Tripping Daisy Kicks Off First Tour in 26 Years With a Rapturous Hometown Performance

Walking into The Bomb Factory to see Tripping Daisy on Saturday night, everyone noticed the same thing first: the longest merch line of all time. It began at the front entrance and snaked all the way through the venue to the bar on the left side of the venue. Granted, the selection was pretty awesome. New I Am An Elastic Firecracker-themed tour shirts, celebrating the album’s 30th anniversary. The Tripping Daisy classic red, white and blue logo shirt. Beautiful posters, and a handful of rare bundles for $200, featuring trinkets pulled directly from Tim DeLaughter’s archives.

The line was populated in groups. Middle-aged men were the primary demographic, either grouped together in packs reliving their glory days through music, or paired up with their teenage children and trying to explain how Tripping Daisy made those days glorious at all. There were the DeLaughter diehards, the ones you see at every Polyphonic Spree show, and who have informed opinions about Preteen Zenith. And then there were the teenagers and 20-somethings, all of whom certainly weren’t around to see the band in its prime, but still think of the psych-pop-rock outfit as one of the hippest projects to ever come out of Dallas.

“Loud and loose. Quiet and tight. Young and old. Weirdos are all the same age,” guitarist Phillip Karnats told us last summer.

All those weirdos wanted a piece of this triumphant moment. At times, it felt more like a sports team’s home game than a concert, as Dallas revved up to send off their homegrown heroes on their first proper tour this century.

Saturday night marked the first of 22 stops over the next month. For each show on tour, the band will play I Am an Elastic Firecracker in its entirety before a second set of hits from the rest of their discography. The band played through that exact format at The Bomb Factory last summer (back when it was still The Factory), so for the tour kickoff, they ditched the playthrough and opted for a two-hour career-spanning set that featured hits and deep cuts from each of their four albums.

The show began with the instantly recognizable silhouettes of DeLaughter and founding bassist Mark Pirro, cast as a shadow on a massive sheet before dropping and revealing the band in its entirety. The 2025 touring lineup features the core founding members DeLaughter, Pirro and drummer Bryan Wakeland, joined by Karnats and Nick Earl on guitar, plus Dylan Silvers as the unsung Swiss army knife on keys, guitar, backing vocals and an impassioned tambourine.

The band opened with “Community Mantra,” the first song from their 2000 eponymous final album, at least until they get back in the studio together. “On The Ground” from 1992’s Bill came next, followed by “Rocketpop” and “Piranha,” two cuts from Elastic Firecracker. The former being about as rocking as the band gets, and the latter featuring a rare DeLaughter guitar solo.

Behind the band, a massive video board played their signature psychedelic imagery, plus some animations from artists Anthony Scheppard and Micah Buzan, who each have segments in the Polyphonic Spree's immersive animated film, Resolution.

Of course, Chris Penn’s absence was felt in the room, just as it’s been felt in hundreds of rooms in the past few months. A photo collage of the late Good Records owner was shown as DeLaughter spoke about the challenges of continuing on without him.

Buoyed by Penn, the past three years have been a new peak for DeLaughter's many projects. In 2023, The Polyphonic Spree released a new album, Salvage Enterprise, their first of all original material since 2013, a subsequent tour that marked the band's first tour in years, and an accompanying animated film, Resolution, which is currently screening weekly in Fort Worth and Denton, and had a special section at SXSW. As for Tripping Daisy, news of an official, non-one-off reunion broke last summer, leading to this month's tour. To be a DeLaughter fan living in Dallas for this period is one of the most uniquely rewarding experiences that music has to offer, and the packed house at The Bomb Factory served as yet another crescendo.

The evening continued on, complete with confetti cannons, bubbles and a Jackass-level failed crowdsurf from somebody who definitely should not have been trying to crowdsurf. Music does make us feel young again, but at what cost? Speaking of, the original music video for "My Umbrella" cued up on the back screen just as the band began to play it, making for a nostalgic kind of warmth, knowing that those songs were being played yet again. It drew one of the biggest crowd reactions of the night, along with classics "I Got a Girl" and "Trip Along."

"Prick" and "High," which close I Am an Elastic Firecracker, also ended the evening right at the two-hour mark. Even at 26 years removed from touring, it's clear that Tripping Daisy's place in Dallas music is not only rooted forever, but still has room to grow even bigger.

See more photos from Saturday's show: