This weekend at the Fillmore, ALO will close out Tour d’Amour XII. The group, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, has had a slightly different look in 2018 as drummer Dave Brogan is sitting out these dates and Ezra Lipp has moved behind the kit. ALO co-founder Steve Adams took some time to reflect on this decision, look back at the group’s early years and discuss his new project with Lipp, Magic In The Other, a trio that has drawn comparison to The Slip.
It sounds like all of a sudden you realized that it was the 20th anniversary of ALO’s first gig. What are your memories of that initial era?
It’s funny, all these little anniversaries and milestones, they kind of like creep up on you. Sometimes, they happen and you’re like, “Oh wait a minute, it’s been twenty years.” Although even before that, Zach and Lebo and me, we had already been playing for over ten years. We started in junior high, went all through high school and then went to college together. That’s when we had all these different band names and we started playing with different drummers. We also began experimenting with different lineups adding horn players.
In Santa Barbara (at UCSB) Dan and I were in the music department doing a lot of stuff there, studying music and playing in different groups. Zach was a history major but he was also in the music department all the time, hanging out with us and also doing ensembles. Then at one point halfway through our senior year our jazz band director was like, “It seems like you guys could use a drummer and I’d love to play with you. I could even help arrange some horns.” So we started this band with him on drums and a five piece horn section, and it got launched at this like pizza parlor called Giovanni’s. It started off as Animal Liberation and then maybe Animal Liberation and The Free Range Horns—eventually we like put it all together as the Animal Liberation Orchestra and The Free Range Horns.
We only played with that nine piece lineup with the five horns and Jon [Nathan] on drums, for like the rest of our senior year and a little bit of the summer. Then we all graduated and Zach and Dan and I decided to move back to San Francisco, back to the Bay Area where we grew up. We kind of left all those guys behind because they were there doing different things too. Then that started a whole new phase of working with various drummers and shortening the name to ALO.
Can you recall the moment when it felt like it had really taken on its own momentum and you’d become a national act?
There are different moments that come to mind. When we were in college before we had the name ALO we would tour a little bit up and down the West Coast. We were called Django, like Django Reinhardt. We had some plays up in Oregon at our friends’ fraternity parties and we’d play little bars in Chico and the Bay Area a bit. But for the most part, we didn’t really get out of Santa Barbara. We were on the school schedule more or less and we played a lot of parties.
Back in high school we made a record. It was a seven song EP. We created 300 cassettes and brought it to school. It sold out in a week and that helped to create the excitement that led us to continue being a band and go to college together. While we didn’t really get out of Santa Barbara too much, we did feel a momentum there, so by the time ALO started, there already were people rooting for us, and they were excited to see what our next project was going to be. So out of the gate our first gigs were packed and we were super stoked because our drummer was really good, we had the horn parts all tight. It felt like a local band doing really well.
So when we left Santa Barbara, we left a town that was rooting for us and kind of started over in San Francisco. We found this drummer, Shree Shyam Das, who we ended up making a couple records with, and we all had part time jobs of all sorts while we living on our own for the first time after college. With Shyam on drums, we started touring the western states a little bit because we saw bands were doing that. We knew if we could like be popular in our town and then take it to the next town, then we have two towns, and so we were trying to figure out how to spiral out of the Bay Area.
The western states seemed natural and we’d kind of like inch over to Utah, and up to Montana and then up to Washington and then down to Arizona. So we began doing that and that felt good but we were still barely making any money and it was really hard to figure out how to get the word out. Then we started a mailing list and we’d do actual physical mailers because we saw that bands like Phish and Disco Biscuits and Perpetual Groove were doing things like that and we thought it was a really cool way to connect with our fan base. It still felt like a little bit of a struggle, but also a step in the right direction in terms of like working towards something, while we were gaining a fanbase.
Utah was really kind to us, and it became a hub for us. And then Shyam left the band because he wanted to play bass instead of drums. He was a killer drummer but he wanted to switch paths himself. And Zach’s wife got pregnant and had a baby. This was in 2000 and at one point he was like, “I don’t know if I can do this.” He was feeling overwhelmed being a father and so he kind of pulled away for a minute but Dan and I were hungry to tour and like keep the momentum going so we joined Global Funk Council.
Those guys were hungry too and Anthony and Eric—Anthony Smith and Eric Bolivar—Anthony was part of The Giant People, which was a spinoff of Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe. Eric Bolivar also played in Tiny Universe at some point so those two were spearheading this funk, instrumental project with some vocals. Lebo was kind of the first one in, then I sort of followed. They toured nonstop and their goal was to live on the road and build it up. But after three or four months it didn’t feel balanced to me, and I missed ALO a little bit. We’d come back to the Bay Area to play a show and Zach would come out and he’d say, “Man, I wish I could figure out a way to do what you guys are doing.”
Then in 2002 Zach seemed interested again, and feeling better about family life, so the three of us were like, “Let’s try this again. We have some momentum, we have some fans, Lebo and I got like a little more experience touring, so we can maybe bring some of that in.” It took a few more drummers before we got to Dave, and that was within six or nine months. But once we had Dave locked in, it all started feeling like it was on track. That was in the fall of ’02.
Jack Johnson was doing great in ’02, he had, a record or two, maybe the second one was out. He was our old friend from Santa Barbara and he called us up and said, “Hey, I just added a second night in Denver at the Fillmore because the first one sold out and the opener can’t do the second night. Do you guys wanna do it?” And we’re like, “Yeah!” [Laughs.]
So we picked up Brogan in Portland and drove straight to Denver. That was our first gig with Brogan and it was the biggest gig ever we’d ever played. Jack was stoked to have us, we’d stayed friends, and he was like encouraging us to keep it going. So that felt really meaningful, and over the next two years we toured a little more of the western states and we did a Hawaii tour. We were still holding some part time jobs and stuff, but it felt much more meaningful.
Then in ’04, ’05 we were invited to open for Jack on his big summer tour. That was his In Between Dreams tour. We’d just put out our Fly Between Falls record which was still an independent release, but he ended up signing us to his label and re-releasing that record, so that was our first Brushfire release also. That also was the moment where it felt like it was on track—“This could be a thing so let’s walk away from our part time jobs as much as we can and focus.” Since then we’ve been pushing along and it’s grown in the right away. I think when Zach joined Jack’s band, that kind of shuffled things up a little bit but that’s another story.
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.
You have a trio with Ezra, Magic In The Other. You had a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund a record. Where does all that stand?
Ezra is from the East Coast. He went to school in Vermont, then he came out west, planted roots and has become part of this Bay Area music scene. He’s been playing with Phil Lesh, a bunch at Terrapin Crossroads and around the bay. He’s been in some different projects. Ezra played with Sean Hayes for a bit, so he’s done sort of singer-songwriter stuff, he’s done some world music stuff, he played with this Iranian musician for a while and toured New York with him.
He’s studied a lot of music but he’s always sort of been a side-man. He’s never been like in a band where he has a voice and his opinion counts. He even wrote this song “A Man Without A Band” that he would play at Terrapin Crossroads. So I think it finally came to a point with where he was like, “You know what, I just need to make a band. I need to stop talking about it and start a band.” The first two calls he put out were to me and to Roger [Riedlbauer] because he thought we’d be a good combination. Roger is a killer guitar player, lives in Oakland and he’s more in the jazz world than the Dead world. Both of those worlds exist in the Bay Area, but sometimes they don’t collide as much as you might think. He’s sort of like Bill Frisell with a punk-jazz, avant-garde approach.
I’d never met Roger, but I was like, “Sure! Let’s get together and see how it feels.” And when we did, our personalities just clicked and the three way energy was really good and it all felt balanced. Ezra had all these compositions written on paper. It was literally like reading scores of music off the page and putting the music together, which is something I don’t typically do with a rock band but, it was really cool. It took me back to college a little bit with studying scores.
So that’s kind of how it started and he didn’t even really have a name, but he said he’d been thinking about a name. After a couple of rehearsals he sort of sprung the band name on us and we are like, “Yeah! That’s awesome.” He explained it as he wanted this project to be something that would tap into the body, the mind, the soul and then this like other element that like would happen only when we would come together to play with an audience and that would be the magic. It would be this thing that you can’t plan for or rehearse for, but we want an element of that unknown magic. And so that’s sort of been the direction for us—trying to tap into this some headiness, some danciness, some spiritual soulfulness, and then whatever magic that happens because of all that.
We had our first rehearsals and then Ezra just booked a gig. He was like, “Let’s put a gig on the book. That’ll force our rehearsals to be more focused.” So we booked a gig and then by the fall, we decided to book a residency at this place in Berkeley, the Ivy Room. We played there every other Wednesday and we’d invite different people to open for us or we’d open for them if they were bigger. And that got us even more comfortable as a band and we started feeling like the band was taking shape and like there was people coming regularly.
So by the fall we were trying to figure out the band and we were like, “Let’s force another move and look at making a record.” We had some contacts at this killer studio in San Francisco called Tiny Telephone, which is all analog—we were convinced that it was going to be actually a cool approach for us and it has been. We are about 80% through it, but in the fall we launched this Kickstarter to help raise the money and we had this $18,000 goal. After week one we were like, “Oh crap, I hope that wasn’t too ambitious.” But it really picked up and we hit almost 20. So, it was super successful and we were really appreciative of all the support.
So we started recording in December and we have a couple more sessions on the books for tracking and mixing and hoping to have something out this summer or fall the latest. We raised enough money to do the recording and manufacture it and even get some merchandise pieces that were offered through the Kickstarter campaign.
After that comes out do you think you’re make it our way, out East?
We would love to hit the East Coast. Ezra is super pumped and motivated. It’ll be a balancing act of getting to the East Coast and making it affordable and seeing what kind of touring we can do. We hope to play some festivals this summer. We’re completely self-managed and self-booked and self-published. It’s the three of us, solely. We’re all chipping in however we can but we’re excited and we’ll see where this takes us.
