We met PJ Morton backstage at a Maroon 5 show in Nashville. He was still in his stage clothes but ready to talk.

New Orleans Is Forever feels like your most personal album. Where did it come from?

I was home for Mardi Gras last year and I was walking down Frenchmen Street and I heard three different bands playing three different kinds of music simultaneously, and it hit me: this city is a miracle. There is nowhere else on earth like it. And it is in danger. The sea level is rising. The land is sinking. We could lose this in a generation. I had to make a record about it.

You have lived between New Orleans and Los Angeles for years. How does New Orleans still feel like home?

Because it is in my body. The rhythms are in my body. When I hear a second-line beat I respond physically before I respond mentally. That is what it means to be from somewhere.

What do you want the album to say about New Orleans to people who have never been?

That it is a city that invented joy. That the second-line tradition — this idea that you transform grief into celebration, that you dance at funerals — is one of the most profound things human beings have ever created. And that it is worth fighting for.