He also produces an album every two years or so, and on tonight’s evidence he certainly has an ear for a melody. And that’s essentially why he needs a voice; for the bluesy part of his repertoire he can get away with his shouty vocals, just another cracked walnut veneer on the guitar of melancholy, but when it comes to Parisian Walkway and the like, he needs a voice that can match all the subtlety and nuance of his beautiful tunes. Thus a Gary Moore show is a concert for six string purists, his tours ply the small theatre and town hall circuit, hence just one 45ft stage truck parked outside (and hence the reason he makes money touring). But with the right larynx he could double his audience. Still, he looks happy enough.
LightingThe rig is supplied by DLD, or rather by LXCO (for the kind of complicated reasons it’s probably best to ask James Dan about). A rare visitor to these pages, the lighting is on first examination singularly conventional. LD Mark Scrimshaw has a simple two-truss rig (TFL pre-rig), about 100 Pars, including ACLs, with eight each of Martin’s MAC 500s and 600s. But this is not Dullsville personified: "I’ve been lighting Gary for about three-and-half years now," said Scrimshaw. "When I joined, his previous lighting had been played against a plain black backdrop - since then I’ve introduced some dimension at the back. On the last tour, we had white silk legs to stripe the blackcloth, whereas this year I have a more familiar white cyc with black gauze. It’s nothing new, it’s all been done before, but with colour and somewhere to project gobos I can do more than just complement the music." As you’ll have gathered, this is not a light show - Scrimshaws lights are expected to be sympathetic to what’s happening on stage, not detract from it.
"Gary pretty much lets me do what I like. He’s insistent on not too much smoke, or rather haze, so I just have a Star Hazer ticking over at the back. He doesn’t really like spotlights, though he accepts their necessity." Scrimshaw is using a Robert Juliat Foxie spot, heavily dowsed, which he gets away with for two reasons. The predominant wash palette is saturated hues, so the weakened light of the spot is readable. Likewise, the cyc’ tends to the richer hues, so Moore is already pulled into prominence by the ETC Source Four profiles Scrimshaw has positioned above the guitarist’s two favourite spots on stage.
The looks are predictable, inasmuch as you get feature on the back, be it uplight from the Par/Chroma-Q scroller combos at the foot of the cyc’, or from the MACs in the rig, plus at any time about 25kW of two-colour wash on stage from above. Attractive is the word: the stage never fails to look nicely set, and let’s not forget, it could be down and dingy. But it’s a shame Scrimshaw wastes the opportunity to put some flesh-tone on the other three musicians, for the sake of a few more profiles he could lift the whole mood significantly.
Scrimshaw operates from a Hog II: "The Hog Edit is a life-saver for a tour like this. With no production rehearsals, I can still get in my patch, build palettes, and my basic programming structure at the first show." It’s not a cue-heavy show, not on the ‘beat’, but Scrimshaw has taken the time to add some nice little muted flourishes with his moving lights to punctuate the changes. It will be interesting to see what he does with a more dynamic artist.
AudioThe PA system is provided by Capital Sound, a Martin Audio W8 system: "It’s a regular for me," said Andy May. "The
