The first and only Electric Cowboy Festival was held over Labor Day weekend in September 1993. The three-day event didn't feature any artists from the fledgling local rock scene, although Gregg Allman was born in the Music City and past sell-by date Southern rockers like the Marshall Tucker Band and the Outlaws had a tenuous connection to Nashville through the business. Leon Russell would end up moving to Nashville, but was never really a part of the local "scene."
The Electric Cowboy Festival was the first event of this sort in the region, however, beating both the ill-fated Itchycoo Park Festival (1999) and the more successful Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival (2002) by a good decade and a half. The event had some high-profile performers, too, like Joe Walsh, Joan Jett, Cheap Trick, Humble Pie, and Kansas but offered a somewhat eclectic mix of artists like the Elvis Brothers, Mitch Ryder, Fastway, Quiet Riot, Teenage Head, and Madness. I covered the festival for the first two days for some rag or another and had an overall good time. I don't know if the event made any money but since they never held another one, I'm guessing that it broke even at best. But the Electric Cowboy Festival holds good memories for many who went, so many that there's even a Facebook group for the concert.
