“The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday, but never jam to-day.”
- Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
I’ve said previously in the halls of this sector that Sammy Hagar is my most patronized musical artist over the course of my lifetime. A very close second would be Zach Gill, infamously of Jack Johnson fame in being Jack’s keyboardist partner-in-crime, more properly the frontman for his own jam band outfit, Animal Liberation Orchestra.
I’ve seen ALO many, many times, as their acronym stands among their rabidly fervent fan base. They call themselves Shapeshifters and I was once a stalwart member in good standing.
The thing is, I mostly can’t stand jam bands.
I know, seems counterintuitive to all of my concert shenanigans and general overall pseudo-hippie-dippie mentality.
Here’s a secret I’m willing to impart to you loyalist Show readers.
I only just this year got into the Dead.
I know!
It kinda happened because of a fortuitous invite to the Sphere in Las Vegas to see Dead and Company, pretty much the Bob Weir and John Mayer variety hour, but the songs themselves, bolstered by the Sphere’s incredible immersive experience (we’ll be doing an extended multi-part series on the Sphere, fret not), were incandescent and transformative, just like the fuckin’ Deadheads have been saying for sixty years. If only I’d seen them with Jerry. Heck, if only I’d seen them with Phil. I’m very, very late to the Dead party.
That said, ALO was more or less my substitute for the extended jam motif.
I got into them, much like I did with G Love and Special Sauce, through their frequent collaborations and opener gigs with Brushfire Records label mate Jack Johnson. Interestingly, as I mentioned earlier in this series regarding Jack Johnson and how I’m fair certain I caught Jack’s first band Soil somewhere in the depths of UCSB’s college ‘burg Isla Vista, so too did I probably catch Zach’s first I.V. band Django. Their friendly rivalry resulted in Jack and Zach ended up becoming lifelong pals (they share the same birthday) and band mates.
Zach’s a local fixture here in Santa Barbara. Me and the wifey see him and his wifey all the time, at Whole Foods, on the beach, crossing the street, at the Summer Solstice parade, Earth Day celebrations. We know each other by name, but that’s pretty much where our familiarity hits the limit. He does a lot of charitable work for local causes, and thusly have I seen Zach Gill solo many times over, but not near as much as when he tours or announces one-off gigs for ALO here in Southern California, as well as his standard appearances within Jack’s band every three years or so. He’s a top shelf pianist and keyboardist, he plays a mean melodica and accordian as well. Sounds pretty hipster beatnik, yeah? Zach is literally the epitome of hipster beatnik, with his long, thinning hippie hair, his wacky in-concert headgear, his crazed, acid eyes, and his amiable, ne’er-do-well, man-about-town gadfly sort of easygoing dudeness. If Santa Barbara has a Dude-apprentice (Jeff Bridges lives here in town as well), Zach is it.
The other three fellas in the band are equitably impressive musicians, including Dan ‘Lebo’ Lebowitz, ALO’s guitarist, bassist Steve Adams, and Ezra Lipp, their current drummer. Though our heyday era in ALO fandom was when Dave Brogan was drumming for them, and I admit that is my preferred ALO lineup. Dave sings lead on several ALO songs I truly enjoy, particularly fan favorites Wasting Time (the I.V. Song), Empty Vessel, and Coast to Coast. All of them take turns singing lead on different tracks, though Zach does most of the heavy lifting. Dave had to leave the band for personal reasons, and while Ezra is a monster percussionist in his own right, I think ALO was best with Dave, despite his legendary curmudgeonly personality.
Dan is a consummate musician’s working musician. He plays with a lot of famous peers up in the Bay Area where he lives, like at Terrapin Crossroads, an infamous roadhouse venue where he jammed with many of the Dead’s members, especially Phil Lesh and friends. He’s a killer axe man, wildly versatile, and one of my favorite ways to watch Dan ply his craft is when he play the slide or steel pedal guitar. I have a soft spot for those instruments, they’re literally the most difficult strings to play at expert levels, and Dan’s definitely one of those cats who does exactly that (I’ll be doing a segment soon on steel pedal modern master Robert Randolph).
I’ve probably talked with Steve the most of all the band members. When they play Santa Barbara’s club venue SoHo each year, we often catch Steve before the gig and jaw for a bit. He’s a chill kinda guy, longtime best friends with Zach, owns a record shop in Berkeley. Stellar deep end man, great vocalist, the glue that holds ALO together.
Contrary to Dave’s notorious grumpiness, he was overtly friendly and engaging in conversation when we palavered over the years. I don’t really know Ezra because we’ve been missing the last few years of ALO tours due to life being lifey, and Ezra joined the band in only 2018. Then we sat out the music scene for a couple years thanks to Covid. We have seen ALO with Ezra a few times since, and he’s a valiant replacement for Dave.
The usual fashion in which Southern Californians attend ALO gigs is either when they open for Jack, or during one of two ‘themed’ tours they host annually: a ‘Tour d’Amour’ every February for a Valentine’s Day celebration and a short Halloween run in October. That latter deal is still my favorite way to see ALO. Costumes, spooky shenanigans and themed songs, the whole nine yards. ALO is a fun outfit, and they love their fans, often taking set list requests on socials before every gig. One year I drove all the way up to the Fillmore in San Francisco to see them, a fair jaunt for me, mostly because I’d always wanted to attend the infamous Bay Area club notorious for hosting the likes of the Doors and Hendrix and pretty much everyone and anyone. It was a rocking good time, well worth the drive, and honestly, I got some of the best pix of ALO ever at that gig, as seen below.
The hard truth is, for a Gen X fella frequently chained to his classic rock roots, I tend to eschew songs lasting twenty minutes or more. It’s not that I don’t have the attention span or the wherewithal. I do. It’s that I prefer hearing more songs in a set from some band I enjoy. I’d rather hear eighteen 3-4 minute songs than six 20 minute songs, ya know? That’s one of the reason I never got into the Dead before this year, or Phish. The only exception was ALO themselves. When I first got into them, I would dare say they were more often a garage-folk rock band than they were a jam band, but fellow Shapeshifters might disagree with me. Sure, they played 15 minute versions of Maria or Cowboys and Chorus Girls, but they also filled the set with precision snap-tracks like The Ticket, Plastic Bubble, Lady Loop, and Barbecue, plus plenty of covers from classic bands of the seventies and eighties.
These days they definitely have embraced their Dead/Phish leanings, and now play three hour sets with two intermissions, proffering songs that last 20 to 30 minutes. The Shapeshifters love it. Me, a little less so, not because their musicianship is any lesser, ‘cause it sure as shit ain’t, but because again, the extended jam thing just isn’t, well, my extended jam.
Nonetheless, I was a legit Shapeshifter for years. In fact, as part of their ‘Hot Tub Club’ fan club perks one year, me and the wifey were selected amidst a tiny handful of their fans to receive a personalized song-riff from the band, replete with personal references provided by us. Ours was a Lebo-driven effort with a Middle-Eastern sitar flair and some Moroccan style vox from the guitarist, and of course we loved it…how could we not?
My preferred ALO works? I’m a big fan of their seminal album Roses and Clover. My favorite ALO tune was dropped on their very first EP, a song called Time is of the Essence, a track I’ve requested them to play live a few times before a pending SoHo gig and they were gracious enough to accommodate me. Yet their best album may be Tangle of Time, itself boasting a track called Undertow, my favorite tune showcasing Lebo’s vox, a slow burner ballad that’s velvet-smokey smooth.
For well over a decade, ALO more or less heralded my holiday seasons every year, New Year’s Eves and Valentines, Saint Patrick’s Day and Halloween, summertime gigs with Jack Johnson, and Zach solo fundraising gigs at Christmas time. They’re a Californian melting pot, a four-piece porridge of genres across the entire musical spectrum, classic rock to psychedelic jam, jazz to blues, pop to hip hop. You’re just as likely to hear U2’s Where the Streets Have No Name or Madonna’s Material Girl at an ALO gig as you are the Grateful Dead’s Franklin’s Tower or Van Morrison’s Into the Mystic.
I have many stellar pix of ALO and Zach, far too many to tender hereabouts. It might be I’ve seen ALO more than I’ve seen Sammy Hagar, actually, now that I’m looking over all these archives in hindsight for this Substack sector. I may have to adjust my numerical rankings accordingly.
I’m fine with that. ALO is the best damned band many of you have never heard of, and you’re unknowingly poorer for it. Download Tangle of Time and spin those funkalicious songs. You’ll thank me later.
