For more than 15 years, Nashvillians packed downtown in late May to listen to all kinds of musical acts perform during the city’s annual Summer Lights festival. I have fond memories from several of the annual events, and it was a sad day when the festival signed off for good. Summer Lights showcased the diversity of local talent and displayed Nashville at its best. The Tennessean’s Beverly Keel, then writing for Entertainment Weekly, described the festival near the end in 1997:

For a full view of Nashville, from the eclectic music that swings outside its country boundaries to food that leaves Southern-fried far behind, prepare for Fan Fair by heading to Summer Lights. The downtown street festival, which runs May 29-June 1, has nine stages that feature 250 acts, ranging from blues, hip-hop, classical, and gospel to Celtic, Hispanic, African, and a panoply of other forms of music. Nibble on Cajun food while listening to opera, or down a funnel cake to the sounds of big band. Of course, there’s still plenty of country music. This year’s headliners include Lorrie Morgan, Tracy Lawrence, and Mark Chestnutt. For Nashville natives, Summer Lights is the official start of summer, and they look forward to strolling down the several-block area around the War Memorial Plaza (last year it attracted more than 150,000 people). Locals like to boast that Nashville is Music City USA, not just Country Music City, and at least for one weekend a year, they’re right.

Nashville Scene film critic Jim Ridley, reviewing the 1997 slate of performers, made the case that the final festival had saved the best for last, though no one knew it was the end at the time:

There were many years when the music at the city’s largest annual festival seemed of tertiary importance to lemonade booths and funnel-cake stands. In recent years, however, it has steadily gotten better. Even if Summer Lights appears destined never to have the big-name rock ’n’ roll, funk, or blues acts that similar festivals in Memphis and Birmingham attract, festival programmer Kari Estrin has nonetheless assembled a remarkable cross-sampling of local, regional, and international talent. Besides, we’d rather see the Hackberry Ramblers, Othar Turner, or Joy Lynn White than some lame major-label headliner going through the motions.

As Ridley observed, Summer Lights wasn’t a cookie-cutter assortment of national acts, as some might argue that Memphis in May or Birmingham’s City Stages can be at times. (The short-lived Nashville River Stages that followed Nashville’s event was much more along those lines.) Summer Lights was an eclectic event that was distinctly Nashville, and I think we’re missing it, even at a time when the city has grown signficantly and improved tremendously in its absence.

Ridley’s article was ironically titled, “Summer Lights Gets Back on Track,” but then columnist (and future, but now former, editor) Liz Garrigan spread the word months later that the writing was on the wall for the festival’s fate.

Is Nashville in need of a Summer Lights’ revival? I certainly think so, but it would likely require an economic upswing and a better budgetary bottom line for the city for it to happen. In the meantime, it will have to remain a blast from the past alongside Dancin’ in the District and the Italian Street Festival as beloved local events that are long gone. Here’s hoping all of you rise again some day.