You’re liable to see Curtis Arceneaux a.k.a. Coco Robicheaux on Frenchman Street anytime, surveying the passersby while nursing a robusto maduro or torpedo cigar. But every Saturday night, Robicheaux holds his own brand of musical smoker at the Apple Barrel, accompanied by any number of people but usually with Dave Easley on a multiplicity of stringed instruments and Alex Nygren on keys. The crowd moves in and out of the club in tidal surges over the night and local musicians gravitate easily from the tables to the Uptown corner of the club where the band sets up. Well, all that happens on Like I Said, Yeah, U Rite!, which features vocalists Irene Sage and Dorian Rush, drummers Herman Ernest III, Kerry Brown and Steve Howell, Smiley Ricks on congas, Smoky Greenwell and Pat Ramsey on harmonica, Jerry Embree on tenor sax, Hart McNee on baritone and a host of bassists and guitarists.

But this is not your average souvenir-of-the-good-time-you-had recording. Robicheaux has put together a well managed remix album from a variety of sessions that presents a more unified statement than most New Orleans bands ever approach. No doubt this is due in large part to Nygren, who supervised both the remixes and the remastering.

“Decision Blues—Squawkbox Mix,” a refashioning of a tune taken from Hoodoo Party, is a case in point. Robincheaux’s voice is bathed in a wash of echoing effects as Will Ainsworth’s bass line drives the tune and blurts of harmonica and percussion careen in and out of the mix in a narcotic frenzy. Nygren is comfortably making this sound as dirty and noisy as he can get it.

Elsewhere, he goes for a groove that mixes rhythm samples in with fat, greasy analog rhythm section elements, placing Robicheaux’s guttural voice in a setting that evokes the swamp spirits he attempts to conjure. The thick rule of Catholic ethos coexists with the Native American, Cajun and African spiritual elements in spooky, biblical-themed observations like “Work of the Devil” and “Revelator,” although his sense of humor comes to the fore for “Ten Commandments of the Blues.” Here, and on the choogling “Hot Sauce Boogie” we find Robicheaux veering most closely into the maelstrom of that Frenchmen Street Saturday night.

There really isn’t a more emblematic character in town—hell, Dr. John name checked him all the way back on his debut album during “Walk On Gilded Splinters”—and Robicheaux finishes off here with a flash of his street cred on the title track, which talks of a New Orleanian everyman that he engages in a rhyming exchange as the record ends: How old is you? / Ninety-two! / What you wear? / Matching pair! / What you eat? / Garfish meat! / Where you drink? / Outta da sink! / Yeah, U rite!</p