At Nashville Pride 2025
While CMA Fest and Bonnaroo are two enormous happenings that mark festival season kicking into high gear, music fests tend to pop up like thistles after a summer shower around Music City. Here are a few more you’ll want to have on your calendar throughout the season.
The National Museum of African American Music’s Black Music Month programming runs all month long and will include appearances from PJ Morton, Summer Joy and Rissi Palmer. The Equity Alliance’s Black on Buchanan party will take over the burgeoning arts district on Buchanan Street on June 13 with food, arts vendors and lots more. Nashville OG MC Young Buck headlines the music lineup.
Two years ago, Nashville hip-hop collective Six One Trïbe launched 615 Day, crystallizing a loose tradition of celebrating around the day that matches up with the city’s longtime area code to spotlight a wide array of local underground talent. This year, the event has expanded into 615 Week, with a slew of events June 15 through 20. The party starts with a June 15 concert at Aura Events Center (2020 Lindell Ave.) featuring members of the ever-evolving Trïbe, R&B singer-songwriter Kyleigh (coming off her stellar forward-leaning November EP Almost Everything) and many others. Events showcasing a broad swath of creative folks continue through the week, including the Raised by the Rhythm event June 18 at The Outfield (410 Chestnut St.) and the June 20 pool party at Drift Hotel (10 Interstate Drive).
Nashville’s official Juneteenth615 event on June 19 typically includes live music. While this year’s lineup wasn’t announced at the time of writing, the party is set for Centennial Park and culminates in a fireworks celebration.
Meanwhile, Nashville Pride Festival is happening just one day this year — June 27 at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park — but it’s going to be a doozy of a day with a big focus on hometown talent. Country phenom Fancy Hagood tops the music lineup. He’s set to bring a passel of his friends along with him, and they’ll be supported by rising pop diva Molly Grace, multitalented songsmith Saaneah, a lineup organized by the folks at Gay Ole Opry Nashville and more. RNBW Queer Music Collective’s Rainbow Stage is coming back, as is the Stonewall Stage with drag performances all day long.
On the campus of Fisk University, the annual Fisk Food & Jazz Music Festival is also set for June 27. The fest is organized via the university’s radio station WFSK Jazzy 88, which this spring received digitized copies of nearly 400 hours of archival broadcast audio from the HBCU Radio Preservation Project. The lineup focuses on top talent in the smooth jazz world, and this year includes guitarist Adam Hawley and flutist Ragan Whiteside.
Further out on the calendar, East Nashville’s beloved Tomato Art Fest returns to Five Points Aug. 7 and 8, though the music lineup has not been announced as of this writing. AmericanaFest is back again Sept. 15 through 19, featuring a massive number of performances from legends like Melissa Etheridge and the McCrary Sisters as well as rising stars like Katie Pruitt and Courtney Marie Andrews. While festival season traditionally ends with summer, CaveFest at Pelham, Tenn.’s The Caverns is happening Oct. 10 and 11 and will be headlined by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
And the likelihood is strong that there’ll be more. Case in point: While this is not exactly a fest per se, NPR music discovery station WNXP announced its Summer Line Series of concerts at Ascension St. Thomas Landing at Nashville Yards as I was writing this. The series begins June 26 and features Devon Gilfillian, Bully and others.
Diving into the who, what, when, where and why of the two major music festivals that hit Middle Tennessee at the start of summer
