Mama Zu Release Album 'Quilt Floor'

It has been six years since the untimely death from cancer of Those Darlins' frontwoman Jessi Zazu. 

Today the band's drummer Linwood Regensburg announces the February 23 release of Quilt Floor - the project he and Zazu were working on in 2017 while she was sick, under the name Mama Zu. 

Work on the album started in early 2017 and was done in fits and spurts. By late summer, the pair had recorded and mixed an album to near-completion. Tragically, though, final work on the album was halted when Zazu passed away that September at the age of 28. The unfinished album was put back on the shelf.

“After she died, I didn't want to touch it,” Regensburg says. “I didn't want to play the songs or listen to the songs, let alone finish them. It just seemed like such a daunting task with a lot of layers—there was a lot of work left to do, but then there was also this exhausting underlying emotional component that pops in and hangs around the moment I'd open a session.”

Years passed. Distance grew. Healing began. By 2020, Regensburg felt ready to finish what they had started,  he says, “both for her sake and for my own sanity level. I was the only person left with this project.”

Working on their songs again was therapeutic, even if doing so brought on a new set of challenges as he both polished nearly-finished tracks and rebuilt songs out of disparate parts, from the drum track on an older, alternate recording to a simple phone demo. “It was a way of spending time with her, and kind of the only capacity in which I could,” he said.

“But then, I was also left with a lot of creative choices without her. Even though I had played most of the instruments, it had still been a totally collaborative thing; if there was a part I played that she didn't like, she was clear about that. If someone's gone, you can still talk to them, but you can only assume what their feedback might be. So I was stuck with a lot of musical choices that I'd be working under the context of, I hope you like what I did here.” 

Today Regensburg reveals the first glimpse of Quilt Floor by way of the first single, “Lip.”  Searing, fuzzed out guitars and a relentless, propulsive drum beat push the song, a kiss off track with a grin.

“You didn't disappoint me, you didn't even try,” Zazu sings with a sneer; her subject is more to be pitied than scorned. Linwood notes,  "The beauty of a 'f you' song (of which there might happen to be several on this album) is that you could simultaneously find yourself singing along while also being the oblivious target. Granted I never asked Jessi what this song was actually about and it's also quite possible I might be an unreliable narrator here. Nevertheless, in the meantime, whether you're in the mood to raise a middle finger or perhaps deserved of one, this song's for you."  

A portion of the proceeds will benefit Jessi Zazu, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to continuing Jessi's work in the arts & humanities, social justice, and women's health.  Pre-order Quilt Floor here.

Photo courtesy of Mama Zu

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