Mathilda, I'm leaving it up to you to listen to the Revolution 21 podcast. Sweet dreams.

Ever spend most of the summer in South Louisiana, at a camp between the river and the swamp?

Just down the road from an honest-to-god honky tonk?

I have.

I'M NOT SURE what's more memorable, the reeeeeeeeeoww reeeeeeeeeoww reeeeeeeeeoww all-night song of the tree frogs. The droning of the locusts and chirping of the crickets. Perhaps the haunting hooooooooooooooOW of an owl, up in the gum tree by the porch.

Maybe it's the sticky-hot night air of the Louisiana summer, made up of something like one-fifth oxygen and four-fifths water vapor -- an atmosphere more suited to drinking than breathing. Certainly not suited to sleeping, because it's half-past midnight, you're still awake, you're stripped down to your Fruit of the Looms, and you're still sweating.

Sleep being futile for your adolescent self, you kneel in the bed and gaze out the window toward the bright lights of The Barn, the juke joint on the river and down the gravel road. There's an old man, full of whiskey, puking into the weed patch behind the club.

And there's the doom BOO doo doot DOOM, BOO doo doot DOOM coming fron the smoke-filled, beer-soaked interior of Juke Joint Central, penetrating the walls that hide its middle-of-the-night mysteries from teen-aged eyes, peering from down the road. That wonderful swamp-pop bass line surfing the sultry waves of the South Louisiana air to my bedroom window, out by the Petite Amite River in a place called Head of Island.

The Big Show tonight ain't The Barn, and I hope no one's "spellin' Noo Yawk" out by the weed patch, but the music's fine, and I hope you enjoy it.

It's the Revolution 21 podcast, and it's on the player at the top of this page. And it's here, too.

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OH, ALMOST FORGOT about the mystery band we're featuring on Revolution 21 this week. It's Cookie & the Cupcakes, who gave us "the swamp-pop national anthem," "Mathilda." That's them in the picture atop this post.