Bay Area jam band stalwarts ALO finished their “Tour D’Amour” this week with shows in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. This was the 18th annual west coast Tour D’Amour – and as usual, the quartet shared oodles of love with their devoted fans, known as the “Shapeshifters.”
That love is palpable. It starts on stage and radiates out to the audience. Founding members Dan “Lebo” Lebowitz (guitar and vocals), Zach Gill (keyboards, accordion, ukulele, and vocals), and Steve Adams (bass, vocals) began their lifelong friendship in elementary school. They formed their first band in junior high and then launched Animal Liberation Orchestra as college kids attending UC Santa Barbara. That lifelong bond, now decades in the forging, casts a wide shadow, enveloping a legion of diehard fans who call themselves Shapeshifters (named for one of the band’s early songs).
Nowadays, Animal Liberation Orchestra is known by most fans simply as ALO. The band’s website (www.alomusic.com) says the original, unabbreviated name is an “a.k.a.” moniker. Wikipedia says the same, and if you search for the full name on Spotify, it pops up as “ALO.” Call them what you will; the result is fun, funky, and free-flowing jam band heaven.
ALO is all about sharing and caring. All four members contribute songs for every album. Frames, which drops in April, features at least two songs from each member. Even so, it’s a team effort. Lebo described the creative process in a recent conversation: “We're really open to the idea of … collaborating on our ideas. That's kind of the unspoken rule. You throw out an idea and it doesn't stick and you're like, okay, cool. Or someone else throws out an idea.”
That collaboration extends to ALO’s live shows. The four musicians rotate turns as “set list captain” for each live show. Everybody gets solos; everybody takes a turn on the mic thanking the audience and praising – and often teasing – each other.
Drummer Ezra Lipp (who also contributes vocals) has been part of the ALO lovefest since 2018. His creativity and musicality mesh lovingly in the quartet’s milieu. For instance, there’s Lipp’s “You May Not Get It All,” a new tune that appeared in at least a few set lists on the current tour. The refrain, which follows the title lyric in the chorus with “But that’s all right,” fits right in with ALO’s we-love-you-no-matter-what aesthetic.
ALO is also all about fun. Gill has his toys, including a red laser beam on the end of his uke, a psychedelic electric light whip, and the toy bullhorn he uses for vocal effects on “Cowboys and Chorus Girls.” (Any of these may or may not make an appearance on any given night.) A confetti bomb often drenches the fans with color. The lyrics are often silly.
More fun: Lebo, who is all smiles (except when he’s shredding, which is often), has a script “L” drawn on his acoustic guitars. Maybe not all of the Shapeshifters are old enough to associate that “L” with the “L” sewn onto every article of clothing ever worn by “Laverne” on the classic 70s sitcom “Laverne and Shirley.” So, if you didn’t know that before, you know it now.
A fixture of almost every ALO show is the “Lebo Leap,” a set-ending aerial vault that every photographer on the scene wants to capture. (As a photog, I still have not captured my perfect “Lebo Leap” shot – call it a bucket list item.) At that Fillmore show, the showman defied gravity with a “Lebo Leap” at the crescendo of “Lady Loop.”
Throughout the nine-city Tour D’Amour, which was wrapped on either side of a Jam Cruise jaunt by the band in mid-February, ALO played at least 50 different original songs. The tour catalog included songs from every ALO album, including premieres of most of the tracks that will be included on Frames.
A personal favorite among those newbies is Adams’ “Separated, Come Together,” which ALO played at the Fillmore show. Speaking recently about one particular aspect of his song, Adams says that the guys in ALO, “All have separate lives and separate paths – but when we come together … we get on the same page and figure out what it means to be a band. You become a single entity from these four parts.”
It’s easy to extend that analogy to the entire auditorium. The Bay Area Shapeshifters in particular may not spend all their day-to-day time together, but at the Fillmore, at least 25 of the rail riders are the same folks who can be found in the front row at any ALO show within 100 miles of San Francisco. We might live separated, but we all come together.
“Separated” is a lively rocker with room to stretch, and it’s easy to see ALO adding a bigger jam in the middle as they explore the edges. The same can be said of many of the new songs, almost none of which were tried out on stage before being recorded for the album. Talking about the new songs between shows early in the tour, Lipp said, “I’m hearing some of the things live that I think are right in the wheelhouse, and I’m hearing some things live that might go to a little bit of a new place.”
Another new tune is Lebo’s “Space Between Frames.” The lyrics on this song point to that very idea: “In the space between frames, that’s where we figure it out.” Like so many jam bands, ALO is comfortable playing with a new toy on stage, seeing what emerges over time. Lebo says, “New music always stretches us and pushes us a little different direction.” Shape shifting. That’s part of the ALO magic too.
A number of covers made the cut on Tour D’Amour. Among those, a nightly guest appearance mid-show by tour openers Glitterfox alternated between Alanis Morisette’s “You Oughta Know” and a Janis Joplin version of “Piece of My Heart.” The Fillmore audience in San Francisco got to hear both songs and gave an enthusiastic reception to Glitterfox’s Solange Igoa in response to her passionate vocals and rock star poses.
In Portland at The Get Down last Thursday, Gill returned the favor, adding accordion on Glitterfox’s “Xalbadorren Heriotzean,” a bouncy polka that evokes ABBA’s “Fernando.” But Glitterfox doesn’t need Gill to thrill. Igoa’s perfect pitch trills (a touch of Joan Baez, a hint of Melanie) are captivating, and the foursome’s songs are catchy. Portland was a hometown show for Glitterfox, and they had their own fans in the house alongside the Shapeshifters (and in at least a few cases, they were one and the same).
The pictures accompanying this article are from the San Francisco and Portland shows. Here are the ALO set lists from those two appearances:
THE FILLMORE, SAN FRANCISCO, February 22, 2025
SET ONE:
Get To Do It Again
Blew Out the Walls
IV Song
Separated, Come Together
Rescue Our Demons
Bizarre Love Triangle
Growing Your Hands Back
SET TWO:
Blank Canvas
Space Between Frames
You Oughta Know (with Glitterfox)
Piece of My Heart (with Glitterfox)
Barbeque > Your Wildest Dreams > Barbeque
Not Old Yet
Cowboys and Chorus Girls
Room For Bloomin‘ > Tequila > Room For Bloomin’
ENCORE:
Storms and Hurricanes
Rewind
Lady Loop
THE GET DOWN, PORTLAND OR, February 27, 2025
SET ONE:
Girl I Wanna Lay Your Down
Black Canvas
Plastic Bubble
Try
You May Not Get It All
Sugar On Your Tongue (With Matt Butler)
Country Electro
Piece Of My Heart (with Glitterfox)
SET TWO:
Intro/Tuning
Dead Still Dance
Space Between Frames
Waiting For Jaden
I Love Music (With Laz Blakeman)
Roses and Clovers (With Sean McClain)
Devine Fall
Walls of Jericho
ENCORE:
Hot Damn
