Alan Jackson, Sturgill Simpson to Headline 2025 Two Step Inn Fest
Alan Jackson, Sturgill Simpson, Miranda Lambert, and what’s left of Lynyrd Skynyrd will be the headliners of the 3rd annual Two Step Inn Festival in Georgetown, TX on April 5th and 6th, 2025. They will join 30+ other artists across three stages in what has become one of biggest festivals with a classic country/independent country focus.
Alan Jackson’s appearance is especially notable since Jackson is playing only a very limited amount of performances on his “Last Call” tour as he works through complications with the neurological disorder CMT. Organizers are saying this could be the last time Alan Jackson will ever play the Austin/Central Texas area.
Shane Smith and the Saints, Flatland Cavalry, Kaitlin Butts, Noeline Hoffman, supergroup The Panhandlers, Ryan Bingham with The Texas Gentlemen, The Droptines, Tanner Usrey, Ole 60, and William Beckmann are some of the other top names in independent country who will appear at the 2025 Two Step Inn. Country legends joining Alan Jackson include Tracy Byrd, Aaron Tippin, as well as Sammy Kershaw, whose 2024 Two Step Inn performance was unfortunately rained out.
Mainstream names include traditionalist Randall King, and Ernest who also had his primary performance rained out in 2024, though he did get in a well-received Keith Whitley tribute during last year’s Two Step Inn. Eli Young Band will also take the stage.
Since the beginning of the Two Step Inn, they have also curiously included a couple of hip-hop/EDM performers. 2025 will be no different as they take a play from Stagecoach’s playbook, and book both Diplo and Nelly, despite both men being accused by multiple women of sexual assault and rape.
Two Step Inn Fest is promoted by C3 Presents, which has donated $2.3 million to Friends of Georgetown Parks and Recreation over the first two years of the fest.
1-Day and 2-Day GA, GA+, VIP, and Platinum Presale Tickets will go on sale Friday, October 25 at 12pm CT at twostepinn.com .
October 24, 2024 @ 4:37 am
So dang funny that you can’t bring yourself to just call them Lynyrd Skynyrd. Great lineup!!
October 24, 2024 @ 11:04 am
For younger people who may not be aware of this, the Lynyrd Skynryd band were killed in a plane crash in 1977.
None of the people in the group scheduled to appear at the Two Step Inn Fest had anything do do with recording “Free Bird,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Call Me the Breeze,” or any other classic Lynyrd Skynyrd. recording.
I’ll go along with the host here in not “just calling them Lynryd Skynyrd”–dang funny or not.
October 24, 2024 @ 5:03 am
I love how the problematic ones Nelly and diplo are in the same spot on the poster for both nights
October 24, 2024 @ 5:14 am
I dont understand why Diplo and Nelly are always part of country music festivals. Do they think that their draw is enough to bring in the fringe crowd? Maybe in 2000 when “Country Grammar” was all over the radio, but I dont get it now.
October 24, 2024 @ 7:07 am
The reason all of these festivals are booking Nelly and Diplo is because so many of them are just cheating off each other’s posters, and all of a sudden every single festival has the same basic lineup no matter where it transpires. This was the reason I published an article earlier this week talking about the blind spots that have opened up in these rosters.
https://savingcountrymusic.com/live-performers-country-festivals-should-not-overlook-for-2025/
You could replace Nelly and Diplo with Gabe Lee and Rattlesnake Milk on this same festival roster, and it would still sell out, and the festival would spend less money. Granted, when Nelly and Diplo perform, there will be tons of basic chicks in their cutoffs and pink boots there with their boyfriends in tow swinging their hands in the air like they just don’t care when prompted to.
Ironically, festivals are booking these acts for “diversity” and to “open country music up.” The press fawns over these bookings. But what they’re opening country up to is sexual predators and a misogynistic culture that these performers bring and country music doesn’t need. There are plenty of Black and Brown performers in country music that could benefit from these opportunities like Gabe Lee, and instead we get ’90s nostalgia acts with an alleged rape history.
October 24, 2024 @ 6:28 am
“what’s left of Lynyrd Skynyrd”
Skynyrd is competing with Kiss for the record for longest ever retirement tour. I saw Skynyrd about 9 years ago at the beginning of the last tour LOL.
October 24, 2024 @ 8:07 am
Skynyrd…best tribute/cover band out there today with the exception of maybe Foreigner.
October 24, 2024 @ 7:34 pm
Don’t forget the Artimus Pyle Band. He fell out of the sky in 1977,too.
October 24, 2024 @ 8:48 am
Really tempted to fly into Austin for the 2nd day of this.
Might start a petition to trade Nelly and Lynard Skynard for Kaitlin Butts (who I think deserves to be at least one rung higher up on these bills) and Noeline Hofmann. Seems like they belong on day 2 the way they’ve split this up.
October 24, 2024 @ 9:56 am
Last time I checked, ol’ Stugill was distancing himself from using his own name and going with Johnny Blue Skies. Purportedly he didnt like the fanbase he had been cursed with. Haha. Yet, here the promoter has minimized the Johnny moniker and maximized the Simpson name. Does the promoter believe that using the Johnny name in large letters would somehow be detrimental to headliner status? Or maybe Sturgill tried it as Johnny Blue Skies and found out it affects turnout, and now to sell those tickets, he’s perhaps reluctantly gone back to using his name again. One things for sure with the guy, he’s always changing, like the wind. I remember reading that when Eric Clapton formed Derek and The Dominoes, he went on tour only using that name and managed to book some tiny gigs with no one showing up, due to the anonymity the name provided. But to Clapton, that was the goal, he wanted to play to smaller crowds. Seems like Stugill wants the big crowds and the $$$.
October 24, 2024 @ 2:48 pm
Sturgill Simpson has to be a more recognizable name that Johnny Blue Skies. These festival posters and where artists and bands appear is often part of the negotiation they go through when they are booked, and often have to be signed off by the artist’s representatives. Sturgill or Johnny Blue Skies, my guess is Sturgill’s peeps approves how his name appeared.
October 24, 2024 @ 9:20 pm
The poster shows “Johnny Blue Skies” in small print between “Sturgill” and “Simpson.”
Sturgill is no in Eric Clapton’s league as far as money earned–and “Johnny Blue Skies” does not have a “Layla.”
He’s got to support himself and his band. To be a co-headliner, on the bil, and get paid for that, he has to let them use his name.
October 24, 2024 @ 5:55 pm
Here’s what’s on my radar, in descending order, for what it’s worth:
Alan Jackson
Tracy Byrd
Diamond Rio
Miranda Lambert
Ryan Bingham
Randall King
Sammy Kershaw
Aaron Tippin
Sturgill Simpson
Treaty Oak Revival
Stephen Wilson Jr
It’d be interesting to see if Stephen Wilson can break out of obscurity. Treaty Oak is known but not distinctive. Young people at the barn know Waylon Wyatt, but so far he’s still learning the ropes as a Zach Bryan type. I wonder if Ryan Bingham has anything else in him; he sure had everyone’s attention for a while. Everyone else not on the above list is unknown up here.