Red Dirt Comes Home: Giovannie and the Hired Guns Load Into the Texas Club
There is a certain poetry in a Texas red-dirt band pulling up to a Baton Rouge room literally named The Texas Club, and on Thursday, July 9, Giovannie and the Hired Guns will test whether the joke lands as loud as the amps. It should.
If you've somehow missed them, Giovannie and the Hired Guns are the Stephenville, Texas crew who spent the last few years dragging red-dirt country sideways into hard rock and getting a suspicious number of people who "don't like country" to scream along anyway. They're loud, they're tight, and they play like a bar band that accidentally got famous — which, in the Texas Club, is exactly the correct energy. Opening the night is Austin Meade, another Texas export who splits the difference between arena rock and honky-tonk grit, the kind of opener who can empty a bar's worth of people onto the floor before the headliner's first note.
Why does a touring Texas bill matter to a Baton Rouge music column? Because the Texas Club is one of the few Red Stick rooms sized and staffed to catch acts at exactly this moment — bigger than a bar, smaller than a shed, the sweet spot where you can still see the setlist taped to the monitor. The venue at 456 N. Donmoor has been booking country and rock this way for decades, and its calendar this summer is a reminder that mid-size touring country still routes through Baton Rouge on purpose, not by accident. A month from now the same stage hosts Clay Cormier and the Highway Boys and, the night after, a Wayne Toups Cajun throwdown. Thursday's show is the rock-leaning end of that spectrum.
A few practical notes for first-timers. Doors and set times skew late here — this is a 9 p.m. show — so eat first and pace yourself. The room rewards people who show up for the opener; Meade's crowd and Giovannie's crowd overlap heavily, and the floor fills early once word gets around. And if you've only ever caught bands like this at a festival, understand that the Texas Club is the inversion of that experience: no jumbotron, no lawn, no half-mile walk to the beer. The band is right there, close enough that the between-song banter is aimed at you specifically.
The broader point, on a Wednesday in early July when the LSU crowd is thin and the city feels like it's running on a summer skeleton crew: Baton Rouge live music does not clock out for the season. While the Varsity sits dark and the college kids are scattered, the Texas Club is the room keeping the lights on and the touring vans pointed our way. Red-dirt is having a genuine national moment, and instead of forcing you to drive to Houston or Dallas to catch the wave, it's washing up on Donmoor Avenue on a Thursday.
Bring cash for the merch table — the shirts move fast at shows like this — and get there for Austin Meade. The best story you tell about Thursday will probably be about the opener.
Giovannie and the Hired Guns with Austin Meade, Thursday, July 9 at The Texas Club.
Sources: The Texas Club; Texas Club at Songkick; Baton Rouge shows — Songkick