Jellyback

On Grief, Gigs, and the Ghosts I Drive With

I just got back from New York. It was a memorial—a celebration—for my friend Drew Zingg. Alot of you knew him and are still sorting through the emotional freight of that trip. Drew is gone. Jeff Young, too. Two friends I loved, played with, sweated with, lived entire music lifetimes with. Now, they’re both stories, and I guess this is one of them.

Its hazy how we met, and he’s not here to remind me. Gah… I think the first time I heard Drew play was somewhere deep in the boroughs—Queens or Brooklyn, some club with a name tied to railroads. I wanna say the band was with Lincoln Schleiffer and Denny McDermott. I think Jeff was the one who dragged me out there, and like the rest of us, he knew right away: Drew wasn’t just good—he stuck out. Velcro good.

Then I started touring with Robben Ford and Drew was a big Robben fan so I would see him at the gigs.

Soon enough, Drew, Catherine Russell, and I were grinding through club dates for a guy named Peter Yellen, a.k.a. Mr. Love. He ran two bands. The Sons of Love, who were total cut-ups, and our outfit—the straight men. Over the years, we probably did a hundred gigs, but one sticks with me like melted gum on a sizzle cymbal.

Central Park Boathouse. One hundred degrees. I show up to unload my drums—no designated entrance, no mercy—and the only available parking is a handicap spot. I figure: three minutes. That’s all I need. I jump out, unload, jog back. Boom—ticket being written. I lose it. Complete meltdown. A full sweaty symphony of profanity, and just like that, I’m getting arrested.

Cue Drew. The human diffuser. Somehow, with his trademark deadpan calm, he talks the cop down and talks me down. Lets me go park my car. We set up and launch into the set.

A few tunes in, Drew nods toward one of the tables. I look once. Then again. Elvin Jones. Elvin fucking Jones—in all his Zen-lion glory, sitting politely with his wife Keiko. And I’m up there onstage playing “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” while they bring out the salads.

Now, anyone who knows anything about Elvin Jones knows what a tragicomic gulf that is—from “Impressions” with Coltrane in Stockholm to… me, boathouse salad music. But that’s New York. It makes you laugh while it crushes you.

We’d drive to all these gigs together. The car was the classroom. We’d play cassettes, swap obsessions. One of Drew’s was “Always Something There to Remind Me” by Dionne Warwick. He was fixated. Reverent.

And both of us were devout full-on Hendrix believers. We built a Hendrix trio with Leo Traversa on bass—Leo already widely known throughout the Brazillian music world, was family and another Jimi worshipper extremist. That turned into Jellyback.

“Jellyback” came from a deep cut improvised lyric of Jimi’s that Drew and I bonded over the ridiculousness of. Drew loved deep-cut laughably strange.

“Floatation is groovy

And a jellyfish will agree to that

Yeah, but that old jellyfish

Been floating around so long

Lord, he ain’t got a bone in his jelly back…”

It was our inside joke turned mission statement. The band was a celebration of elasticity—musically and spiritually.

Once, while playing “Power of Soul,” I took an improvised solo that just totally left the planet. Drew lost it. He thought this was hilarious. “Lord, he ain’t got a bone in his jelly back.” He quipped. That was us.

That band was on fire. There’s recordings of us (some with Jeff Young too I think) at Le Bar Bat—it’s floating around YouTube somewhere. I’ll find it. Share it.

And yeah, every Hendrix band has its own flavor of close but no cigar. But that’s never the point. We weren’t trying to replicate—it was more like showing up at the altar and lighting incense. A ritual, not a re-creation. It was what it was: big, loud and incredibly fun.

Bu playing Jimi tunes (maybe it’s just me) is like trying to recreate Marvin Gaye on What’s Going On. Gorgeous in theory. Doomed in execution. Anyway, we took our swing. Why not? I loved everything about Mitch Mitchell—his wild grace, his melodic chaos. I tried to evoke his feel, sure, but copy him? Never. You don’t Xerox a ghost.

One night, mid-gig, Noel Redding (one third of the Jimi Hendrix Experience) shows up. Later, John Paul Jones from Zeppelin. Full circle moments for me—I’d sat front row center at The Song Remains the Same at the Garden back in the ’70s. Now he’s watching us. Reality really does bend if you play long enough.

Drew always had complicated love stories—didn’t we all? Maybe we just had broken pickers. But eventually, somehow, each of us found our person. Or maybe, more truthfully, they found us—rescued us from ourselves, or at least tolerated the mess, and from that chaos came something quietly miraculous: beautiful families.

We bonded heavily in fatherhood.

I called Drew for the first Lone Star gig when the Steely Dan Redux was getting a head of steam on, because long before that, we were already playing Third World Man (Drew’s favorite Dan track) in other bands—and Drew was deep inside that tune. Imagine what it meant to him when we finally played it with Donald and Walter themselves.

We wrote. The first Drew time was at a little house I’d rented upstate. He insisted we call it “Drew is Stupid.” That was his humor—Letterman-esque, bone-dry, and just dumb enough to be genius.

At the Bitter End, the memorial was perfect. Joyous, even. Drew would’ve dug it. I saw so many people there, each carrying some sacred memory of him.

When in public, I carry mine quietly.

I remember the day he shaved his head. We were in Bonaire, diving between gigs. Drew had just gotten scuba certified, and that night, he walked into dinner freshly bald—radiant and weirdly confident. I don’t think he ever grew it back.

There’s a hundred more stories, maybe a thousand. I just don’t know where the story is. Maybe it’s this: grief is a private concert in a room full of people who loved the same headliner. But your seat, your song, your memories—those are yours alone. So you hang back, disappear a little, watch the slideshow play. Smile. Cry. Then hit the road, Jack.

And maybe, if you’re lucky, somebody floats by with no jelly bones in their jellyback and reminds you it’s okay and to just keep playing.

“Sing on brother. Play on drummer”

-Jimi Hendrix