Mama Zu Releases New 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 releases Quilt Floor (Thirty Tigers) - 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.” The end result, today's Quilt Floor, is a reminder that we lost a powerful voice way too soon. Though it was written mostly while Jessi was sick, the songs are full of life - and in true Jessie style, ferocious and fierce. She was looking outward and they are colored by the aftermath of a new era in America, a period in which many were both grieving and galvanized. 

Leading to the release Regensburg teased the album with "Lip,” "Safe Place To Stay," and “Make A Joke.” The single saw support from NPR, Consequence, and Flood, among others and Stereogum listed Quilt Floor as one of their “most anticipated albums of 2024.” This week NPR listed the album as a "Notable Release" for the week.  The Nashville Scene ran a cover story on the album – read that here and Talkhouse published an essay by Linwood entitled “On The Absurdity Of Navigating A Posthumous Record Release” - read that here.