JERSEY CITY

THE last thing he remembers is this: it was a hot day, and he was in a Hoboken nightclub hanging fliers to promote a gig by his band Amandla. He looked out a window and saw a parking-meter reader heading for his car. To avoid a ticket, he scrambled out the door, ready to call it a day. The next morning he would be heading out on a cross-country tour with his other, better-known band, Ween.

When Claude Coleman Jr. woke up four days later, he was in a Newark hospital’s critical-care unit with partial paralysis, a pelvis fractured in six places and brain damage. A truck had struck his car on I-78 West, sending it careening across the median and through several lanes of traffic; his wife and parents were unable to locate him for two days.

That was in 2002, and Mr. Coleman, 37, still feels a tingling numbness through his left side, he said recently at a cafe near his home in Jersey City. The truck driver who struck his car four years ago, Dimitrios S. Tseperkas, was involved last month in an accident on the New Jersey Turnpike that killed four people and injured four others. He was charged with careless driving and equipment violations.

Mr. Coleman received a settlement of $850,000 in a civil suit after his accident. Even after years of rehabilitation, he said, “my balance is affected, so when I’m walking I still have to focus on every step.”

Still, he was out of commission as a musician for only six months. “After what I went through, the music has greater importance to me,” he said. “I know I have to push it, to follow through, to play it and get it out there.”

While he continues to drum for Ween (and was touring with them earlier this month), Amandla, which was formed in 1999, is his vehicle of choice, the four-piece band he leads as singer-guitarist with Dan Green on bass, Peter Kaufman on drums and Francis Pisani on guitar; all are from Jersey City. This month, he is releasing “The Full Catastrophe,” its second record and the first since Mr. Coleman’s accident.

“I’m all over the map,” said Mr. Coleman, tall and athletic looking. “There’s some Curtis Mayfield-type stuff in there, some Sabbath-y stuff, some folky-dirty Fleetwood Mac,” he said. “I call it soul-folky-rock-psychedelia. The way I approach making music, everything gets regurgitated.”

It is a concept not unfamiliar to Ween fans. In its 22-year history, the experimental act has consistently offended purists and tested the faithful with its leaps from pop to classic rock to glam to R & B and hard core. But Ween’s deliberately snarky side does not translate to Amandla, a name Mr. Coleman chose, he said, because it means power in Zulu.

After 12 years of drumming, “Ween is my job, what pays the bills, even though those guys are like family and I love playing the music,” he said. With Amandla, which will be touring later this fall, “I get to be a charmer — I’m good with people, I’m a social animal, and I like that part of it.”

The playing, he admitted, doesn’t come as easily, especially since the accident. “With the guitar, there’s a fine dexterity required between your fingers and your wrists,” he said. “The individual finger stuff has been the most difficult for me.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Coleman considers himself “a really strong rhythm guitarist, if I don’t say so myself.”

But having had his outlook permanently rewired, he harbors no illusions.

“Everybody thinks I’m a rock star and that people are going to show up by the masses when I play, like I’m Prince or something,” he said reflectively. “Much to the chagrin of promoters, that doesn’t happen. We’ve had some supersleeper shows. But building myself up is what it’s all about.”