Like anywhere else, Baton Rouge’s music scene has taken some heavy blows during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many venues have gone months without hosting a show, and some have had to close their doors indefinitely.
The Varsity Theatre, a decades-old stalwart of the city’s live music community in the LSU North Gates area, has now been silent for more than a year. Other venues, like the Manship Theatre and L’Auberge Casino & Hotel have either been limited to mostly outdoor shows or have had to dramatically slim down or postpone their entertainment calendars.
But that all seems to be changing. With COVID infection rates dropping, and masking and social distancing restrictions loosening across the country, the past few weeks have brought the first signs of the return of live music to the Capital City.
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Before Beauvoir Park temporarily closed its Perkins Road overpass space to pursue a rezoning strategy, it hosted shows with a consistency of which few other venues in the city—if any—have managed. It also hosted the city’s first music festival since the pandemic’s onset, and other venues like Mid City Ballroom have even partnered with the park to host shows.
“What Beauvoir Park was able to do during the pandemic for live music was nothing short of remarkable,” says J. Hover, promotions and bookings director for the park.
Currently, Beauvoir Park continues to support live music in Baton Rouge through partner spaces, like new event venue Gallery 14. This past Friday, May 14, local band Hydra Plane performed its rescheduled Beatles cover show outside at Gallery 14. Beauvoir Park also recently started hosting shows at Red Stick Social, which reopened this month after being closed since September.
“If we can play a part in continuing to bring great music as we did at Beauvoir Park, wherever that may be, that’s our goal, that’s what we’re about, and that’s what we’re going to continue to support,” Hover says.
But not all purveyors of live music feel they’re on their way to greener pastures. Lloyd “Teddy” Johnson Jr., owner and proprietor of Teddy’s Juke Joint in Zachary, still feels he has a ways to go before he can be hopeful for the future.
“In the past year, every (show) I had, I lost money on,” he says. “By the time I pay my overhead, I don’t make nothing.”
The Juke Joint—a legendary and eclectic music venue that’s been operating for more than 40 years—shut its doors for eight months starting at the beginning of the pandemic. Since reopening in October 2020, Johnson estimates his venue has seen, on average, only about 50% of the activity it did before the pandemic.
Attendance at both jam sessions and concerts has been untenably low for months now, and even with recent relaxations in COVID mitigation requirements, Johnson says the capricious nature of those guidelines makes it hard to plan for—and much less be optimistic about—the fate of his business.
Restaurants, which previously struggled to bring back indoor live music, are slowly rebuilding their entertainment schedules.
La Divina Italian Cafe, in the Acadian Village shopping center on Perkins Road, boasted weekly live music on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights before the pandemic. It seriously restricted those activities in accordance with federally mandated lockdowns and subsequent social distancing guidelines.
Mary LeBlanc, who owns the café with her husband, Lance, calls the loss of live music “devastating.” While the restaurant did succeed in hosting the occasional live performer starting in summer 2020—at which point restaurants were restricted to outdoor dining or limited indoor seating—she feels that only now is La Divina getting back on track to host live entertainment with the same consistency as it did before the pandemic.
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After months of hosting all shows outside underneath a tent, La Divina recently implemented a revised policy by which musical performers get to choose whether they play indoors or outside. This past Thursday, retired local attorney-turned-singer-songwriter Steve Judice delivered the first indoor live set the café had seen since before the pandemic.
And while many of the factors determining when and how fully live music is able to return remain up in the air, there’s still plenty to see. The calendar on local site Red Stick Music is filling up, with shows listed today, May 19, at restaurants like BLDG 5, Bin 77 and El Paso, and The Jovin Webb Experience performing at Red Stick Social tomorrow, May 20.
As for Teddy’s Juke Joint and La Divina? They have shows planned for this Friday night, too. Catch Doug Brousseau and the River City Alstars at Teddy’s Juke Joint or Peter Simon and Friends at La Divina on May 21.