Live music with Zack Spencer
Court to Table
Baton Rouge
Jan. 10, 2026
When Court to Table opened last year, I thought it would be a place for 20 somethings to hang out with their friends. When I went last weekend, there were so many kids running around, I thought there was a birthday party I’d missed the memo on.
Don’t get me wrong, there were a fair number of 20 somethings playing pickleball or drinking at the bar. But the courtyard seemed owned by children under 6. Jenga towers taller than the kids came crashing down to choruses of “Ooooh!” Kids were standing on tables. Every time a small voice screamed “Daaaaaad!,” millennials in polo shirts with baseball caps on whipped around to see if it was their kid being chaotic.
It was in this environment that Zack Spencer was setting up to play. I had no idea what I was about to see.
Spencer had played earlier in the night. He opened the second part of his performance with a few country songs like “Boondocks” by Little Big Town and “Feathered Indians” by Tyler Childers before encouraging people to come up and give him song requests. The kids kept playing in the courtyard, not paying him much attention.
In this chaos, I somehow ran into an old friend I haven’t seen in a while. We were just in the middle of catching up when Spencer asked her if she had any requests for him.
“The kids love ‘Pink Pony Club,’” she said.
“And the kids are gonna hear it,” Spencer responded without a beat. “I’ve been waiting for someone to tell me to play that song.”
Spencer wasn’t lying. He was prepared to play “Pink Pony Club.” As the chorus neared, kids came out of the woodwork to dance, leaving their toys and jumbo jenga behind. Some were cartwheeling, others just jumping up and down, still others cautiously approaching the stage. Tiny voices sang “Pink Pony Club” while parents recorded their kids. It was an outpouring of unbridled joy.
“Pink Pony Club” is the anthem of the season for kids, my friend told me simply; they have to play it every weekend. Most kids probably don’t know that Chappell Roan’s hit song is about leaving Tennessee and finding liberation in Queer spaces in LA, but they’re finding their own spaces to have fun and dance and be themselves, probably as Roan intended.
It’s always interesting when songs like this go mainstream. The message can get lost, but maybe not forever. Some day some of these kids might look at this time period dancing to “Pink Pony Club” as a watershed moment. We just don’t know yet. We do know that the song was a turning point in the performance, and goes to show how one request can change the whole vibe.
Spencer was a charismatic performer and good with kids. “Pink Pony Club” is not the easiest song to sing, but he killed it. Outside of singing at Court to Table, he’s part of a country band, the Southerlies, and plays other 21 and over bars throughout the city. It shows impressive range to be able to flip the switch and do crowd work with kids and play different genres of music, and take requests for songs that he’s never played before. I wonder what he’s like in his own element.
