The Let’s Go Round Again (One Last Time) tour was the final, farewell trip around the highways of Average White Band’s UK roots. From Manchester to Scotland via the Royal Albert Hall, the tour was a celebration of the Scottish soul and R&B giants. 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 2024.
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 explained. “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. Having the experience of mixing this iconic group and enjoying such a strong relationship has been a fantastic experience for Dale.
“It’s just seven guys playing amazing soul music,” Dale remarked. “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.”
Touring with the DiGiCo SD10 front of house, means that Dale is not taking a rack of outboard, just a single favourite reverb. On stage with the SD12, there are 4 monitor wedges and four IEM mixes. Keeping it simple means the stage sound is lower, so in venues with less than perfect acoustics Dale and Gazaille are able to keep it sounding great by avoiding putting too much energy into the room.
While not all his gigs are this paired back, using the SD10 can feel like having a whole warehouse team and equipment at your disposal, as he concludes. “I have other bands where I am using all the bells and whistles. Snapshots are really powerful in those situations,” said Dale. “Recently, for the Rewind Festival in Dublin, we had a single house band that stayed on for the whole show. Throughout the evening, we had rapid change overs between numbers and Snapshots were really useful then. It’s great to have the power of the console in those situations to keep it all rolling. One major thing about DiGiCo is the tech support. I haven’t needed it on this tour, but I did need it for Rewind and just having someone at the end of the phone who can help you out straight away is phenomenal.”
