Smoking Popes playing New World Brewery in Ybor City, Florida on May 9, 2011. Credit: Photo by Nicole Kibert/elawgrrl.com

A dozen years after a wild set at the old New World Brewery, Chicago punk scene mainstay Smoking Popes returns to Tampa packing not just nostalgia in its suitcase, but also new songs (like last summer’s “Madison”) and some good friends to boot.

Rodeo Boys puts a little twang on its strain of ‘90s grunge, and Pohgoh reigns supreme in the annals of Tampa’s second wave emo bands.

Tickets to see Smoking Popes play Orpheum in Tampa on Wednesday, March 20 are still available and start at $20.

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This article appears in Mar 7-13, 2024.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...