Long before "Austin" became shorthand for a music scene, a radio station on the edge of town decided the city needed a soundtrack that matched its restlessness. In the summer of 1972, KOKE FM abandoned its old format and became a country rock station, or as locals started calling it, "progressive country." Two years later, Billboard named it the most innovative station in the country, and the timing was not a coincidence. Willie Nelson moved to Austin roughly six months after KOKE flipped its format, drawn by a station willing to play his records alongside The Rolling Stones and The Carter Family in the same afternoon.
That original run helped invent the sound that would define Austin as the "Live Music Capital," a station willing to mix classic country with rock and roll at a time when Nashville radio wanted nothing to do with either. Program director Joe Gracey used the airwaves to champion the singer-songwriters who were about to become legends, and the station's willingness to break format rules made it a rallying point for what people now call the outlaw country movement.
Bringing the format back from the dead
The KOKE name went quiet for decades after ownership changes pushed the frequency toward soft adult contemporary in the early 1980s. It came roaring back on June 28, 2012, when the 99.3 signal in Austin flipped its call letters to KOKE FM and began stunting listeners with a looped recording of Dale Watson's "Country My Ass," playing it more than a thousand times before officially relaunching. Watson later re-recorded the song with a new line for the occasion: "Now Austin's on track, 'cause KOKE FM's back," according to Saving Country Music. For the next twelve years, the revived KOKE FM built a devoted following around Texas country, red dirt, and Americana, hosting the annual KOKEFest and giving airtime to homegrown artists that bigger commercial stations passed over. It never chased the ratings of Austin's more mainstream country competitors, but it earned something harder to buy: a listenership that considered the station part of the city's identity.
From FM tower to online only
That chapter closed in 2024 when the station's owners sold the 99.3 frequency to a broadcaster that rebranded it for a Regional Mexican format. Rather than disappear, KOKE moved entirely online, continuing to stream through its own app and website as reported by Saving Country Music. The shift cost the station some of its longtime on-air voices, but it also freed KOKE from the constraints of a single tower and the Austin city limits, letting the red dirt and Texas country format it fought to preserve reach listeners well beyond the Hill Country.
What made KOKE worth reviving in the first place is still what makes it worth tuning into now: a refusal to treat country music as a single, predictable playlist. Outlaw country, Texas country, and red dirt were always genres built on friction with the mainstream, and a station born out of that same friction is a fitting place to keep hearing them.