DALLAS — Editor's note: The video at the top of this article is raw footage from the beginning of Tripping Daisy's February 12, 1994, show at the Deep Ellum venue then known as The Bomb Factory. Stepping into The Factory for a production meeting ahead of his band's upcoming concert, Tripping Daisy frontman Tim DeLaughter takes in the now-unfamiliar space around him. Thirty years ago, his iconic Dallas alt-rock band played this same Deep Ellum venue -- right before heading to the studio to record its most popular album, 1995's “I Am An Elastic Firecracker.
” The Factory is no longer the venue it was back then, he notes. The space DeLaughter remembers was a hot warehouse with a makeshift bar, makeshift restrooms and a completely analog system for projections. Known at the time as The Bomb Factory , it was a far cry from the state-of-the-art facility it stands as now.
“That’s how it was back in the day,” DeLaughter says. “A lot of bands were pioneers in turning these empty [Dallas] spaces into eventually becoming clubs and proper venues.” DeLaughter even remembers what the Factory's ceiling looked like in the Deep Ellum music scene of the '90s.
Looking up at it now, he says it's one of the only things in the space that hasn't changed in the past three decades. Everything else in the venue -- himself included -- has. “We were young and raw and flying by the seat of our pants to do the shows we did,” DeLaughter says as he continues his trip down memory lane.
He .
