Try my luck in Baton Rouge – Name-checking the Red Stick in popular music

For most songwriters, Baton Rouge sounds like a good stopover city to call out in a song about being on the road. For others, it’s a place to court witches, pretend you’re a riverboat captain, find some work when you’re down and out or show off your new reptile-skinned kicks. And let’s be honest, it rolls off the tongue better and conjures more imagery than, say, Indianapolis. Here’s a list of tunes you may or may not know that name drop the Red Stick. Know of one we’re missing? Let us know in the comments below, or email us at [email protected].
—COMPILED BY BENJAMIN LEGER

Those times we get some love among a laundry list of other cities.

Chuck Berry
“Back in the U.S.A.”
The legendary musician was happy to touch down on U.S. soil again in this swinging track with a nod to the Red Stick.

Huey Lewis and the News
“Heart of Rock & Roll”
Blink and you’ll miss it, but we get name-checked in the second half’s roster of cities where rock ‘n’ roll’s heart is still beating.

Johnny Cash
“Wanted Man”
He’s basically wanted everywhere–here, too.

“Roll On, Mississippi, Roll On”
That lazy steamer sure slows it down between New Orleans and Baton Rouge in this old-timey classic made famous by the Boswell Sisters and others.

Touring takes a toll on musicians, and Baton Rouge often factors in.

Rolling Stones
“Memory Motel”
One of their few songs to feature both Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on vocals, this track from 1976’s Black and Blue mentions the next stop is Baton Rouge, likely a reference to a set of shows performed at LSU during their Tour of the Americas ’75.

Boz Scaggs
“Runnin’ Blue”
The touring life has left Scaggs’ unsure if he’s leaving Detroit or comin’ into Baton Rouge. “I get so tired, so tired of changin’ views,” he sings.

John Mayer
“Who Says”
Mayer’s had a long night in New York City, in Austin, and also in the Red Stick. He doesn’t remember you looking any better, but then again, he doesn’t remember you at all. Typical, Mayer.

Drive-By Truckers
“Greenville to Baton Rouge”
The alt-country band has some flight troubles, but the tour seems to be going OK.

It isn’t a mantra or manifesto of Southern life without a Baton Rouge mention.

Lucinda Williams
“Bus to Baton Rouge”
In this song, Williams waxes nostalgic about a house on Belmont Avenue. She’s mentioned the Red Stick in several other tunes, too, like “Jackson,” a song that finds her slowly getting over an old love via each stop on the road.

Mary Chapin Carpenter
“Down at the Twist and Shout”
She won a Grammy for this tune with help from members of BeauSoleil‚Äîwho obviously didn’t correct her when she pronounced “Baton Rouge” incorrectly.

Kenny Chesney
“What I Need to Do”
There’s a buddy of Kenny’s in Baton Rouge who can help him find work, if this country star thing doesn’t work out.

Cross Canadian Ragweed
“Headed South”
The singer wants to get back to Baton Rouge before winter and “walk down by that river and cross that muddy river now and then.” That’s ill-advised, dude.

For some reason, wanderlust sends that girl you love to the Red Stick a lot.

Carrie Underwood
“The Night Before (Life Goes On)”
A story about a teenage couple hanging on to summer before the female protagonist leaves for Baton Rouge to start her college years at LSU. It can either tug at your heartstrings or result in a jaded eye roll.

Carpenters
“One More Time”
On this airy ballad, Karen Carpenter gets more specific in the second verse, saying not just that she’s running away down south to “Loozy-anna,” but that she’s going all the way to Baton Rouge.

Grateful Dead
“Operator”
She skipped town and headed to Baton Rouge. If only the Grateful Dead knew the area code.

“Back to Louisiana”
Written by Bobby Osborne and performed by the likes of Delbert McClinton and Bruce Channel, this tune is about a girl who used to live in Shreveport, but odds are she moved to Baton Rouge.

And some of the ones you thought we forgot about.

Bob Dylan
“Tangled Up in Blue (Real Live version)”
In what some Dylan fans consider the greatest live cut of this Blood on the Tracks classic, Bob changes up nearly every line. New Orleans and Delacroix get a mention on the album version, and Dylan throws in a Red Stick reference in this version.

Iron & Wine
“Baby Center Stage”
Samuel Beam has developed a fuller sound through multiple albums. On the closer of his newest, released this April, he offers up some twangy, soft classic rock and cryptic lyrics about Louisiana and a little angel.

The Oak Ridge Boys
“Callin’ Baton Rouge”
The original version (by the same guys who sang “Elvira”) is a little more bluegrassy than Garth Brooks’ stadium rouser, with enough claps and “heys!” to make you think these squares were nu-folk before it was cool.

Lou Reed
“Baton Rouge”
The late great musician thinks of a lot of things when he thinks of Baton Rouge, but it starts with a mariachi band. We don’t know why, either.

Counting Crows
“Goodnight Elisabeth”
Adam Duritz will wait for you in Baton Rouge and also miss you down in New Orleans, Elisabeth.

Guy Clark
“Baton Rouge”
In which Clark rhymes “Baton Rouge” with “alligator shoes.”

Lil Boosie
“Nothin’ like Baton Rouge”
Recently incarcerated rapper Lil Boosie calls out the Red Stick on the regular, and on this track, he lets us know he does it all for his city.

Common
“It’s Your World”
Who knew Common spent his college years in our fair city? Unfortunately, it didn’t go so well, as explained in this smooth hip hop number.

“Me and Bobby McGee”
Apparently, people waited for trains in Baton Rouge? Probably the first song many people think of, its most famous version is by Janis Joplin. But Bobby was a woman in the original, written by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster and first sung by Roger Miller.

Johnny Cash
“Big River”
The Man in Black makes an appearance again with a rambling track that finds him in a love/hate relationship with a woman, following the Mighty Mississippi in search of her. “Now, won’t you batten down by Baton Rouge, River Queen, roll it on. Take that woman on down to New Orleans,” he sings in his famous deep rumble.

Tom Waits
“Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard”
Missed opportunity: Waits voicing the villain in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog. Here he conjures up voodoo images in a bluesy romp, growling, “I only come to Baton Rouge to find myself a witch.”

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
“Louisiana Rain”
“Shoes” rhymes with “Rouge” again. Petty experiences a Louisiana rain shower, or what we like to call Tuesday. It affects him so much, he’s worried he won’t be the same once he reaches the Capital City.

Randy Newman
“Rednecks”
LSU gets a shout out in a pretty negative way, in a song that holds nothing back about racism in the South.