Tripping Daisy’s Tim DeLaughter reflects on 30 years of I Am An Elastic Firecracker ahead of Monday’s Warehouse on Broadway show
Tripping Daisy. // image courtesy the artist
On June 20, 1995, weird Texas rockers Tripping Daisy released I Am an Elastic Firecracker, spawning the alt-rock radio hit, “I Got A Girl,” which was seemingly inescapable for those around here listening to Lawrence’s 105.9 The Lazer. The group was a regular presence in the area before and after, all the way through tours for the follow-up, Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, until the band broke up in 1999 following the death of guitarist Wes Berggren.
Frontman Tim DeLaughter would get even weirder with his next musical project, the sprawling pop choir which was the Polyphonic Spree. He’s been making music pretty much nonstop since and in 2024, reformed Tripping Daisy. They’re currently on tour playing I Am an Elastic Firecracker top-to-bottom in celebration of its 30th anniversary, so we hopped on the phone with Tim DeLaughter to talk all things reunion.
The Pitch: What’s it like taking the band back out on the road after 25 years?
Tim DeLaughter: Well, luckily I’ve had some experience and we’re still kind of limber with the Polyphonic Spree, ’cause we toured that last year, right before fall, so I’m acclimated there, but as far as Tripping Daisy, yeah, it’s been a while. I’m looking forward to it. It’s exciting, but it’s also like, I don’t know what I’m in for.
What is it like making that creative switch from this massive choir of a band to your basic four or five piece?
I’ve got a couple of the core members from the Spree that are also in Tripping Daisy, who are playing with Tripping Daisy, a few of them. So there’s Nick Earl, and Mark [Pirro], and Dylan [Silvers] and Brian [Wakeland] plays occasionally with the Spree when Jason [Garner] can’t do it. So it’s kinda like we’ve been jamming together for years and sometimes we’ll go off in directions that aren’t the Spree, so it’s still there.
I like to rock still and get to kinda get my ya-ya’s out with Tripping Daisy, and I like those songs a lot. There’s some that I have very fond memories of Tripping Daisy but there’s elements about that that I’m ready to dive back into and explore ’cause it’s very much a part of who I am and so I’m looking forward to doing that out on the road.
I’ve talked to a few other musicians who’ve done the full album top-to-bottom thing and they’re just like, “We literally haven’t played these songs since the record came out. We had to go back and find bootleg live videos on YouTube to figure out how we did this live.”
Luckily, last year we played it for the first time in Dallas and so we got it all figured out then, and Tripping Daisy’s done some one-offs through the years, doing some reunion shows here and there, so we’ve dusted the songs off, so to speak, and we’ve got ’em down. Now, as far as playing that record on a nightly basis, it’s going to get tighter and then we’re also going to bring in some other songs from all the other records, but it hasn’t been that difficult and surprisingly, my voice, ironically, is probably the best it’s ever been, which is incredible considering my age, but it really is.
I’m hitting things that I wasn’t able to hit back then and I know that we’re gonna sound way better today than we did back when we were kind of all over the place and fun in all sorts of directions. But the record sounds great. It’s a good record and songs sound great, but then we’ve also sprinkled in some new stuff as well.
What makes this sort of thing fun is that you get the old and the new, as opposed to just being a complete nostalgia trip.
Yeah, I mean, we’re gonna be playing some songs that no one’s ever heard live before that were Tripping Daisy songs back then that we just never released. We’re actually gonna be writing on the road like Tripping Daisy used to do back then. That’s an element of this band that I always missed that I’m not able to really do with the Spree–that element of improvising that Tripping Daisy used to do on nightly basis.
It was kind of outta necessity when we first began. The band took off when we only had about eight or nine songs, so we were getting these high-profile shows Friday and Saturday night in the biggest clubs in Dallas, and we had to have more material. We basically got to a point where we were just jamming to try to extend our time and ultimately started writing songs in front of folks and that pretty much became a norm for us.
We wrote a lot of our songs that are on these records literally in front of people, and that’s an element that I always loved about Tripping Daisy, that I’m looking forward to getting back to so people experience that, as well.
Kansas City and Lawrence really got behind this album when it came out.
Yeah, they did. Back then, we toured nonstop. Tripping Daisy was just known for just hammering the road and we always hit Kansas City, Lawrence–we played there a lot and so they got accustomed to seeing us. A lot of things that happened off that record happened in Lawrence, so when Firecracker came out, people had some ownership in it.
We’re playing some markets we’ve never played before, but that’s one that I’m looking forward to because we did play there quite a bit, but that was years and years ago. But still, if there’s anybody still around from back then in that area it’ll be fun to revisit those songs again.
This album celebrates 30 years about a week and a half from when we’re talking, and then later this year, you have your 60th birthday. 2025 is a big year for you.
Yeah, it, it’s already been a big year for me and it’s a trip. Of course, I’ve been doing Polyphonic Spree for 25 years and Polyphonic Spree was something that I always envisioned myself doing when I was at this age. I thought Tripping Daisy was my band that I was gonna be going through life with. Polyphonic Spree was something I always thought about in Tripping Daisy, and I thought that’s what I’m gonna do when I’m older. When I think about the Spree, it was like when I was thinking to myself at this age.
I just always thought Tripping Daisy was forever and it didn’t work out that way, so it’s bittersweet at the same time, but it’s here and I’ve got some enthusiasm for it, and I’m happy about it and I like being in this space at this age. It’s gonna be interesting to see what the songwriting becomes after being in the world of Spree for so long, but Tripping Daisy is the essence of my playing.
All my songwriting began in Tripping Daisy. The music I’ve listened to up until Tripping Daisy was all geared into that world. I’m a rock kid growing up, and it’s who I am at the essence of me, so it’s kind of cool that I am being able to visit this and get an opportunity to exercise that option that I’ve got, and I’m grateful that it’s there.
Tripping Daisy plays I Am An Elastic Firecracker in its entirety at the Warehouse on Broadway on Monday, June 23, with support from Jumprope. Details on that show here.
