Summer Lights gets back on track

Lighting Up

Give Summer Lights a little credit this year. 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.

Below, we’ve tried to cull the best from the festival’s daunting lineup, space permitting. Consult a schedule on the festival grounds for other worthwhile performances—or better still, just show up at one of the event’s many outdoor stages and be surprised.

Thursday

We’re just imagining the looks on the faces of unwary listeners as they settle in front of the Budweiser Stage Thursday night at 7 p.m.—and they suddenly get a force-nine blast of Rebecca Stout’s new material. Best known as the former vocalist for the Shakers, whose rootsy mysticism arrived just a few years too early for fans of Enya and Sarah MacLachlan, Stout has kept a low profile for the past few years, emerging every so often at local benefits or club shows for an a cappella number or two. Ain’t nothing a cappella about Stout’s new recordings, which sound like Rickie Lee Jones undergoing an exorcism at the hands of Mitchell Froom. Over hip-hop beats, woozy keyboards and horns, and grinding acoustic riffage, Stout moans, murmurs, and shrieks some of the rawest, most aggressively erotic lyrics this side of Liz Phair.

Her opening act, Lambchop (6 p.m.), would be better heard anywhere other than at an outdoor festival, but their music—a sort of chamber-country spiced with newfound R&B pep—should be a cool drizzle in the midst of Summer Lights. Stick around after Lambchop and Stout for Murfreesboro’s swell Fluid Ounces (8 p.m.) and the cathartic noise of Jay Joyce’s iodine (10 p.m.).

Fresh from releasing Keepers, a splendid live LP on Sugar Hill, Guy Clark assembles a group of friends and fellow musicians for his 6 p.m. gig on the Marlboro Stage. As intimate venues go, the Marlboro Stage is somewhere between Municipal Auditorium and Dudley Field, but Clark’s magnificent “Dublin Blues” is epic enough to fill a stadium.

Elsewhere along the country/folk continuum, cock an ear for the Children’s/Family Stage, which throughout the weekend sponsors some of the festival’s best music. The towering hillbilly singer Hayseed, whose “God-Shaped Hole” is among the highlights of Bloodshot Records’ Other Side of the Alley compilation, performs Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m., followed by Greg Trooper, Barry & Holly Tashian, Kate Campbell, and bluegrass star Tim O’Brien.

Traditional country is represented on the Cabaret Stage by an afternoon with numerous Opry stars. All you need to know is that Connie Smith (4 p.m.) is still one of the hottest women on the planet, and that Stonewall Jackson (1 p.m.) sang “Waterloo.”

The Swing Tent features some of Music City’s finest non-country bands, including jazz vocalist April Barrows (11 a.m.), fiddle master Buddy Spicher & the Nashville Swing Band (4:30 p.m.), and our own local klezmer band, the Klezmaniacs (6 p.m.). And for the first of the weekend’s fine zydeco offerings, let the bon temps rouler when Li’l Brian & the Zydeco Travelers take the Alligator Alley stage from 4-7:30 p.m.

Friday

To paraphrase Steve Earle’s famous quote about Townes Van Zandt, Joy Lynn White (6 p.m.) is the most grossly underrated vocalist in country music, and we’ll say that standing on Faith Hill’s coffee table in a feather boa. Of all the people playing at Summer Lights this year, she most deserves the exposure to thousands of people, and she’s the one most likely to make herself noticed and remembered long after the last three-ticket beer has been downed. She joins the hillbilly hellcats of Hank Flamingo (7 p.m.) on Capt. Morgan’s Parrot Bay Stage—which, incidentally, features Steve Earle himself at 10 p.m.

Alt-country in all its guises is well represented on the Children’s/Family Stage. By now we hope you’re familiar with Paul Burch & the WPA Ballclub (5 p.m.), whose Pan-American Flash LP is the best country album we’ve heard so far this year. Fans of Wayne Hancock and BR5-49 are henceforth hipped to Gary Wayne Claxton (7 p.m.), who slaps out that trad-country thunka-thunka with an edge of rockabilly energy. R.B. Morris previews his upcoming Oh Boy CD of boisterous, defiantly literary busking with a show at 8 p.m., and the delightful Northeastern band 5 Chinese Brothers kick up a cheerful roots-rock squall at 9 p.m. Compass Records artists Farmer Not So John close the bill at 10 p.m.