The strength and weakness of Louisiana Time is that it’s really folk music. In the simplest sense, its instrumentation—acoustic guitar, harmonica, light drums and an emphasis on voices—marks it as folk, but so does the music’s construction. It’s the sound of common people singing about our world, framing those ideas in music anyone can play. Over standard blues changes, Slewfoot rasps, “This ain’t no rap music / This ain’t no rock ’n’ roll. / This is just old school. / It’s easy to do. / The way you get through it is to feel it from the heart” in “Steerwagon Blues/MTR.”

But that prescription—don’t think, feel—explains why a lot of us have something to say about New Orleans and the rebuilding efforts, but no one is paying us to write them. In the barroom as part of an evening, “Carpetbaggin’” agreeably reflects a shared hostility toward those who are coming to town looking to profit from the devastation. On record, the faux hip-hop opening is stiff and unconvincing, and declaring the city “Corporationland” is awkward, easy, and not quite true. On a night out with friends and with beers, stuff like that flies; but its commonplace stuff—conventional thoughts expressing real frustration, but not in a way that can stand up to much scrutiny.

Then again, little about Louisiana Time suggests the music was ever supposed to. The songs are played at the lengths they’re played in the bar when the feeling’s good, frequently drifting over five minutes with no appreciable instrumental breaks. In that way, the album is more of a document than an artistic statement, and in that, it documents a type of band that exists in every city, and the sort of band every city should have. The band playing the blues of the people is a valuable thing. The question is how such bands are best appreciated.