Bob and Phil are firmly west coast guys, you’re a west coast guy and ALO is kind of a west coast band. However, you guys are touring back east for the first time in a little while.

We’re gonna hit a bunch of spots we’ve played before: Brooklyn Bowl, Ardmore. Then we will be up in Boston for a couple nights too. It’s great because ALO doesn’t get out east nearly enough. We are very West Coast, you know? I grew up in the Bay area, went to school in Santa Barbara then moved back to the Bay area. We play so much on the West Coast. I come out east with other bands throughout the year, but ALO, we don’t get out nearly enough.

Personally, I feel like I grew up on the West Coast and I feel very west coast in my ways, but both my folks are from Upstate New York so I grew up with east coast culture. And as I’ve gotten older and go to the East Coast more, I feel a certain comfort there. There is something familiar about it.

In addition to ALO and other collaborations, during things like Jam Cruise you appear as a solo artist-at-large. What makes your solo appearances different from all these other things?

So they are all different sides of what I do, right? I have a bunch of material obviously that I do in ALO, but I also have a lot of material that I don’t do in ALO.

ALO is such a collective band. We all put a lot of material in there but it’s one band and there’s only so much time for so much material. When I’m bringing in something for ALO I got those guys in mind, and I bring the stuff that I think would fit them, but there’s other stuff too. Of course, the Dead world is Dead world and that’s awesome and inspiring.

But one of the things that has been fun for me is Lebo and Friends. It’s been a fun opportunity to play with other musicians and interact with a rotating cast thing. I also have, in the back of my mind, that one of these days I am going to get a more consistent lineup thing going. Because there is a fun depth you can get when you’re playing with the same cats all the time too you know?

One other thing I wanted to mention is that you’re an acoustic guitarist in a scene very dedicated to the electric guitar.

In a way, I actually think of myself as an electrical guitarist. Like, there are all these types of electric guitars: Telecasters, Stratocasters, Les Pauls. I happen to use an acoustic guitar as my vehicle for it. But it’s very much an electric guitar thing. It’s kind of fun it’s got its own sound. You know, it doesn’t sound like a Les Paul or a Stratocaster or any of those guitars you know and the other thing that for me at this point it’s sort of like the shortest path from the ideas to realizing them into the air.

I know a lot of guitar players that switch guitars a lot and I totally get that. But I’m kind of on the other side. I like having one instrument and trying to pull off the sounds from that one instrument. When I was young I always played electric guitars, but I think I was doing a bunch of acoustic gigs and then just out of necessity I was doing a lot of shows where we were plugging in and it was getting electrified. Then I just never changed guitars and adapted.

Right when I finished college before I started touring I apprenticed with a guitar builder, a luthier. I’ll tell ya, I use that shit every day I’m on the road like, that knowledge from refretting a few hundred guitars over the course of a couple years.

So if you crack a neck you know what to do?

Oh, I do it all myself, yeah. And I think that is part of the nature of how my guitar became like it is. It’s way different from how it started out. It’s an acoustic guitar, but I put all those pickups in. I don’t use any of the electronics that came in it. I’m kind of a tinkerer in that way. I got a little corner in my garage that’s like a shop, you know? With all the Luthier tools and I’m not afraid to grab a drill out and drill into my guitar to try something out on it.

You have just one guitar, right?

Well, I have one acoustic guitar that I play 98% of the time. And I have this other acoustic guitar that is very similar, that I use about one and a half percent of the time. And then a half a percent of the time I’ll pick up a Tele or a Strat, usually in the studio.

Your main one has the script L on it?

Yeah.

Is that like a Laverne and Shirley thing?

[Laughs.] I’m Lebo, so growing up if someone would write to me they would just write L. So I just kind of adapted.

It’s like Willie Nelson’s Trigger.

I got an acoustic guitar in high school and used that many many years. Then, in 2004, ALO was on a tour and we hit some ice going from Colorado to Utah, and the van flipped over. My guitar was in a soft case and suddenly a Rhodes piano and a whole bunch of amp cases were on top of my guitar and smashed it. So I went out and got another guitar. And that’s the same one I’ve been using. It looks like it’s from the 1800s because it’s got that amount of hours, or probably more hours than a lot of guitars from the 1800s have on them, right? Because I use it every day. I perform with it, practice with it.

Does it have a name? Are you one of those guys?

No, I don’t have a name, it’s just my guitar.

Ever since that experience do you keep it close when you travel?

I always take it with me, and I got a really good hardshell case for it. The case is heavier than the guitar.

And every day at the end of the gig I walk out of the venue with my guitar. I go into my hotel room with my guitar and…you know, there is actually another aspect to that. A tip I learned many, many years ago – and I think it’s a really great tip for a musician – is that guitars in cases don’t get played. When the guitar is out you just grab it. “Oh I got a half-hour, let’s play guitar for a half-hour.” I am certain I’ve logged thousands of extra hours just from that simple thing.

Do you find you get writing done that way?

Oh tons, writing and playing time. But I think it’s like a metaphor for life. Anything you want to do, it’s good to just surround yourself and make it really easy. If someone wants to do yoga, take the yoga mat out and put it on the floor. And when you walk by and you see it, maybe you won’t get like some hour-long marathon session but you’ll probably jump down there and get some poses in and get some stretches done. Whatever you surround yourself with is what you are gonna do. If the guitar is in the case and there’s a TV out there sitting in front of you you’re probably going to watch the TV [Laughs]. I put the guitar in front of the TV.

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