The Transcendent Return of Tripping Daisy

Why You Can’t Miss the ‘Elastic Firecracker’ Tour

Moments before Tripping Daisy took the stage — Photo by Gina Henderson Rogers

On a Friday night in Ponte Vedra, Florida, I walked straight to the front of the stage at the music hall. There was no weaving through bodies, no throwing of elbows, and no claustrophobic sea of smartphones. Just open space. A few dozen of us were gathered near the barricade, drinks in hand, watching a phenomenal, fuzzy opening band called Jumprope tear through a set that deserved a crowd ten times the size.

I’d waited decades for this moment. It didn’t feel right.

Just a few miles away, 1,200 people had packed into a sold-out show to see Everclear. Jacksonville’s alt-rock crowd had made their choice for the evening, but as I stood there in the echoing hall, I knew one thing with absolute certainty: they had chosen the wrong show.

The crowd across town got a legacy act. I was about to get a resurrection.

When Tripping Daisy hit the stage for the first date of their Spring tour, the cavernous room was instantly electrified. The mostly middle-aged crowd were instantly snapped back to their youth, the air pumping with the raw voltage of an acid rave.

Even with a few first-show snafus — a delayed microphone cue that left frontman Tim DeLaughter singing silently into the void, earning the sound guy a highly amusing baleful glare — the performance landed instantly in my top ten concert experiences of all time. And I have attended hundreds.

The band takes a final bow — closing out a set that turned a quiet room into something electric. Photo by Gina Henderson Rogers

I was so blown away that three days later, I got in my car and drove to my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, just to see them do it again.

To understand the weight of this tour, you have to go back to June 20, 1995. That was the day something momentous was born into the grunge-heavy world of alternative rock: Tripping Daisy’s I Am an Elastic Firecracker. Propelled by the infectious, MTV-conquering first single “I Got a Girl,” the album was wholly unlike anything else on the airwaves.

The ’90s saw a resurgence of ’60s-style psychedelic music, but Tripping Daisy was always a truer psych band than their contemporaries. While The Flaming Lips leaned heavily into whimsical, confetti-cannon spectacle, and The Brian Jonestown Massacre often lost themselves in retro-purist pastiche and volatile antics, Tripping Daisy bridged the gap. They possessed a genuine lyrical mastery paired with an innovative, melodic sonic architecture that was entirely their own. Who else, after all, was writing a shimmering rock song from the perspective of a ghost, like they did on “Step Behind”?

Devastatingly, their ascent was derailed by unimaginable tragedy. In October 1999, during the recording of their fourth album, founding guitarist Wes Berggren passed away from a drug overdose. The band, understandably unable to bear the weight of continuing without him, dissolved two months later. Fans were left with a crushing sense of loss and three perfect albums — Bill (1992), I Am an Elastic Firecracker (1995), and Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb (1998) — plus the beautiful, posthumous self-titled album released in April of 2000.

In Birmingham, I handed my vinyl copy of that 2000 swan song to guitarist Philip Karnats to sign. He looked at the cover, his face softening with a complicated mix of nostalgia and sorrow. “The day we took these photos was horrible,” he told me quietly. “We got kicked out of a hotel the night before, and Wes was in a really bad place.”

Signed vinyl and setlist from the Birmingham show — proof of a night that felt anything but ordinary. Photo by Gina Henderson Rogers

Out of his grief over the loss of his dear friend, DeLaughter famously built The Polyphonic Spree — a sprawling, choral symphonic pop project that transformed his mourning into a rapturous reawakening of what it means to be human. (DeLaughter is still pushing boundaries with the Spree; they recently scored the SXSW Audience Award-winning dome theater film Resolution, a stunning immersive experience set to their album Salvage Enterprise).

But seeing DeLaughter back at the helm of Tripping Daisy is a different kind of magic entirely. He is an artist in the truest sense of the word. At the show, he shared a story about the track “Pillar.” After recording it for Atom Bomb, he decided it was all wrong and completely rewrote it, leaving only the drum part intact. But recently, upon revisiting the original tape, he thought, “This is a great song, what was I thinking?” — so on this tour, fans are being treated to the original, previously unheard version.

He’s also charmingly chaotic. Knowing his guitar solo on “Piranha” (track four on Firecracker) was approaching, I started filming and then watched in confusion as DeLaughter turned his back to the audience, performing his solo to the row of amplifiers. When he strode back to the mic, he casually explained that earlier in the day, he had sliced open his thumb and forefinger while unsheathing a kitchen knife. His DIY superglue stitch-job had just burst open, and he was bleeding everywhere. He finished the set wearing band-aids, still sounding phenomenal, though he’d occasionally complain in his delightful Texas drawl about them getting in the way.

A particularly beatific Tim (R) and Phil (L) — Photo by Gina Henderson Rogers

The rest of the band is a masterclass in musicianship. Karnats is an absolute innovator. All the weird, soaring sounds on Tripping Daisy records that you might assume are synthesizers? He makes them live onstage with his effects pedals and whammy bar. For select songs on this tour, he’s playing a guitar he crafted himself from spare parts, the body just a plain 2x6 piece of lumber. It sounds incredible. When DeLaughter joked he could sign it and sell it on eBay, I shouted, “It will be his signature piece!” — a quip DeLaughter smilingly repeated into the mic.

Philip Karnats in a head-to-toe red blur, bending melody in motion— Photo by Gina Henderson Rogers

Bassist Mark Pirro is the glue. Supporting the low end with exciting, interspersed frills, he radiates a stable, loving guru energy that would have fit perfectly in the late ’60s. (He also joked that fans often ask if he’s the bald man on the cover of Firecracker — it’s actually Italian artist Guglielmo Achille Cavellini, whose face is also emblazoned on drummer Bryan Wakeland’s hypnotic, reverberating kick drum). Wakeland is an absolute monster on the kit, anchoring the chaotic joy with a groove so deep that it locks everything into place.

Rounding out the sound are Dylan Silvers on keys and guitar — the epitome of a psychedelic musician. He moves and dances in a way that proves he feels every note in his bones — and Nick Earl, who joined in 2017 to cover Berggren’s parts. With his bell-bottoms, long hair, and perfect tone, Earl fills massive shoes admirably.

DeLaughter, arms lifted in a moment that feels closer to worship than performance — Pirro grounded beside him, Wakeland igniting the room from the back. — Photo by Gina Henderson Rogers

By the time I reached Birmingham on Tuesday, the atmosphere had shifted. Saturn — fittingly owned by Brian Teasley, the former drummer for The Polyphonic Spree — was packed. Outside, torrential rain poured relentlessly all day. Inside, the room was a pressure cooker of joy.

The crowd was a testament to the band’s enduring, cross-generational appeal. Teenagers stood shoulder-to-shoulder with fans in their 40s and 50s. A 13-year-old girl pressed against the barricade next to me declared that Tripping Daisy was her favorite band, marveling at “how cute these guys still are.” A few feet away, a mid-40s woman hollered at DeLaughter that he’d been her crush since she was 13. He didn’t miss a beat: “Meet me later and I’ll take care of that problem for you!”

The author and the packed house at Saturn Birmingham — Photo by Gina Henderson Rogers

The connection in the room wasn’t just nostalgic; it was fiercely active. When the band ripped into deep cuts and encores from Bill, the Birmingham crowd lost their minds. I danced, sang, took photos, laughed and cried. I cried for the inexorable passage of time, in joy for the blighted neighborhoods of my youth that have grown into thriving artistic communities, for the things we lose, and for the things that survive and come back stronger.

This is not just a band making people reminisce about their youth. This is a band capable of making anyone, of any age, feel ecstatic.

If you’re waiting to catch this tour later, don’t. Later is how Jacksonville ended up missing it.

Go support a band that has survived the absolute worst to bring pure joy back into the world. Show up so they see the demand and head back into the studio to make us some new music.

At the merch table, in addition to new vinyl, posters, and tees; Tim’s son Oscar is selling fantastic vintage ’90s stock pulled from storage — proof that the best things don’t fade, they just wait.

Just do me one favor: bring a marker to the show. While Tim graciously holds court at the merch booth after each concert, giving rapt attention to every fan who wants to tell him how his music changed their life, the rest of the band is often left packing up gear without a pen to their name. In Birmingham, a lovely Saturn bartender had to rescue me with a fat Sharpie so I could get the rest of the guys to sign my setlist.

Don’t be the crowd that missed it: Catch Tripping Daisy on the remaining dates of the Spring tour:

• May 6 — El Paso, TX
• May 7 — Phoenix, AZ
• May 8 — Anaheim, CA
• May 9 — Las Vegas, NV
• May 10 — Los Angeles, CA
• May 11 — San Francisco, CA
• May 13 — Portland, OR
• May 14 — Vancouver, BC
• May 15 — Seattle, WA
• May 16 — Boise, ID
• May 18 — Salt Lake City, UT
• May 19 — Denver, CO
• May 22 — Dallas, TX (Hometown Finale)

Magic. Loud enough to put their name on it. — Photo by Gina Henderson Rogers