The Port Townsend Slide and Steel Festival, June 24 – 30, 2007, is a total-immersion workshop presenting many styles of slide guitar music and pedal steel guitar music. The workshop’s wide spectrum includes workshop sessions, faculty demonstrations, tutorials, concerts, open jams, parties, and informal and spontaneous gatherings.

Participants must have a basic understanding of how to play a guitar. Differing levels of ability are expected, and classes are designed to accommodate these differences.

The Slide & Steel workshop will run concurrently with Voiceworks: A Week of Singing, and there will be some integration between the two gatherings. Most of the faculty will be teaching two sessions a day. Generally speaking, one session will be incremental, building upon the work done on the previous day. The second daily class will be more spontaneous, evolving on-site as a collaboration with another faculty person, or perhaps a one-time class (for example, “How to back up a singer,” or “The music of Don Helms”).

Tuition for the workshop is $425 ($325 for returning participants who register a new participant the same day as they register), and includes free admission to all festival events. Room and board options range from $200 to $385.