also a longtime musician who played the very festivals the entire table had been discussing during our chat.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really cool\u00a0to see something like this forming and happening because it\u2019s going to help us\u00a0as instructors at School of Rock to get these kids, point them in the right\u00a0direction, have them playing festivals and playing packed places,\u201d Guth said. \u201cI feel like, if you\u2019re a musician, everyone\u2019s played the\u00a0show to four people and the guy yells \u2018Free Bird!\u2019 so you don\u2019t want that for them, especially when you can see how talented\u00a0they are. You want to see them succeed. You want to see them play to\u00a0packed venues. And that\u2019s why, you know, when Nicole and Luke mentioned\u00a0that it was going to be at Axelrad, I was super excited because there\u2019s a community here. It\u2019s fun. It\u2019s awesome. You know,\u00a0everything about this place is just really good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSeveral of the bands that are on the\u00a0lineup are actually former students that are now in the scene that are\u00a0performing,\u201d Starch said, and Shiflet added, \u201cYou know, it\u2019s funny. I started thinking about some of the great Houston bands\u00a0in our time right now. And I was like, you know, if we run out of bands that are\u00a0represented within our Schools of Rock, I\u2019m going to reach out to these bands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I started to reach out, I started to realize, wait, all these bands do work\u00a0at a School of Rock,\u201d Shiflet continued. \u201cSo all\u00a030 of these bands that we\u2019ve curated, you know, outside of the headliners, and\u00a0even the headliners, have something to do with the School of Rock. School of Rock is right now creating musicians who are\u00a0going to be festival headliners the years down the way and be local\u00a0headliners and phenomenal talent already.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s important to Sosa, giving locals a chance to lineup with big, touring acts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, it\u2019s kind of insane how many locals there are and how\u00a0these festivals in bigger venues \u00a0that will not be named in Houston do\u00a0not put on locals with these bigger bands, and it suffocates the\u00a0local music scene, since they\u2019re not able to play with these people who come\u00a0from outside of the loop, who are not involved in a DIY music scene, or not know\u00a0the actual bands, it\u2019s completely just lost on the community,\u201d Sosa said.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re trying to turn that around, and then bring\u00a0something back that is accessible by local bands. You don\u2019t have to be popular\u00a0like in Austin, and know the right person. It\u2019s like, if you\u2019re just playing around in Houston\u00a0and you do your job, you can potentially play this festival and we want to\u00a0grow it annually.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shiflet is a triple threat, not just a music educator, but also a musician, whose band, Margins, is playing the fest. And, he is a show promoter via Gulf Coast Booking.\u00a0 He thinks the festival can shine the sort of light on Houston that will be a beacon for touring bands that sometimes skip the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a phrase we keep coming back to, and it\u2019s we wanna put\u00a0Houston back on the map,\u201d said Shiflet, who is so excited about the festival\u2019s possibilities he\u2019s hoping it will one day necessitate street closures like the old school fests. He\u2019s even got a dream headliner for 2026 \u2013 anyone reading this, he says, please forward it along to Khruangbin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is one for the\u00a0culture. This is one for the heart of Houston. This is going to put Houston\u00a0back on the map. We\u2019re already seeing people that are so excited. We have some\u00a0viral TikToks and viral posts where people are like, they\u2019re yearning. They\u2019re yearning to see, again, Houston back on the map and to be a part of the\u00a0festival culture here in Houston.\u201d<\/p>\n

Radfest, Saturday, November 22 at Axelrad Beer Garden, 1517 Alabama. The event features 30-plus bands, including headliners Daikaiju and Los Skarnales, and house bands from Houston\u2019s School of Rock locations. $24.54 and up, doors at noon for this all-ages, new Houston music festival.<\/p>\n

This article appears in Jan 1 \u2013 Dec 31, 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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