At OffBeat’s 2006 Best of the Beat show—the first after Katrina—James Andrews brought what seemed like most of the Treme onstage with him at the House of Blues. It was his set in name only; he often acted as the ringleader, and vocalists and featured performers stepped up throughout the set. If some people didn’t have parts to play, they picked up a tambourine or tried to get to a mic for impromptu backing. It was rarely spot-on, but it was a dramatic show of community.

People Get Ready Now shares a vibe with that night. The core Crescent City Allstars—Andrews, Kevin O’Day, Scott Jackson and West Bank Mike—are joined by 23 players, including Mac Rebennack, Big Chief Alfred Doucet, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Ryan Scully and Roger Lewis, and you can hear all of them. There’s a lot of sound on the tracks and a lot of pieces that cling tentatively to the tight core, but they’re in the right places and that makes all the difference.

Andrews makes the community explicit when he addresses the lyrics of “If You Ain’t Doin’ Somethin’” to Dr. John, Washington, June Yamagishi, Mark Brooks and O’Day, giving each an occasion to toss out a handful of notes. The song is slight, but the track’s good nature carries the day, as if often does on the album. This is Andrews’ funk project, and he makes the most he can out of almost nothing in a number of cases. “Hasta La Vista” is essentially a two line song, with the title answered with the phrase “for all of my people.” What does it mean? Who knows, but it sounds like a party because of the sheer number of people on the track, a feel it shares with some Parliament/Funkadelic tracks.

The tossed-off tone brings out the best in the players. Everything is funky, often funkier than recordings by a number of full-time funk bands with stable memberships. As tempting as it is to assign the credit to the A-list players, it ultimately has to go to O’Day (the only drummer credited on the sessions) and Andrews. The tracks might be ragged, but there’s a unified sensibility behind them. The titles might be empty lines, but they give Andrews a framework in which he routinely finds a path back to life after Katrina. In the title track, he’s pissed that there are FEMA trailers on the Indian Grounds.

That undercurrent of anger and urgency—the title is People Get Ready NOW—keeps the album from being simple good times and the tracks more than just a bunch of jams. Just as Andrews dramatizes community on the album, the tracks dramatize the lives we lead here—often seeming slack but with a deceptive amount of purpose.