"Americana! Nostalgiana!"

The title is the chorus from a song that my neighbor's band plays.

My neighbor is a fifty-something-year-old man who may or may not be retired. If he isn't retired, he will be soon.

I am sitting in my living room on my sea foam green sofa, and my neighbor's band is rocking out the neighborhood on his back porch. His band is some sort of wedding reception Mardi Gras rhythm and blues outfit. They play New Orleans music with basslines that bounce all over and piano that's smokey and jumps and hollers like a black cat in a bathtub.

They sound all right, they're together and all, but their's is a different kind of feel. I feel like fixing myself a glass of punch and calling up one of my cousins to talk about what we think we'll get for Christmas this year.

My personal favorite is their warbly rendition of "Are You Sleeping, Brother John?" They sound like the band that your strange uncle is in, or your high school math teacher.