Call of the Tigers
The Florida Street Blowhards will be a downtown tradition on LSU football home Fridays this fall.
Saturday night is for Death Valley and the "amped to 11" anticipation for the start of the Lane Kiffin experience at LSU, but the good times start Friday night for the Florida Street Blowhards.
The traditional jazz outfit unofficially kicks off the season at Poor Boy Lloyd's, 7 to 9 p.m., for the first live music at the Florida Street poboy shrine since the pandemic.
- Fred Taylor, the co-owner and man behind the counter with the never-ending supply of post-meal peppermint candy, used to give the Blowhards a standing monthly gig there before lockdown ended it.
- Nine years after the band's public debut on that same floor, they're back where it all started—weddings, funerals and second lines being just as much the outfit's bread and butter these days as anyone's front lawn.
The timing isn't an accident. FSB will be something of a downtown Friday event during LSU home-game weekends. The Tigers open the season with Clemson, also an ambush of Tigers, and both marching bands claim Tiger Rag as their own. To each their own, but the Blowhards figure they'll get there first and play their own version.
They'll warm up that morning busking outside the Third Street Starbucks, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.—part of a season-long habit of greeting each incoming opponent's fans before kickoff, with Louisiana Tech, Mississippi State and Texas all getting the same treatment later this fall at rotating downtown spots.
Details: Poor Boy Lloyd's, 7-9 p.m., 201 Florida Street. Busking, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., Starbucks, 260 3rd Street (Courtyard Marriott Baton Rouge Downtown).