The Polyphonic Spree don’t get out of city a lot. Since forming almost 25 years in the past, the Dallas band has persistently been a problem to pack up and ship out: At all times no less than 20 members; At all times a kitchen-sink-orchestra method to instrumentation, from normal rock-band gear to a wholesome dollop of brass and strings; and at all times some form of matching apparel that pulls cult-like comparisons.
So it’s a giant deal when the 24-member band pulls collectively its restricted sources, pauses its members’ day-job obligations, and piles right into a bus—particularly since no one makes tour buses for bands like this one.
“Most of your buses sleep 12; 13 is actually pushing it,” Tim DeLaughter, the band’s lead singer and head songwriter, says from his Dallas residence. “So we’ve got to go on this bus referred to as the Sportstar, which is a hockey-team bus, and there isn’t any frills there. It is nothing however bunks—it could possibly sleep 27 individuals. We do not use it that always, nevertheless it’s the one bus on the town that may home the Polyphonic Spree.”
That bus is hauling the band to Bumbershoot this weekend. DeLaughter—who additionally acts because the band’s preacher, proselytizer, and admitted “hustler”—is raring to promote the Spree’s worthiness amongst the crowded pageant schedule. His fervor in regards to the band’s first nationwide tour in a decade borders on spiritual: “We stay up for changing individuals into our world, and that is what we do, particularly within the stay state.”
When pressed on “convert” as his phrase selection, DeLaughter ranges with me utilizing his born-and-raised Texas drawl: “We’re totally different, man. There’s nothing like this band. And I do know that it is so much for individuals to absorb, in a single dose, however when you get on it… should you let it go and the Spree will get its hooks in you, there’s nothing prefer it.”
That zeal, someplace between pariah and pusher, is well-earned. The Spree started life as a survival-mode response for DeLaughter after his first breakout band, the Nineteen Nineties grunge-adjacent Tripping Daisy, broke up within the wake of a band member’s sudden dying. From that band’s ashes got here the Polyphonic Spree: a blast of unfiltered, major-key sound amongst lyrics of coping by despair, shaped with an ever-evolving collective of Dallas music friends (together with, at one time, a guitarist named Annie Clark who finally reached solo stardom as St. Vincent). There’s at all times a choir, at all times some grand explosions of sound, and at all times a sure connection between performer and viewers that works higher on stage than on residence audio system.
“To look at that occur, you possibly can see individuals, like, their mouths are huge open,” DeLaughter says about taking the Spree on the street. “They’ve received this large smile on their face by the tip of it, they usually’re simply in it. I’ve seen it occur, and it is cool—I do know that now we have these guys. They’ll be followers for us eternally, man.”
The Spree’s newest album, 2023’s Salvage Enterprise, is the closest the band has come to scaling its sound seamlessly between the stage and the house. Solemnity washes over the signature track “Part 45 (Wishful, Courageous, and True)” as a Simon & Garfunkel-worthy strum of acoustic guitar is briefly disturbed by totally different Spree parts—a flush of violin and horn right here, a twinkle of harp there, all whereas DeLaughter urges the meditation alongside in near-falsetto: “Laughter is disguising the richest rain we knew.”
On this track and others, the Spree displays a degree of restraint that DeLaughter describes as “militant”—resisting the band’s signature urge to play each instrument and voice concurrently. That newfound dynamism received DeLaughter so excited upon the album’s launch in late 2023 that he didn’t anticipate the remainder of the Spree to take break day from their menagerie of day jobs to “tour” the outcomes. (DeLaughter says the band counts amongst its ranks professors, music academics, and “a bunch for a Pluckers [a chicken wing chain] on Wednesday nights the place he calls out trivia questions.” He admits doing “building stuff on the facet” himself, as nicely.)
After packing his automotive with mills, a PA, and audio system on tripods, DeLaughter hit the street with a replica of Salvage Enterprise in hand—and nary a proper invite to truly host any of his guerrilla listening events. Whether or not taking part in amidst the open expanse of Joshua Tree, the cliffs of San Diego, Topanga Canyon, or perhaps a church whose members stepped up after cops almost confiscated the listening events’ gear, the month-long tour operated completely by way of social media DMs and DeLaughter’s enthusiasm. For the 58-year-old, having as few as three individuals present as much as a selected listening celebration had a shocking influence.
“It was just like the early days—I might be in a van for 3 months at a time with Tripping Daisy, and also you go and there is two individuals on the market,” DeLaughter says. “Like I used to be beginning once more, not likely figuring out who was going to be there and in the event that they’re even into it or not. It was like spreading the phrase once more, simply doing it in a extremely totally different means, the place I used to be wanting individuals to tune out, get away from the telephone, and take a look at the sky and take heed to an album that complemented that atmosphere.”
Whether or not partaking within the grey authorized zone of out of doors listening events or sustaining the Spree’s common Texas tour dates, together with an annual Dallas Christmas live performance streak of over 20 years, DeLaughter admits a constant impulse drives him—the identical one which not solely egged the Spree into existence however spurred his first band into motion.
“In the event you take heed to Tripping Daisy [lyrics], there’s a component of overcoming what life dishes out,” DeLaughter says. “Music’s turn into my vessel to specific myself and speak myself by this factor referred to as life. With this band, it turns into extra technicolor than something I’ve ever completed earlier than. I’ve at all times used these songs, this document to persuade myself of issues, of having the ability to transfer from level A to B. Nothing’s modified. It is simply how I am wired and what I would like to be able to get me the place I must go.”
No matter you name them—a band, a collective, a cult, or a bunch of professors and trivia hosts—the Spree continues to be working as an act of sonic marvel. A “regular” Spree second would possibly see a full choir scream-singing, “smiling on the goddess of evil, I discovered to fly,” over a mattress of horns and amplified guitars, perhaps with extra dynamism or life-weary survival behind them, however in any other case carrying the identical spirit that when blasted out of iPod commercials or toured for David Bowie within the early ‘00s. Depend your self fortunate that such a sensation continues to be round immediately, nonetheless being delivered to your metropolis by way of a rickety outdated hockey bus.
The Polyphonic Spree play Bumbershoot’s Mural Stage Sunday, September 1, at 6:25 pm.
