UK - The Let’s Go Round Again (One Last Time) tour was the final, farewell trip around the highways of Average White Band’s (AWB) UK roots. From Manchester to Scotland via the Royal Albert Hall, the tour was a celebration of the power of AWB.
Charlie Dale, at the front of house position, chose to tour with a DiGiCo SD10, thanks to the accessibility of the console’s surface and Mark Gazaille at the monitor position opted for the SD12. The tour covered the UK over April and May, with the band saying their final goodbyes in the USA from July.
Charlie Dale has been with the band since meeting them at his day job, mixing sound at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. The band had arrived without an engineer, so he jumped in, sparking a relationship that would stand the test of time and continue for over 15 years. The choice to tour a DiGiCo SD10 was a slightly selfish one. Even though the tour was almost exclusively theatres and intimate venues, Dale chose the SD10 so he could have his entire mix on one surface.
“It's nice having a DiGiCo with me, partly because I know the console backwards but also because of the processing,” Dale explains. “It allows me to quite subtly mix, in a way I wouldn't be able to do with other consoles. Like using a little bit of dynamic EQ where it's needed rather than hacking an EQ to make something sound good. We were travelling to a variety of venues from theatres to clubs, so having all those all those tools built into the console is great.”
When touring multiple venues of different sizes, the consistency of the DiGiCo SD10 ensures that every performance goes smoothly. Joining Dale and the SD10 at front of house is Mark Gazaille, using the SD12 at the monitor position. On a paired back tour with a limited crew, it is important for the engineers to know their desks inside out and having consoles that both engineers can use without thinking is a huge advantage.
The Average White Band set-up is old-school; there is no track or timecode, just a really tight band.
“It's just seven guys playing amazing soul music,” Dale remarks. “In a world where so much of what we mix is heavily programmed and the songs are a set length because it’s all to timecode, it's really lovely to go back to that feeling of ‘I'm mixing all of this!’ Being with the band in the Albert Hall was phenomenal. Throughout the tour, we’ve done some lovely theatres, festivals and also tiny venues. The set-up is quite simple, we don’t take much with us, but it’s a joy in every space.”
