St. George is throwing open the gates on its newest civic tradition this October, with a free outdoor concert series that pairs live music with a curated market of local vendors at Highland Road Park. The two-Sunday lineup runs from 2 to 6 p.m. on October 11 and October 18, and organizers are billing it as a showcase for the cultural richness of the greater Baton Rouge area.
Dubbed Sundays in St. George, the series is presented by the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge and the City of St. George, with support from Visit Baton Rouge and The Advocate, according to WBRZ. Each date features live music, a curated arts market, and food vendors, and the event is free and open to the public. Attendees are encouraged to bring lawn chairs and blankets for the afternoon.
The October 11 show features Phat Hat, a Baton Rouge-based funk and soul cover group known for spinning classic dance hits from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, per 225 Live Events. The following Sunday closes out the series with Parish County Line, a contemporary country band formed in Baton Rouge in 2012 whose members hail from small towns across South Louisiana and Mississippi, according to the same listing service.
A Market Built Around Local Makers
Beyond the stage, the series leans heavily on its curated arts market, which includes local small businesses alongside the food vendors. The event's organizers say the lineup is designed to reflect diversity and inclusion across both vendors and performers, and they're actively seeking event sponsors, food vendors, visual artists, and other makers to round out the market.
Artisans and small business owners hoping to set up a booth at the October 18 market have a hard deadline: online applications through the Arts Council portal close September 30 at 10 p.m. The Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, founded in 1973, has spent more than five decades administering arts grants, education initiatives, and community cultural programming across a 10-parish region of South Louisiana, according to the organization's own account of its history.
Highland Road Park's Sprawling Amenities
The venue itself is no small backdrop. Highland Road Community Park spans 144.4 acres in southeastern East Baton Rouge Parish and is managed by BREC, the parish's Recreation and Park Commission, according to a Wikipedia entry on the site. It's one of 12 parks BREC designates as a Community Park under its Imagine Your Parks master plan, a strategy built to keep every parish resident within a 10-minute drive of a roughly 140-acre regional park, per BREC's own park classification materials.
Families arriving early or staying late have plenty to do beyond the concert lawn. The park includes a 45-by-30-foot pavilion that seats 65, an interactive splash pad, 17 hard tennis courts, and a paddle boat launch onto Bayou Fountain and Bayou Manchac, according to BREC's park page. The grounds also house the Highland Road Park Observatory, a public facility jointly run by BREC, LSU, and the Baton Rouge Astronomical Society that features a 20-inch reflecting telescope, per a ParkMagnet profile of the site.
A Civic Milestone for Louisiana's Newest City
The concert series arrives as St. George continues establishing itself as an independent municipality after a long and contested path to incorporation. Louisiana's Supreme Court cleared the way for the city in April 2024 by reversing lower court decisions, setting an effective incorporation date that followed a 2019 ballot initiative in which 54% of local voters approved forming the city, according to Wikipedia's account of the legal dispute.
That fight didn't fully settle the matter in the public eye. As recently as June, St. George Mayor Dustin Yates was publicly affirming the city's operational legitimacy after a land-use lawsuit alleged the incorporation was procedurally invalid, telling Talk 107.3FM that the municipality continues to handle zoning, permitting, and public programming. Co-presenting a high-profile community event like Sundays in St. George alongside established regional institutions marks another step in the city carving out its own local identity.
