You’d also played with Brogan for a stretch at some point prior to 2002, correct?
We knew Brogan in college, in Santa Barbara, and he was in this other band, Evil Farmer that we all looked up to and were like, “This is the best band we’ve ever seen.” We just like worshipped them. We’d go and see them all the time, and Brogan was an insane drummer.
He was older than us but when he graduated, he kind of kicked around a little longer and ended up storing his drums in our garage. That led to us playing together for the first time in ’96 and we did a whole tour out to Georgia and lived in Georgia for the summer. He auditioned for James Brown’s band and we played all over the South. That was like a crazy time for us, but it was a real bonding experience. Had we not done that we probably wouldn’t have even thought of Dave in ’02. But since we had such like fun memories of that, we we’re like, “Let’s call up Brogan and see what he’s doing because we need a drummer and that was super fun.” We all loved it, we didn’t want it to end. And when we called him and asked him he was like, “You know what, I just left Microsoft, I’m looking for something to do.” So we asked, “Can we pick you up in Portland in three weeks?” And it was onward from there.
This is ALO’s 12th Tour d’Amour. How did it originate?
It started because we were looking for some kind of tradition, and also we’d had some gnarly winter touring. We rolled our van in ’04. We were hustling from an Everyone Orchestra gig in Boulder to an ALO gig in Park City or Salt Lake City. We left in the middle of the night or super early in the morning we hit this ice patch. The van slid off the road and did two and a half turns so that we were facing the opposite direction on the side of the road. We were all okay but it was like super traumatic. And we were like, “You know what, it’s not worth it going through these towns where we barely know how to drive through those kinds of conditions, especially when it gets extreme.” So we decided, “Let’s forget about winter touring.”
The Tour d’Amour also kind of spun out of that idea, “Well what if we just tour in California, that’s pretty safe.” And it sort of like happened that the love theme thing seemed cool, and so we put those two ideas together. We did like three weekends and it was a total hit and people loved it and we had these sort of like big stage heart pieces made and we hoisted those up each night. The second year is where the tradition really started and then the next year came around, we’re like, “Let’s do that again.” And we just kept building on it. And now this year it’s five weekends and we’ve included Seattle and Portland and Eugene.
At the Fillmore you also have a kids matinée on Saturday. What was the idea behind that?
I have to credit Michael Bailey from the Fillmore. He’d had Ozomatli come in and do a kids show and he approached us with the idea. He explained, “If you do a two night run, you could leave all your stuff set up.” So we tried it and it sold as many tickets as the Friday night show and we were like, “Woah!”
Now that we’re in our forties and being from the Bay Area, we have lots of friends and classmates who have kids. It’s like a half price sort of deal and the parents and the kids are just loving it. The parents love to show their kids the Fillmore, the legendary Fillmore and get to be in there. There’s a balloon drop and we can do whatever we want, it feels good. We’ve been doing like Beatles tunes like, “Yellow Submarine” and “Octopus’s Garden.” We’ll do a whole little tour through the animal kingdom. I mean our name is a good name to frame it all too—The Animal Liberation Orchestra— and sort of tie that into the whole kids show. This will be our third year, I think, and other ones were super awesome and a total no-brainer.
It’s cool that Michael thought of that and we were able to put it together and just play another show that sort of hits another audience. We hear stories from parents who tell us, “All we listen to is ALO in the car on car trips and at home. The kids know all your songs and all the lyrics.” It is really cool to sort of offer that live experience to the kids in that kind of special place, too.
Jumping back to Brogan, he’s not on these dates. You have Ezra Lipp on drums. How did that come about?
Yeah, speaking of family and kids, he sort of opted out. He was conflicted about being able to do the tour and feeling like he needed to be home with his family and sort of focus on that. A week or so before we were getting ready to announce, he was like, “You guys, I have to tell you guys something… 2018 in general is gonna be really hard for me. I feel like I need to spend more time with my family.”
So the three of us kind of huddled and were like, “Should we cancel it? Should we like not announce it? Should we look for somebody else?” And Brogan was great. He told us, “I’ll support whatever you want to do.” We thought about it and I’ve been playing with Ezra in Magic In The Other, a bunch, so I put his name in the hat with a strong endorsement. We thought of a lot of people but Ezra just made sense.
So Ezra’s covering this whole tour and we’re not like chasing after any gigs, just to be sensitive to Brogan. Maybe it’s a slower year, but we’ll see what happens, sort of crossing that bridge with Brogan. I’m sure it was super hard for him, but ALO is very supportive of family and health and stability. When those things happen, when people kind of step out for minute, the band members always figure something out whether it’s joining another local project or getting involved in something else, we’re all really resourceful and I think that’s what helps keep ALO moving, in a way.
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