No matter how much New Orleans changes, some things remain constant: we always give good supergroup.

This disc is the brainchild of former Maria Muldaur and Juice Newton guitarist Danny Dugan, and along with vocalist Sean Carey, they’ve created an impressive rotation of friends to help keep their urban soul-blues funk vision alive, including David Torkanowsky, Papa John Gros, Doug Belote, and other local luminaries—you may have seen bassist Cornell Williams doing his thing on “Treme,” for example.

The urban blues they come up with is backed by a groove that’s decidedly more jam-band than street funk, and it’s got a stronger than usual R&B flavor thanks to Carey (son of John), the youngblood of the group and the real MVP of this session.

He’s a walking repository of old-school soul, mostly Stevie Wonder but with a little Otis here and some Bob Marley there (the band’s take on Steely Dan’s “Haitian Divorce” has definite traces of Sublime, perhaps for just that reason). His expert layered harmonies are the force that breathes life into Danny’s originals while also holding them all together.

Even their ass-man anthem (“Baby Fat”) and travelogue (“Sweet New Orleans Nights”) sound heartfelt, and the obligatory post-K political song—“Skin of the City,” about the Mother’s Day shootings—feels as organic as the beat. And the local pros are all right there with him, right up to the main man himself—you could swear that Dugan drops the turnaround from Hendrix’ “The Wind Cries Mary” right into that Dan cover, if for no other reason than that he can.

And that, kids, is what they used to call jamming.