Hybrid Heaven

As ALO drop their first studio album in eight years, Dan "Lebo" Lebowitz reveals his secrets to achieving glorious amplified acoustic tone.

- JIMMY LESLIE

THE LINES BETWEEN acoustic and electric become more blurred every day, and one cat that’s had a hybrid vision for a cool quarter century now is ALO’s Dan “Lebo” Lebowitz. He essentially turns a grand auditorium cutaway into a hollow-body electric by using a sound-hole pickup through a tube amp, and he can make it sound like Trey Anastasio meets Wes Montgomery.

Lebowitz is a regular call for Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and other festival scene luminaries, including Jack Johnson. He’ll be an artist-at-large again this year at the High Sierra Music Festival, where he’s liable to play a dozen or so sets with numerous acts. You’d be hard-pressed to name another guitarist on the NorCal scene over this past quarter century that’s played a more unifying, Jerry Garcia–like role as a player and person.

We headed to the Fillmore to catch a sold-out show in support of ALO’s first new studio album in eight years, Silver Saturdays, which was just released on Johnson’s Brushfire Records, and what a silver jubilee celebration! It was a gas to watch folks decked out in silver duds and Lebo T-shirts descend on the historic venue. Band members that have been besties since middle school include Lebowitz, Steve Adams on bass and Zach Gill on keyboards and vocals. The relatively new kid on the drum kit is Ezra Lipp. On and offstage, they exemplify togetherness. Jazz trained, they improvise as naturally as breathing. Lebo is the most gregarious, leaping around and rocking out from atop the PA speakers while ripping lead licks laced with copious effects, from Whammy to wah, that no one would imagine were coming from an acoustic.