When we heard live music during the first season of HBO’s Treme, we heard the same thing the cast and crew heard when they shot the scene—a live performance. The numbers weren’t cut in the studio then lip synched for the camera, and those performances dominate the Treme soundtrack. The versions represent the artists as you’d find them on any given night; it’s the version of “Feel Like Funkin’ it Up” you’d hear the Rebirth Brass Band play at a second line or “I Hope You’re Coming Back to New Orleans” that the New Orleans Jazz Vipers would have played nightly at the Spotted Cat.

That doesn’t mean the music of the show is strictly true to life. There are moments that never happened such as Davis McAlary/Steve Zahn’s irreverent rewrite of Smiley Lewis’ “Shame Shame Shame” (including additional verses too pointed for television) and the exciting version of “Drinka Little Poison (4 U Die).” It’s the product of a collaboration that had never happened between John Mooney and the Soul Rebels, a moment of creative license that produced a great track and is true in the big picture if not the details.

In that way, the album mirrors the show, presenting the true- to-life and the broadly true. It reflects Treme’s larger concern with reinvention, presenting three versions of “Indian Red.” The Treme soundtrack doesn’t try to be the definitive argument for New Orleans music; it simply suggests how good it can be on any given night.