The season of free Friday evening concerts in Cesar Chavez Plaza at 10th and J streets in downtown Sacramento, a summer tradition, just got a bit longer.

Promoter Jerry Perry, who has been arranging the multi-act shows, all featuring local musicians, since 1997, just got permission from the city to extend the concerts another five weeks.

And this time, Perry will be in charge of the whole event, over the five-week series. Called “End of Summer Fest,” it will begin when the current series of concerts ends on Aug. 14.

“I’ve always felt that the season ends too soon,” he said by phone Tuesday. “But I was never completely in charge before.”

The shows are generally sponsored by the Downtown Partnership, with Perry in charge of booking the acts. Other sponsors chip in, and a popular beer garden underwrites the remainder of the cost.

The new series of five concerts, which begins on Aug. 21 and runs through Sept. 18, will be sponsored by The Sacramento Press. Other sponsors will be coming on board during the next few weeks, Perry said.

Artists already signed by Perry to perform during those five weeks are artists he couldn’t book during the original 15-week season, including Jackpot, Agent Ribbons, Shannon Curtis, Mike Farrell and a reunited Kai Kln. More artists will be announced shortly.

The concerts have proven popular, but producing them is still a huge effort, and a risky one at that. Perry says that the cost of putting on the show, with beer garden, food vendors, police, fire and health department inspectors and other costs total roughly $20,000 per week.

And although the shows are free, audiences wax and wane week to week, depending on weather, competing events, the timing of holidays, Furlough Fridays, and even last year’s wildfires, which led headliner Mumbo Gumbo to cancel.

This year, says Perry, “We got rained out one day and rained on two days. If it’s too cold, you don’t sell enough beer, if it’s too hot, people don’t come out. Last week was our lowest beer garden in a few years, I don’t know why. We got hit harder with the heat than anything. When it’s 105 degrees, people don’t want to come down to the park.”

Still, Perry says, being more in charge, while daunting, is allowing him to make a few changes he’s been wanting to make. One is to create a separate food court with tables, accessible only to those who buy food and want to sit down to eat it. He also says that problems with the beer lines have been eliminated.

With the enthusiastic support of the city – Perry says Tuesday’s approval of permits came in a mere seven minutes – the new End of Summer Fest seems likely to continue a tradition that is one of downtown Sacramento’s most popular.

But that doesn’t stop him from worrying.

“I think about the days getting shorter, is that going to affect turnout?” he says. “But I want to take it further, see where we can go with this. It is one of the things that defines downtown Sacramento in summer.”