An interview with Tripping Daisy

Frontman Tim DeLaughter talks about the Dallas band's unlikely return, his complex relationship with “i Got a Girl,” getting mocked by Beavis & Butt-head, and chillin' with the legend Chris Blackwell.

Tripping Daisy were never supposed to be here, touring across North America, 26 years after calling it a day. As far as frontman Tim DeLaughter was concerned that band was done and dusted. He had The Polyphonic Spree, the substantially-membered (currently 26 of them!), choral-psych-pop collective he formed out of the ashes of Tripping Daisy in 2000. Still going strong after 25 years, the group have often been mistaken for a cult due to their heavy, spiritual vibes and penchant for wearing robes. But the Spree have done well in their time, appearing in films and TV shows, playing to far bigger rooms, and even touring arenas with the late David Bowie.

As it turns out, business for Tripping Daisy was unfinished. Not convinced at first, DeLaughter took up an offer to perform as Tripping Daisy again, along with former members that had graduated to the Spree with him - Mark Pirro, Nick Earl, Dylan Silvers and Bryan Wakeland - and Philip Karnats of Preteen Zenith, one of DeLaughter’s side-projects. A couple of triumphant one-off shows in their hometown of Dallas, Texas took place over the past few years, leading Tripping Daisy to realize that hey, people still love the zany alt-rock they were cranking out in the ‘90s.

Formed in 1990 by DeLaughter, Pirro, Jeff Bouck and Wes Berggren, Tripping Daisy built a loyal following in Dallas, leading them to sign a major label deal with Island (with the approval of industry legend Chris Blackwell!) following some buzz they built with their debut album, Bill. Island re-released the album, which produced minor alt-rock radio hits in “Blown Away” and “My Umbrella.” While Bill didn’t change the world, it established the band enough to build some anticipation for the next album, 1995’s i am an ELASTIC FIRECRACKER.

Featuring a now iconic album cover with Italian artist Guglielmo Achille Cavellini (the guy covered in red paint) on it, FIRECRACKER quickly found an audience with its first single, “i Got a Girl.” That tune flirted with the mainstream and became one of alt-rock’s biggest hits, thanks to its unhinged music video that found regular airplay on MTV and MuchMusic. While the album sold well (platinum in Canada!!), follow-up singles “PirANhA” and "Trip Along" stalled and Tripping Daisy were relegated to alt-one-hit wonders in the eyes of the masses.

Which is a damn shame, because the band’s next album, 1998’s Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb was an ambitious and sonically awesome bit of psychedelic Americana that should sit alongside modern classics such as Mercury Rev’s Deserters Songs, Grandaddy’s Sophtware Slump and The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin. But as soon as they released the album, which saw them add Karnats and drummer Ben Curtis (Secret Machines), Tripping Daisy were dropped by Island. In typical major label fashion, Island underwent personnel changes following Blackwell’s sale of the label to the Seagram Company of all things. The band kept touring the album, but in October 1999, co-founder/guitarist Berggren died unexpectedly of an overdose. Devastated by the loss, Tripping Daisy ended abruptly, there and then. A fourth, self-titled album would see a posthumous release in 2000, but the band chose not to promote it.

But now here we are. Last month, Tripping Daisy embarked on their first tour in 27 years, playing i am an ELASTIC FIRECRACKER in its entirety, along with a second set of fan favourites across North America. Vinyl reissues for FIRECRACKER and Atom Bomb will soon follow, thanks to the hard work of their late manager Chris Penn, who suddenly died last April.

During their stop in Toronto to play Lee’s Palace (you can watch some of that here), I sat down with Tim DeLaughter to reminisce about the good old days, find out what led to the reunion, and ask what is next (spoiler: a new album!).

There has been some band activity over the years, so why did it take 26 years to bring Tripping Daisy back?

Tim DeLaughter: Honestly, I had no intentions of going back to Tripping Daisy, and it wasn't till a couple of years ago. I mean, I would do these little one-offs in Texas to please fans and the guys in the band, but my heart just wasn't in it. At the time we were busy full-on with Spree, and then we played a show at the Kessler in Oak Cliff in Dallas for my friend Chris [Penn]. It was an Alice Cooper tribute because he was deep into Alice Cooper, so we covered a song for Alice Cooper. And since we were in Texas, we decided to do a surprise show the following night at the club. Well, we played that show and I don't know, call it the spirit or whatever, but it got into us and we kind of went off on a little tangent and did some improvising like we used to do back in the day. 

That's what I really loved about Tripping Daisy. And we had never done that before prior to that night. So we did it, and God, I had the biggest blast. Like, this is what I loved about Tripping Daisy - being put on the spot and writing these songs. That was an element I really missed that I don't get to do with the Spree. My roots are in rock’n’roll, and it just all came together at that particular show. I told Chris, I said, “Man, I've got a newfound energy for this band that I haven't had or felt since the time I was in it back in the '90s.” And I go, “I want to tour this thing!” And that's where it came from, that one show. And it just kind of happened like that. So the wheels started to go in motion, we talked to an agent and said, "Hey, do you think we could try to find a tour for Tripping Daisy?” And here we are. 

So the timing is perfect because it’s the 30th anniversary of i am an ELASTIC FIRECRACKER. Did that cross your mind when you were putting the tour together? 

I had no idea that FIRECRACKER was turning 30 at that point. This took two years to get into motion. And it was just coincidentally that it fell on the FIRECRACKER anniversary, so it kind of worked out. So yeah, this was never in the cards. 

But the timing of it has worked out well because you're also pressing the record again for the album’s 30th anniversary. Everything has lined up nicely. 

We saw where we were at and we saw where the anniversary was lying. It was like, “Wow, we might as well just make hay when we're making hay.” So we're repressing FIRECRACKER and putting it out on Good Records (the label and store DeLaughter co-founded with Penn) for the first time. Previously I was selling [vinyl] copies of FIRECRACKER from my own personal vault. At one point I had like a thousand copies of FIRECRACKER on vinyl. When we got dropped from Island, they gave me all the inventory. And so I kept everything from the '90s in my storage. So I've got a lot of that stuff, a lot of merch from '93 to '98 for sale. It's all vintage, original Tripping Daisy stuff.

I've seen videos on Instagram of the bundles you’ve been assembling. Are you a big nostalgia guy? 

You know what? I used to be. I had a huge massive toy collection. I used to be a collector of things, and I had a big storage debacle where someone, this particular storage unit, had our life in there because we were moving, and they sold our storage unit for $250. It had literally, my whole life, my kids’ life, all of my collectables, musical instruments, recordings - everything that you'd hate to lose was in there. And from that point on I was just done with it. So I’m no longer nostalgic about things. That kind of ruined a lot of stuff that I enjoyed about my life. 

But then this started happening, and goddang, I started reconnecting with people that I haven't seen in 30 years, you know, that were diehard fans and had such spirit at the time. To reconnect with them 30 years later and look into the eyes of people that I connected with when we were in our 20s, it's just kind of a trip. You can't help but get nostalgic about it. 

How different is it touring this album in your late 50s compared to your late 20s?

So, the spirit's still there for me. And physically, you know, thank God I'm in a position where I can do it. My voice is good and I can still belt it. I don't quite have that tenacious, unstoppable energy I had in my 20s, but I can still kind of hang in there. At least in my head, I feel like I'm in the moment, which to me, it feels the same. I'm older, but in my mind, I feel like I’m having a blast. And then when I see people out there smiling and singing the songs, geez, it’s like, no time went by. 

How does it feel looking back at these songs that you wrote like 30 years ago? Have your opinions or feelings changed about them? 

Not at all. I found that when I'm singing certain lyrics, they’re as relevant today as they were back then. My overall arc of songwriting is usually kind of optimistic and looking forward and trying to get past these things. Even in the Spree, it developed the same way. So at the core I've kind of always believed the glass is half full. I'm like, “Wow, this works for right now, and this is relevant.” It's kind of timeless. 

The band originally wanted to release “ROCketPop” as the first single but the label put out “i Got a Girl” instead. Looking back on the success that song had, do you think that was the right call?

Yeah, and they just went hog wild on that song, which was great. The song was a hit. It did really well, great here in Canada. But who knows? Back then, I was pissed because I really knew what that song was. It was a novelty song, and we knew that they were going to gravitate to it because they kept talking about it before it was even finished. So we saw where they were wanting to go with it. They had already said, “This is the one!” and all their radio people had decided on it. We wanted “ROCketPop” and knew that we would get to “i Got a Girl,” but there's also "PirANhA" and “Trip Along” and "RAINdrOP." There are so many songs on that record that we thought would work. But they came out and said that it was “i Got a Girl” and it pretty much stayed “i Got a Girl” for the longest time. We really didn't get to visit any other single. 

What's your relationship with, “i Got a Girl” these days? 

Well, she's my wife, and we're hanging on by a thread. We've been together since high school and we’ve got four beautiful kids and one of them's out here selling merch. I brought my oldest son Oscar along. 

But what about the song itself? I don't know if you had resentment for it back then, but do any of those feelings kind of come back to you now? 

I mean, yeah. Except she blames that on her period; she's getting menopause now that she no longer has a period. 

Very true! Is there a way to rework that lyric? 

I guess I could but I'd probably piss off a lot of people. 

Or more people could relate to it now because a lot of your original fans are going through menopause too. How did you feel back in the day when Beavis and Butt-head “critiqued” that song? 

Oh, shit, it was funny as hell. It was awesome. I remember one of them said, “Zip it up!” when they were about to unzip the bag. It was funny just to be recognized by that show, which was part of pop culture at the time. 

It's always better to be mentioned on the show and trashed than not to be on that show at all. 

Yeah, totally.

What do you remember of touring with Def Leppard? I always found it strange that Tripping Daisy was an opening act for that band.

That was a blur because we were already completely spent by that time. We had toured nonstop as a young band. And we were crashing and burning and ready to be done for at least a couple weeks. We needed to take two weeks, maybe a month off, and head back out for three to four months, and at that point, we were completely done. And then we got the request to do Def Leppard and we're like, “Oh, God.” I didn't know if we could make it. We barely made out alive, but we got some good friends out of it. I'm still friends with the guys in Def Leppard this day. 

Were you a fan? 

Oh, yeah, I love Def Leppard. I covered “Wasted” off On Through the Night in my high school band. So, yeah, I loved early Def Leppard. 

Did they treat you well? 

They were great, man. Like I said, we're still friends. Joe was always so welcoming, always helpful. We hung out. It was great. A great tour. We were really tired, really burnt out, but we made it through it. And I still go see those guys every time I get a chance. 

I heard around that same time Tripping Daisy played a really awkward show with Tesla in Sacramento, which seemed like a very ‘90s thing to happen. Does that ring any bells? 

I remember we played that show in Sacramento, which I call the butthole of California, even though it's up high. They fucking hated us. I went out there and they started calling us “fags.” And so I just kind of played into it and even more. I was dressed up like a woman on this one song called “Creature” and they just weren't having it. They started throwing bottles of piss, trying to hurt us, and it got kind of scary because I kept riling them up and taunting them. But yeah, it was just kind of a rough time. 

The last time Tripping Daisy played Toronto was on September 21, 1998. I heard that was also the day you were dropped by Island. I read a quote from Island’s chairman Davitt Sigerson at the time raving about Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb, saying it was “more epic and more emotionally connecting… better than what has come before." What do you remember about getting dropped by Island? Were you surprised?

Well, he flat out told me to my face that he wasn't gonna drop us but that there were gonna be some changes. And two weeks later, literally, I get a phone call saying they're dropping us. He was a piece of shit. Chris Blackwell signed us with James Dowdall and Rose Noone, and Chris took care of us. But he called me during the making of Atom Bomb and said, “Tim, I just got off the phone with Bono. I’ve decided to sell the label. But you're going to be okay. I've told them about you and you're going to be okay.” I think he had sold it to Polygram who then sold it to Seagram, the alcohol bran. And I was gutted because the whole reason I went to that label was because of Chris Blackwell. But he sold it for like $350 million, which was incredible. He built that company from the trunk of his car and turned it into a major label that was still an independent. Goddamn, what a pioneer. I love that guy. 

Anyway, so Seagram bought it and didn't know what the hell they were doing. They sold it back to Polygram, and then that's when it happened. But unbeknownst to me, all this was going on at the time with Sigerson. He blatantly told me. I mean, we had released "Waited a Lightyear” as the first single, which was… well, I had creative control when I chose that and it turned out to be a horrible idea. But I was like, “I'm tired of these people telling us what to do. Why not have a six-minute-long single? Why does it have to be these two-minute songs? Why can't it be something adventurous like this? Look at Queen and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’! Why can't we get back to that again?” And so that was a kiss of death, because obviously it didn't go anywhere. We had songs like “Sonic Bloom,” “Mechanical Breakdown,” these songs that were just screaming to be singles that would work. 

So we released the album and two weeks later we were dropped. I was pissed. But, you know, at the same time, it was like we were out from under all of that, and it was done. We could feel a new way of life, a kind of beginning as far as labels and an independent side that was kind of happening, which was cool. And we were so burnt out at the time. It just ended in a bad way because Atomic Bomb is such a great record that never got its shot. At the same time, I think for us spiritually, we were ready for a new path. 

I was going to ask you about Chris Blackwell. How much time did you get to spend with him? 

Quite a bit. James and Rose are the ones who found us, and then they made Chris come down and hang with us in Dallas. He came down and approved of us. He was a very gracious man. We recorded FIRECRACKER in his studio and mixed it in South Beach. So we lived there for two months. And then, we went and mixed Atom Bomb in the Bahamas at his place. So we lived there for three months in the Bahamas. We signed our contract at his place in Ochos Rios, Jamaica. I spent a month there in Jamaica too. And then I'd run into him in various places in different parts of the country and we'd always have dinner and hang out. He was a very cool guy, and very down to earth. 

You never got to tour the self-titled album but you’ve been playing some of those songs on this tour. Was there ever any talk of trying to do a proper tour playing that album?

Yeah. We’re eventually going to do that. We never talked about it then though because when Wes died and when the band ended, I never looked back. I thought that was just a chapter in my life. I was done. I couldn't go back to it. So I never even thought about playing records or doing anything. For those little one-offs we did we just played bits from each record and I wasn't really into it. This is the first time we've ever played the whole record. We never played any of our entire records, even back in the day. So the next record we'll do is Atom Bomb. And we'll play it in its entirety. And then we'll do the self-titled one, then probably Bill. 

So what can you tell me about this new album you’re working on? 

There are little things happening. You're gonna see a band tonight that's totally connected and creatively we're there. Nick and Mark play with me in The Polyphonic Spree. Brian does shows every now in the Spree too. So there is that connection there. Phil was in Tripping Daisy for Jesus Hits and self-titled, but Phil and I also have a side-project, Preteen Zenith. So this band we have right now is great, we're really connected and it's got history and depth and creatively, we are firing on all eight cylinders. And yeah, there's definitely gonna be a new record. We're writing songs right now. Okay. 

Can Tripping Daisy and the Polyphonic Spree co-exist in a world where you record and tour with both bands?

When I get back from this tour I'm playing a Spree show where we’re gonna play Together We're Heavy, the whole album. And there has been talk of trying to do a tour with both Tripping Daisy and The Polyphonic Spree at the same time, which would be extremely demanding on myself, obviously. I don't know if I can do that. I think it's a bit overzealous to think I could, but yeah, I'm in a position right now where my kids are grown and I've got the energy for it. I've been doing music my whole life. It's all I really do. So I'd like to think I could keep my foot on both pedals, you know. 

Any chance you’ll be reissuing those early Polyphonic Spree records? 

Yeah. We're doing a re-release with a record label out of Brighton, UK run by Tom Friend, who was my A&R guy at Warner Brothers and 679, when we released The Beginning Stages of... over there. And so we connected and he wants to right the path of what went down. So right now he's repressing that record and Together We're Heavy. It's going to be pretty cool.