Producer Leo Sacks hits rewind on the New Orleans Social Club’s Sing Me Back Home.

“I was sitting in a pizza parlor in midtown Manhattan with a dear friend of mine, Andy Kowalczyk, who became the executive producer of the project. It was August 29, 2005. We were watching the flood waters rise on CNN and the extent of the calamity was becoming very clear. And I realized that one of the ways the healing process could naturally start was by making music. I knew that there would be a roller coaster of emotion, but that ultimately I would try and organize a celebration of the old neighborhood, even if it wasn’t going to be there anymore. And so everyone became a kind of a cultural first responder. There was mourning, there was haunting, there was uncertainty, there was resolve. There was trust and mistrust. There were varying degrees of faith. But most of all there was defiance. And I had to work through my own fears too, because I didn’t want to let anyone down.

Once I knew where everyone was I enlisted my friend Ray Bardani, who really is the consummate engineer and mixer. He helped me to pilot the ship, and Kimball Packard became our air traffic controller—he coordinated traffic for 27 artists, shuttling them to the airport, sometimes twice a day. It got to be like that old Don Covay song: ‘She Was Checking Out While I Was Checking In.’ We set up shop at Wire Recording, which is on a lonely strip of asphalt in south Austin. It’s down-home, dyed-in-the-wool funky; the Christmas lights were still up in the vocal booth from last Christmas. We had an endangered analog tape machine—that’s what made the music sound raw. When Ray saw it he shouted, ‘Old school!’ People are playing ping-pong, watching TV, eating barbecue—they’re all savoring what they couldn’t get for the moment at home.

I didn’t want artists to submit a track to some compilation; I preferred the idea of a house band. So one by one, we put the five of them together. It started with Ivan Neville who was in Austin, and I liked the idea of him with Henry Butler; there’s two guys with the history of New Orleans piano at their fingertips. For a rhythm section, how cool would it be to get George (Porter Jr.) and Leo (Nocentelli) from the Meters? And Raymond Weber on drums, a really strong and gentle spirit.

It’s not my hope that people think of this as a CD about the storm, and I would be disappointed if they only heard that. Obviously ‘This Is My Country’ is one of Curtis Mayfield’s more poignant prayers for social justice, and Cyril (Neville) poured his fury into that. And Ivan suggested ‘Fortunate Son’ to speak to the powers that be. And yes, ‘Why’ (the Annie Lennox hit sung by John Boutté) is wrenching. That was Kimball’s idea to include it, but John had been singing that song in New Orleans before the storm. When he came in that day he was shadow-boxing like a bantamweight and saying, ‘I wanted you all to know that I didn’t smoke at all today.’

I knew we had 13 songs to record, but then the days started rolling into each other. I remember Dr. John coming over the speakerphone saying ‘How you mothas doing?’ in the perfect Mac growl. I wanted Irma Thomas to sing ‘Look Up,’ a song she recorded with Allen [Toussaint] in 1960, when she was a teenaged mother. When she sang it she seemed to slip back in time and become that teenager again. But we had to get her the lyrics—she told me ‘I’m sorry honey, but I don’t remember those words.’

Monk Boudreaux showed up in his floppy hat, looking like an apparition—he knew he had just cheated death so he had that twinkle in his eye. I asked what he wanted to sing and he said ‘I wrote a poem.’ So the band improvised a reggae groove and he recited over it, with a definite nod to Bob Marley. If you listen you can hear George calling out the changes.

Henry Butler’s track was ‘Somewhere,’ and there was a creative decision there that I came to regret. Leo gave me two options for the guitar solo: He could do something smoother and more melodic, or he could do something nasty and hardcore, almost screaming with rage—maybe I was scared off by the intensity of that idea. So just on the strength of that one mellifluous solo, Rolling Stone said the album was smooth jazz. That effectively took the heart out of the record company’s desire to promote the album, and that’s the truth. The marketing was a grave disappointment, and the album’s been out of print since 2006.

The way I really want to think about this record is as a testament to hope and the human spirit. In the vulnerability of that moment, there was something powerful and kinetic. How do you say ‘Thank you’ out of such heartbreak?