9 Questions With Animal Liberation Orchestra’s Dan Lebowitz

With Animal Liberation Orchestra’s Dan Lebowitz

Describe your favorite trip to Vegas. We were playing a pool party the last time Phish was there [’04] at the Wild West and it was such a fun gig, watching people come out and get all wild. My favorite moment was at the end of the show. As we ended the song, one by one we all jumped from the stage into the pool. As soon as we jumped in, everyone in the crowd jumped in with us. Steve [Adams], the last person to leave the stage, left his bass ringing out and ran.

One Vegoose band I’d love to collaborate with is… There are so many good ones. Jack [Johnson] is going to be there and we have collaborated with him all summer so I guess that doesn’t really count [laughs]. Of all the groups there, I would like to find a great Elvis impersonator.

If you were to cover an Elvis song, which one would it be? “Viva Las Vegas.”

What is the worst thing about living on a tour bus? The worst thing is that you have to keep it pretty cold. The mantra is “a cold bus is a healthy bus.” I like to experiment with it because I’m not a big fan of air conditioning. So one day we turned the air conditioning off and we got it to a comfortable temperature. But, I’ll tell you, after you have been on a bus that long, you’re able to tell people have been living on it when it warms up. The smell kind of changes and I quickly learned why the mantra is there.

What is the biggest misconception about ALO? Probably that we are animal rights activists. From time to time we’ll get a few emails about it. It’s kind of fun because it sparks up conversation. The name definitely has lots of meaning to it, being that we are all about freeing your inner animal.

What is the best album you’ve heard in the last year? I would have to say Allison Krauss’s new album, Lonely Runs Both Ways. My favorite song on the album is the instrumental “Unionhouse Branch.”

Which one of your own songs are you definitely not going to play at Vegoose? I don’t think we have a single song that I can say we definitely won’t play. Vegas is an anything goes kind of place.

What’s the longest stretch of time you’ve ever stayed up? Into the three-day mark. I don’t think I’ve ever done a full three days without a wink of sleep but it has come pretty close. Actually, a couple of days ago we played our last show in Toronto with Jack Johnson. After the tour there was a party so we stayed up for that and then went and packed out of our hotel. Then we went straight to a gig in Monterrey, CA and ended up staying up all the way into the night. It was a marathon weekend. I can handle doing that but then I need to go and hibernate for a couple of days.

Any words of advice for aspiring poker players? Know when to fold them and know when to hold them!

ALO plays Vegoose at the Sam Boyd Stadium on Sunday, October 30