ALO: IT JUST FEELS GOOD

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By: Forrest Reda

ALO

On the surface, it appears the success of ALO (Animal Liberation Orchestra) can be attributed to a certain college buddy named Jack Johnson, who invited the band to open some shows, drafted keyboardist Zach Gill to be in his band and eventually signed ALO to his label, Brushfire Records. While this connection is fine and good, the rise of ALO has been a 15-year process, a long and winding road from the band’s inception in the sleepy Bay Area suburb of Saratoga to the college town of Isla Vista, CA near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, where ALO was born.

The band might never have even formed if the core members of Dan Lebowitz, Steve Adams and Gill had gone their separate ways after high school. Instead, the buddies, friends since junior high, stuck together and went to UCSB because it was the only spot that all of them got into. Actually, it was the ONLY school that accepted Gill. “I think we all had the intention of keeping our band going because it was pretty fun and Santa Barbara seemed like an optimal place to go down and be in a band,” Gill says. “I don’t know what would have happened if I wouldn’t of gotten in.”

Dave Brogan by Susan J. Weiand

At UCSB, the guys befriended Jack Johnson, but more importantly, met drummer Dave Brogan of the infamous Evil Farmer. Like many West Coast kids in the early ’90s, ALO hadn’t been properly exposed to the music Phish was creating, but were fortunate to have confluent influences in the same improvisational vein. Gill credits Evil Farmer as being as much of a musical inspiration as Phish.

“In high school we were limited to what we heard on the radio, and what was available,” he says. “I remember someone gave me a Phish tape and not really knowing what to think about it. When I got to college, I saw Evil Farmer play my freshman year and they were sort of the same age as Phish. They were a little bit older than we were and I remember thinking that the music they played that night was unlike anything I’d ever heard. Up until that point I’d just heard high school bands and people kind of sounding like music that was on the radio.”

The collegiate scene at Santa Barbara at this time was ripe for music. “When we were in college, Isla Vista had a little bit stronger music scene than it does now. There were keg parties all down the main street along the ocean of Isla Vista,” Brogan explains. “People who had a house would just get a keg, and you’d go down Del Playa and there would be like 15 bands playing. It was like 6th Street in Austin or something.”

Evil Farmer

Evil Farmer has been hailed for planting the seeds in Santa Barbara for musical experimentation. Brogan is a little bit more modest in his estimation, “No one used the term ‘jam bands’ back then. But, we were into a few different things. We were into the Grateful Dead, and the 60s psychedelic rock like The Doors and Pink Floyd. We were also into rock stuff like Mr. Bungle and John Zorn. We were all music majors so we were listening to crazy avant-garde music, too. So, we were just trying to fuse all that stuff together, as well as being exposed to a lot of different styles by our suburban upbringing – world music and all these different things. We were trying to blend that together in a party style, but definitely using extended improvisation.” “We were also really into jazz,” says Brogan. “We came up through the jazz band in high school. So, we were doing that on the West Coast in 1990-92. I hadn’t even heard Phish until A Picture of Nectar came out. Eventually, I heard that album, and I was kind of like, ‘Oh man, there’s somebody else totally kind-of-doing the same thing.’ I think it came from a similar situation – in college, suburban background, probably played jazz in high school. They were kind of blending some of the same things we were. That was the first time I realized this is something bigger than just my band – other people are doing this, too.”

Adams, Lebowitz, Gill by Jenna Lebowitz

College was a time for musical exploration for Adams, Lebowitz and Gill. Lebowitz describes the casual practices that paved the way for things to come. “We were all just living together, it was like, ‘Do you want to jam in a couple hours? Wanna jam tonight?’ Someone would roll in with a few beers, we’d talk for a while and start practicing,” says Lebowitz.

Lebowitz, Adams and Gill played in numerous bands together, including a project with their jazz band director that included a five-piece horn section. Brogan wasn’t part of ALO at the time but jammed with them often. After the guys graduated from UCSB, they moved back to the Bay Area and Brogan returned to Seattle. In 2002, ALO had a tour booked and needed a drummer. The band picked up Brogan mid-tour and they’ve been on the road together ever since.

If Evil Farmer is the band that planted the seeds the gardeners of the scene were and continue to be the SB Music Phreaks. Started by a music fan named James Studarus as a way to improve the turnout at local concerts and bring more music to Santa Barbara, the SB Music Phreaks began as a list of 30 friends exchanging show reviews and news using Yahoo’s group email service.

ALO by Jonathan D. Nimerfroh

“SB Music Phreaks formed around the same time we were starting out with ALO,” Lebowitz says. “We were living in San Francisco at that point but we still had roots in Santa Barbara. They became a core audience. It’s fun when they are around. People can see how the elders of the tribe, so to speak, interact with the music.”

Jam band fans utilized email lists to create buzz long before blogs started breaking bands, and perhaps no other list is as intertwined with a specific group as the SB Music Phreaks and ALO.

“We like stuff like that, and embrace it, but it’s independent of the band,” Lebowitz says. “We like to provide a place for that to happen. We’ve gotten to be friends with a lot of those people. They’ll come to us with a crazy theme for a show, and we’ll be like, ‘That’s great. We’ll work on some music for you.'”

The hope is to get everybody together and make something magical happen, and it requires audience, musicians and everybody to want engage in that. -Zach Gill

Photo by Casey Flanigan

Gill marvels at the dedication of the fans. “I’m blown away at some of the organization that some of these fans have. I think that it’s really fun for the band and the audience when everybody participates. We’ve tried to keep an open policy for crowd participation in more ways than just like, ‘I say hey, you say hey.’ It makes me feel more comfortable onstage when I see other people getting crazy,” comments Gill. “When you see a play – I think they call it the third wall – and the actor will come into the theater, will leave the stage and start having a conversation with the people watching the show – like in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – I love that and I think that’s an element to the band we want. At times, I’ve thought how the name Animal Liberation Orchestra could be conceived, and sometimes I’ve thought that we’re the animals and the audience is the orchestra. We’re all just trying to make an event; music is just part of it. The hope is to get everybody together and make something magical happen, and it requires audience, musicians and everybody to want engage in that.”

Steve Adams by Jonathan D. Nimerfroh

Adams likens the relationship to a love affair. “We like to have people participate. It’s like you meet someone, and sometimes the dialog is super easy and it flows, and it’s continuous and they become your best friend. I think the dialogue with the SB Music Phreaks is kind of like that,” says Adams. “They would directly ask to do things with us. Sometimes we would do things on our own that would speak to them. I think the dialog has been flowing in a real inspiring way I think, on both sides. When we fell in love with the Santa Barbara Music Phreaks, they fell in love with us.”

Connecting with this web-savvy group of fans led to meeting other groups in San Francisco and other parts of the country. “This is part of the jam band culture,” Lebowitz says. “People who love music, love a different show every time, love to talk about it, compare setlists and all that stuff. You kind of realize that there are pockets of communities all over the world.”

Soon the band was playing to these pockets of fans, expanding its touring radius and playing every festival it could book, including a morning slot at High Sierra in 2003 featuring an onstage appearance by several SB Music Phreaks that cemented ALO as a High Sierra favorite.

With the band’s extensive history in Santa Barbara, when the time came to record Roses & Clover (released May 1) it seemed natural to hunker down in a friend’s barn in the hills above Santa Barbara.

“Our friend Jennifer Terran is a performing singer-songwriter who I used to play with, I’m actually on one of her albums. [She] has a ranch in the hills above Santa Barbara,” Gill says. “She does a lot of house concerts and she built a barn on her property. Outside it looks like a barn but inside it’s a music place. We kind of sweet talked her into letting us use it and moved in for a few weeks.”

Gill says having the resources to properly record an album made it feel brand new. “It definitely feels like the first time we’ve been able to say, ‘Let’s make an album. Let’s move into this barn and get in this vibe. How can we do that?’ As opposed to in the past when it didn’t seem like we had as many options. This was cool because it felt like this was the way we wanted to do it.”

For Roses & Clover, the members of ALO shared much of the producing duties, though they did enlist the help of veteran producer Robert Carranza (Beck, Los Lobos, Ozomatli) and engineer Dave Simon-Baker (Eric Martin, The Mother Truckers), who’s worked with ALO since 2005’s Fly Between Falls. According to Gill, Carranza served as a guide for the band. “We’d be working for a few days and then he’d come in and make some suggestions or say, ‘Hey, this is on the right track.’ We put a lot of intention into the new album. I feel like we made the options happen for themselves. We had a little more of a clear idea on how we wanted to do things and we did what we could to make it happen,” offers Gill.

Dan Lebowitz by Josh Miller

Each member of ALO brought songs to the table for Roses & Clover and got down to the business of weeding through the 40+ demos. “We kind of do it differently each time,” Gill says. “Because we all live in different places, initially we put them up on the Internet and let everyone hear them and pick the ones they feel pretty good about. There were some that we felt that we wanted to do, but once we got into a room together they didn’t quite gel the way the other ones did.”

Given the band’s hectic touring schedule and geographic distance, the songwriting and demo process is surprisingly fluid. In a band where everyone sings and writes songs, a strong brotherhood is needed to decide things like what ends up on a record and who sings which tune.

“Generally the person who writes the song, sings it, but there was talk on this album about having other people sing things,” Brogan says. “I think in the future we could get into it a lot more. That happens on the song ‘Lady Loop,’ which I wrote and Zach ended up singing.”

For Gill, the songwriting is way of life. “A lot of what I write and sing is directed at myself as much as the audience. I need to write and sing to get myself to do certain things. I need to remind myself, and I do it subconsciously through my lyrics.”

ALO

Lebowitz relishes the chance to get in a room with his old friends to create new music. “Right now we’re excited about sharing music with each other. If I bring a song into the fold and people want to work on it, we just go for it. We’re also excited about collective writing. A couple [new] songs came from jams,” says Lebowitz. “I try to not get attached to ideas in my head before we’re recording because you can start hitting a wall. I like to think that we’re four people coming together to turn this song into real life. Even if the core of it came from one person, the four of us are here to bring it to life. I think a lot of times that sense of discovery happens in the studio. A lot of the cool stuff is the stuff that happens all of a sudden. Someone lays [something] down on top that you didn’t expect. It’s so cool [when] someone opens a door. I try and keep the preconceived notions down. I feel like if I force that on the guys, then that’s going to cancel out probably all this cool shit that might have come from the guys searching through the song to find their own parts.”

“I think we have a good idea of what kind of tones we want to achieve with our instruments,” Adams adds. “Like with my bass tone, I feel I got pretty close to what I was thinking, but you are always discovering something new with the process. With this record, I didn’t hear it until it was halfway done but that was the great thing about it. There was so much exploring and discovery going on, a lot of surprises.”

We’ve been at this for a while. Zach has a daughter, and everyone is trying to juggle their personal lives with the band. I think we all want a little more structure and a little more focus. -Steve Adams

Photo: (left to right) Brogan, Gill, Lebowitz, Adams

For a band like ALO, accustomed to playing songs live for years before putting them on record, keeping songs from fans is difficult. Lebowitz explains, “It’s been really hard not to share the new songs with our fans. We’ve had these shows and we’ve been making setlists. We’re so excited for these new tunes. It’s like, ‘That tune would be sweet there and this one would be good there.’ We’ve been really disciplined, trying to hold it off, now we’re really close. Our next shows, starting with The Fillmore [5/5/07], from there on out we’re going to have all these new tunes that we’re going to unleash on people. With this new album, it’s exciting because we have a whole new selection to focus on live, to let develop. They are complete songs but we haven’t tried all the options yet.”

ALO with Jack Johnson :: The Fillmore by Weiand

As well as waiting to play songs until the album is released, ALO is even flirting with the traditional, write-record-tour-break cycle. Adams says that this structure allows the band to focus. “You write, you record, you release a record and then you go out and support it. It’s a little less haphazard than touring non-stop and having records coming out all the while,” says Adams. “I think it provides more focus on the album you just created and are promoting. I think the reason we’re trying to focus is because previously we haven’t had focus. We’ve been at this for a while. Zach has a daughter, and everyone is trying to juggle their personal lives with the band. I think we all want a little more structure and a little more focus on the schedule as to what exactly we were working on and what we are promoting.”

Lebowitz agrees, “It allows space in our lives. We can still make ALO a big part of our lives, but it also creates space where we’re able to do other things, too.” Right now, those other things include Gill playing on Jack Johnson’s upcoming record, Lebowitz and Adams touring with troubadour Brett Dennen and Brogan playing some reunion gigs with Evil Farmer. Lebowitz also gigs with his solo project, but there are no plans at the moment to get into a recording-touring cycle.

Lebowitz & Adams by Jonathan D. Nimerfroh

Lebowitz says trust is what allows the members of ALO to be involved in so many side projects. “I think it requires having self-confidence. When people feel insecure working on something else feels weird” Lebowitz comments. “If you can, avoid any of those feelings of insecurity, all these side things we do just bring back a stronger feeling to the whole thing. If we’re out here playing with Brett, it’s getting the ALO name out there. It’s good for Dave. The fact that Zack is playing with Jack is good for us. I think all that’s good.”

Adams agrees, “I think there’s also a certain level of commitment to a plan that needs to be upheld. Sometimes I think it’s hard with all the side gigs because there’s lots of opportunity. Jack is offering Zach dates and involvement in the next record, and Brett is probably interested in me and Dan for future dates. We all need to remind ourselves that a cycle with ALO is a certain commitment required. You are going to have to say ‘no’ or make ALO a priority over these other things. We’re all kinda feeling that out right now.”

“It was hard going into the making of this [new] record because it was like ‘can we commit.’ A lot of money gets spent making a record, on the promotion of it, tour support, everything,” continues Adams. “It’s like, ‘Can we commit to that cycle?’ I think we all kind of said ‘yes’ but we’re still trying to keep all these other things on the fire. We all do as much as we can. We’re all trying to make a buck and take steps upward in terms of our lifestyle.”

Johnson & Adams by Casey Flanigan

“We’re trying to do it all. You have to try to keep them all [these projects] going as much as you can,” Lebowitz says. “I remember my job before touring so much. I was working at the Haight-Ashbury Guitar Center. I used to do all the instrument repairs. I remember we would go out on some little tours, and I would be like, ‘I need some time off.’ Then, it got to the point where I was just taking so much time off that I had to take the leap and say, ‘Okay, I have to say no to that now.’ Still, I think we all try to do as much as we can.”

As ALO straddles selling out The Fillmore and playing shows in amphitheaters opening up for Jack Johnson or Dave Matthews, the band keeps it all in perspective.

“A lot of jam bands remain under the radar but the scene grows. Look at a band like Phish. They got to a point where they were drawing 75,000 people to their shows, and still not a lot of people knew who they were,” says Gill. “When I look at the iTunes Top 10, I don’t know who any of the names are. When they [mainstream consumers] look at the Bonnaroo lineup, I wonder if they know any of the names besides the big bands like The Police. Would they even know Widespread Panic?”

Johnson with ALO by Josh Miller

“Even hanging and playing with Jack, who is becoming relatively famous throughout the world, [we find] he’s still under the radar,” continues Gill. “Sometimes I’ll be at my daughter’s school and people will ask me what I do. I’ll tell them I’m a musician. They say, ‘Who do you play for?’ I tell them I have a band called ALO and it doesn’t ring a bell with them. Then, I’ll say I also play with a singer-songwriter named Jack Johnson and they’ll say, ‘Sorry, never heard of him.’ Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. I feel like things can be relatively popular and still under the radar.”

Gill says that Johnson also serves as a mentor for the band. “Jack tries to watch the hype. He really likes to sing songs and perform but is kind of tripping out on the hype and all the stuff that starts to surround it after a while. He’s always trying to tone that down.”

Winning over Jack’s fans, who aren’t always familiar with ALO or even their jam-friendly style of music, is a challenge the band enjoys. “In each situation, we looked at who the headliner was and who their fans are,” Lebowitz explains. “We tailored our set a little bit so that we can be smart about what songs we are playing and how much jamming we were doing. The goal is to get exposure and draw people in, create an interest. For Galactic, we did a little bit more jamming. With Jack, we focus a little more on songs. Generally, we look at their audience. Opening for Dave, we could do a little more jamming. It kinda got fun in a way. We felt like we were ambassadors of that kind of [jamming] thing. For the Jack shows, we always tried to work one really good jam into the set, one that really develops and grows, a legitimate, cool jam.”

I get the sense that the jam band scene isn’t as alive in the colleges right now as much as it was when I was coming up. But I know those things move in waves and things get recycled… It feels good to be part of a community. It feels good to be older in the scene. -Zach Gill

Photo: (left to right) Gill, Lebowitz, Adams, Brogan

Lebowitz says that talking to people at the merch table after the shows proved successful in spreading the band’s vibe. “People would come up going, ‘Oh wow, I haven’t heard bands do that before, that section where it sounded like you were making it up as you went.’ And we’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s what we were doing.’ To them, it’s a brand new thing,” says Lebowitz.

Dan Lebowitz :: The Fillmore by Weiand

Brogan says playing in Brazil with Jack Johnson in front of a huge crowd was a surreal experience, but selling out The Fillmore was more meaningful.

“Playing The Fillmore was such a huge goal for us. Knowing that pretty much everyone is there to see you and they’re just into it is a great thrill,” Brogan says. “There’s been way bigger crowds that we’ve played for, way weirder situations, even way louder crowds, but that was definitely up there. Playing in Brazil in Rio De Janeiro, that was more surreal. That’s when you’re kind of just laughing because it’s a surreal experience. You don’t know what’s going on but it’s crazy.”

Gill says the reason Bonnaroo bands are becoming more mainstream is all about the love. “I think what’s so cool about the jam band movement – bands like Phish, Evil Farmer or even ALO – is everyone is thinking about trying to take all these elements of music that everybody’s fallen in love with and put them together in this new and personal way. I think that’s so cool,” says Gill. “These things move in waves. I get the sense that the jam band scene isn’t as alive in the colleges right now as much as it was when I was coming up. But, I know those things move in waves and things get recycled. It’s exciting. It feels good to be part of a community. It feels good to be older in the scene. I’m definitely feeling the youth.”

Steve Adams by Jonathan D. Nimerfroh

To support the next generation of musicians, Lebowitz says that one of the causes ALO has taken up is music education in public school.

“We’re all people that came up through public school music departments. By senior year I was in the jazz band, the jazz choir, the concert choir and the marching band – four things a day, and there was still other stuff, like orchestra. Now at my old high school the only options are band and one choir,” laments Lebowitz.

“Music was the way for me. Once I found my path with it, it became the way I got through life,” Gill says. “It scares me to think that people who have a brain that works like mine, if they tried to force themselves into science, I wonder what would happen to them. It’s so important to keep other options open. For me, music is something close to home.”

“I went to my daughter’s school and did some music the other day, showing a six-year old kid a Middle Eastern dumbek,” says Gill. “I think there’s a lot of people in the world who don’t do well in the standardized curriculum that has become the education of the United States. If not for music I wouldn’t have gotten into college!”

Adams says the other cause the band pushes is good music. “I think we all believe in music. It can be a really powerful force for us and other people. Getting people to come together and dance, and have this experience and interact. That’s the biggest thing we try to do. We try to make the concert a safe place where people can come and enjoy a positive thing. People leave a show and they are inspired,” offers Adams.

ALO

Brogan says the only challenge left for the band is to be embraced by the indie rock scene, but he’s not sure it will ever happen. “We never get invited to do anything remotely hip or cool, whether it’s the Sasquatch! festival or anything like that. We’re pretty much the antithesis of anything indie rock,” says Brogan. “We’re like indie rock poison. I don’t think indie rock people want us anywhere near them. Not to be too technical, but they’re afraid of 1/16th notes. So, if you don’t go ‘da-da-da-da-da-da-da’ but you go ‘da-dink-a-da-duh-da-de-da-duh’ they don’t like it, that 16th note thing, man. They just want straight 1/8 notes.”

If the true definition of the word “indie” is doing it all on your own (with a little help from your friends) then ALO is a true “indie” band. Lebowitz says that they will continue to go down this road. “Sure, we’re working together and we’re building this business, but we’ve been doing this since we were in 7th grade and we didn’t even know what the word business was.”

Adams sums up the band’s path with a simple statement that belies ALO’s contentment with the process, “The fact that we’ve lasted this long feels meaningful.”

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