The holiday season is all about traditions—feasting on Thanksgiving, lighting candles for Hannukah, decorating a conifer for Christmas, and so on. For Dragon Smoke, that tradition is an annual trip from New Orleans to Los Angeles, to play an intimate show for jazz-funk fanatics at the Mint.

This year marked the eighth time Ivan Neville, Eric Lindell, Robert Mercurio, and Stanton Moore reconvened in Little Ethiopia. And, as has become ritual, they didn’t disappoint.

Lindell lit up the joint with his ripping guitar licks and gritty vocals. Neville channeled his famous father and uncles (The Neville Brothers) while singing his heart out and banging away on his quartet of keyboards. Moore and Mercurio did more than keep a steady beat, between the former’s drums and the latter’s bass.

Together, they whipped through two blistering sets of Crescent City-style tunes. They sprinkled in Zigaboo Modeliste’s “Welcome to New Orleans” and Dyke and the Blazers’ “Let a Woman Be a Woman,” Sly and the Family Stone’s “I Am Everyday People” and Bobby Womack’s “Nobody Wants You When You’re Down and Out.”

All the while, Dragon Smoke came together as well as they have since they first formed as a Tuesday night superjam between weekends at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Neville, in particular, looked right at home—and not just because of his octopine ability to seamlessly slide between keyboards. As it happens, he was once a regular at The Mint, closing out weekends with sets at “Big Beat Sunday.”

Nowadays, Neville spends far more time by the bayou than he does in Southern California, and not always with Dragon Smoke. You’ll often find him on the road with Dumpstaphunk, another band that came together on a whim at Jazz Fest.

But if you need another whiff of that Dragon Smoke, you can follow the group on its usual route through the Western U.S. You can also head out to New Orleans, where the band will be back to jamming at Tipitina’s in December and at the Dragon’s Den during Jazz Fest.

Or, if you’re an LA local and not keen to travel, you can keep an eye on the calendar at The Mint, where, like clockwork, the sounds of the Big Easy are bound to roll in next fall.