Steve Adams of ALO
 

Homies with Jack Johnson, tour mates with Dave Matthews...these guys should reek of patchouli and hippy ass, but their refreshing balance of pop, rock, groove and soul is funky in a good way. With sweet sensibilities and technical proficiency, ALO appeal to a broad range of music fans, with and without dreadlocks. I got the chance to speak with bassist Steve Adams to find out more about this experimental group.



Where are you from?

Dan, Zach and I grew up together in Saratoga, CA, the valley side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, about an hour south of San Francisco. And Dave grew up in Tulare, CA, central California near Fresno, a few hours northeast of Los Angeles. Dan, Zach and I met Dave in college at the University California Santa Barbara (UCSB) in the mid-90’s.

When/how did the band form?

ALO started out as The Animal Liberation Orchestra & The Free Range Horns, a 9-piece funk orchestra of sorts. We had the five horn players and then a four-piece rhythm section core.

A little background… Zach, Dan and I have been playing music together since middle school. We had the same band from middle school through high school and into college. Our original drummer moved back home half way through college and we started looking for a replacement drummer. We were called Django back then, a name we had for about 7 years actually. We knew Dave from a band he was playing in called Evil Farmer and Dan, Zach and I would go see as may of their shows as we possibly could, we absolutely loved Dave’s band. Evil Farmer eventually came to a close and Dave started playing around town in some other bands and somehow, he found out that we had a garage with some space and he came by one day and asked if he could store his drums in our garage. So all at once, we were looking for a drummer and there in our garage were Dave’s drums. So of course we ended up jamming a bit and pretty quickly hit it off and started playing out. We taught him the Django songs we were playing at the time and he taught as some Evil Farmer songs, and we put a great set together. We recorded a demo, played some shows in Santa Barbara and then drove out to Augusta, GA for the summer to hang with some of our friends in the James Brown band and pursue the blessing of the Godfather of Soul himself. We had an incredible summer hanging out and touring around the southern states. We came back to Santa Barbara at the end of the summer. Dan, Zach and myself had a couple years of college to finish still, while Dave had already finished his degree. Dave decided to move to Seattle that fall which marked the official end of Django.

Dan, Zach and I continued playing the following years, forming different bands with different drummers, shuffling through different band names. By our last year of college, we had put together the vision for The Animal Liberation Orchestra & The Free Range Horns, a 9-piece funk orchestra without boundaries of any kind, where we would encourage people to come out to the shows and liberate their inner animals. And we would of course try for the same! We had our Jazz Band director on drums who helped arrange a lot of our horn charts and we would blend theatrics, improvisation, stage props and anything else we could come up with that week to make the show special. We released our first record “ALO vs. LAG” that last year of college, which showcased the full 9-piece band on the first half of the album and our acoustic experimental home recordings on the second half. LAG stood for Lebowitz, Adams and Gill and represented our acoustic trio that we assembled once we realized we were moving through drummers at a Spinal Tap rate!

At the end of college, Dan, Zach and I left Santa Barbara to move back home to the Bay Area. Between San Francisco and Marin Country, we kept the LAG process going, playing acoustic cafes, street corners, political rallies and such, al the while continuing to write and record at home as much as we could. We also kept ALO going with a few great drummers, playing local gigs and touring out to Salt Lake City, UT and back. We recorded two more ALO records, a soundtrack to an independent film called “One Size Fits All” and a funky electronic EP called “Time Expander”. We took a little time off after a couple years in the Bay Area but then picked the pieces back up in 2002 with a more concentrated effort. ALO did some summer touring with another drummer who ended up leaving a few months later in the fall. And right around then, we got a call from our college buddy, Jack Johnson, who we met at UCSB and had become good friends since. He had added a second night at The Fillmore in Denver, CO due to a quickly sold-out first night and his opener couldn’t do the second night so he was calling us to see if we could take the spot. Excited by the opportunity to reconnect with Jack and play a big show, we called up Dave in Seattle to see if he could help out. Dave had just finished up some work and had a pretty free schedule and gladly said yes to the gig. We picked him up in Portland, OR, drove across the western states, rehearsed in motel bathrooms with our acoustic instruments, got to Denver and played the set. This was our first gig back with Dave since our Georgia summer and our first reconnection with Jack since his debut record “Brushfire Fairytales” was released. For me, it really marks the beginning of so much, but mostly the beginning of ALO with Dave on drums and the beginning of our post-college friendship with Jack.

Explain the name.

Dan, Zach and I started The Animal Liberation Orchestra with the goal of bringing people together to explore the boundary-less frontiers or our imagination in the context of a soulful celebration. I believe we are still more or less on that path.

Did making the album before 'road-testing' the songs change the way the songs came out?

Leading up to Roses & Clover, we had such a history of writing songs, playing them live, and then recording our favorites and putting together a record. We had done this independently for as long as we’d be been a band. I think part of the reason we wanted to go into the studio with a completely fresh palette was that we thought there could be some value in creating music as a band with only our own influences and opinions to process. When you play songs live, you’re sharing them with an audience that will hopefully react in some way and in turn, form impressions of your music for you. “That one was a real hit live, people laughed when we said that, people looked bored when we did this…” And then there’s all the chatter that sometimes makes its way to you. So we wanted to create something completely fresh and something that we could say we loved at the end of the day, no matter what impression it would make once it left our hands. It was scary in some ways because this was the first record we’d ever made for a record label, so we not only wanted to please ourselves, but we also wanted the label to be stoked and ultimately our current fans and potential new fans as well. You make steps in your career and you always want things to grow a little more, whether it’s your own personal growth or the growth as a band or the growth of your community. And we always hope we’re making the right choices, and sometimes you just have to trust your instincts as you go.

Having experienced both methods of album-making, which do you prefer?

I feel great that we did this last record the way we did. It was something we had realized a while back, that this way was even an option. So it was sort of like following through with a vision, which feels great. As far as comparing the two methods, I think we all agree that we’d love to continue working with this latest approach for at least the next record or two, and build on it even more. It really creates an amazing focus, both in the studio while you’re recording and then once the album is done. Your album is kind of like your guiding light that helps lead the way through all the things that follow once it’s out, especially touring and the live show.

Do you even like making albums?

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a musician say they don’t like making albums. It’s definitely challenging at times and there can be a lot of pressure I’m sure if you’re in that type of situation, but making albums is half the joy of the job. It’s amazing and fun and just an incredible context to create and explore and experiment. And being able to listen back to all the effort you pour into a recording can be one of the most rewarding feelings ever. The other half of the job is of course performing, which is equally fullfilling but in a whole other way. I absolutely love how they compliment each other and shape our lives.

How did Jack Johnson get involved?

Basically, Jack was a good friend of ours in college. We lived in the dorms together our freshman year and both had bands and would cross paths around town. During those years, we got to know each other well and would hang out and jam and record just for fun. When Jack’s college band sort of ended, we would invite him out to come sit-in with us, in whatever band we had going on at the time. He would show us some tunes and we would basically back him up. We all graduated around the same time and went our separate ways for a few years but stayed in touch and continued to support each other and hang out whenever we could. All that led to Jack tracking with us for Fly Between Falls. He always liked our song “Girl, I Wanna Lay You Down” and he was even having Zach come out to his shows to sing and play accordion and they’d do that song together. So it made sense to track that one with Jack when we did. And then that led to Zach eventually joining Jack’s band on keys, ALO supporting Jack on his “In Between Dreams” tour around the globe, and after that, getting signed to Brushfire Records.

While I wouldn't call you a jam band, you're definitely in that same vein. I have always been impressed by how passionate fans are in that genre, fully dedicating to artists. I guess they're all looking for the next 'Dead' experience. What do you think of being a part of that community?

It’s an incredible community to be a part of. Like you said, the fans are extremely passionate and really love to get involved. The Dead seemed to really be one of those bands that fans formed a whole community around. And I think a big part of that was their experimental approach that made every show unique which got fans excited to jump on tour with them.

I think the community and the varied live shows and even the improvisation that happens on stage are what make the jamband scene what it is. And I think ALO is pretty connected to all of that. I think sometimes we feel especially connected to the Dead tradition specifically, maybe since we grew up in the same area and have been surrounded by not only their history but also a lot of the things that were influencing their music and experience at that time – the diverse music scene, the diverse geography, the liberal spirit of the Bay Area and the general northern California vibe.

Do you have any 'mainstream dreams'?

It’s always been a dream since we were kids to see our music in stores and hear it on the radio. And I can’t tell you how much we appreciate that that’s actually happened for us, in our own relative way. And to see that happen where we’ve been able to still make the music we love and are very connected to has made it even more incredible. I think our biggest hope is that we can continue making the music we love, and continue exploring and creating, and that people will somehow connect to it and appreciate it as much as us. And the more people on board, mainstream or whatever, the greater the possibilities we all will have to experience all this together.

The digital version is clearly no replacement for the real thing, but what do you think of social networking sites and all the other things that allow you to reach out to fans while still keeping them at arms length?

The internet in general has shrunken the world down immensely. The fact that we and our fans can communicate across town, across the country, across the world, is simply amazing. The internet may even be the best tool possible to bring people together and rally movements for positive change. It’s an inspiring time, I feel really lucky to be alive in this day and age. The possibilities for taking our global community to another level are right at our finger tips, and that’s really exciting!

Give me the ultimate concert billing- any band, dead or alive, yourself included or not.


I love this question, even though it’s a really tough one to narrow down.

The Rolling Stones 10-11:30
The Band w/ Bob Dylan 8:15-9:45
The Beatles 7-8
Aretha Franlklin 6-6:45
Booker T. & The M.G.’s 5-5:45

At The Fillmore in San Francisco, sometime in the early 70’s!


Where is your favorite place to play?

The Fillmore in San Francisco is definitely high up there with my favorites. I also love playing The Bonarroo Music Festival since their line-up is always really good. And I really love traveling to London, Amsterdam and Shibuya in Tokyo.

Are fans very different from city to city or do they all respond to you the same way?

I think most of our fans know, by listening to our albums or downloading live shows or chatting on the message boards, that we put on a pretty engaging show. We love to mix up our setlists, experiment with taking songs into other songs, get people moving and dancing and singing along. So I feel like people are more and more responding to all those things. The big difference from the city to city is mainly just the cultural differences in how people express those things. We’ve noticed that in warmer climate towns, people are generally a little more loose and ready to go. Whereas the colder towns it may take people a little longer to warm up to the band. But it’s actually pretty amazing how similar the fans can be considering how different they might be culturally. I feel like music can really do that, bring people together through a timeless emotional connection that sort of crosses the differences between people.

What is it about your band that sets you apart?

It’s hard to know what exactly sets you apart from other bands sometimes, but I think our feel-good vibe, our appreciation and blend of both classic and contemporary music, and the incredible community we share with our fans all contribute to making ALO something all its own.

Who is your favorite band member?

Haha! I love all three guys pretty equally.

What's next for you guys?

Well, we hope to make it back over to Europe this year to support this release, that would be great! We are taking a little time off for the first half of the year. Zach will be out on tour with Jack Johnson. Jack’s got a new record coming out and they have a lot of tour dates coming up. Zach and Dave have also carved out some time to work on some recordings of their own, possibly for release sometime this year. I feel like Dan might be interested in doing more shows with his own group as well. Dan and I also play with a great singer/songwriter out of California named Brett Dennen. We have some shows lined up with him this spring. I made it out to England with Brett earlier in ’07 so maybe that’ll be another possibility. I’ve also been playing with another great singer/songwriter, Sara Bareilles, who I met on Brett tour actually. So I’ve got some shows coming up with her. We all have our hands in a few things and hopefully we’ll be able to squeeze some ALO shows in around all that. And then the fall will be our next window to get back together, so we’ll see what happens. I could see jumping into another record, more touring, etc… Time will tell.

Anything you want to plug?

Our website, ALO, Animal Liberation Orchestra.

Listen to music, watch videos, browse photo galleries, skim archive lists and connect to other online hubs – myspace.com, facebook.com, and archive.org for live streaming and downloads, just to name a few.

Awesome, thanks so much for your time!!

My pleasure, thanks!