Arguably most famous for the 1966 album Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton - or, as most refer to it, the Beano album - Mayall has worked with many of the biggest names in the business. His distinctive vocals, harmonica, guitar and keyboard-playing continue to inspire new generations of musicians such as Oli Brown, a young blues guitarist / vocalist whose band is the support act on this tour.
Supplied by Weymouth-based Atlantic Audio, the front of house sound for both bands is mixed on a Yamaha M7CL-48, with an LS9-32 at the monitor position. In between his duties of being Mayall's manager, tour manager and backline tech, Claude Taylor - fondly referred to as 'Grandad' by the rest of the crew - somehow finds time to be front of house engineer as well. Sharing the M7CL with Mark 'Scooby' Widdowson, who is system tech and FOH engineer for the Oli Brown band, it soon becomes apparent that multi-tasking is the order of the day.
"Mark and Dan (Parry, monitor engineer) are really good," says Taylor. "Mark sets everything up while I run round, put the bands in their hotels and so on. Dan does monitors for both bands, we all help each other out."
Many of Mayall's live shows use house systems, so Taylor regularly has to mix on whatever console is available. However on this tour the gear travelled with them, so it was an opportunity to specify his desk of choice.
"I've used the M7CL before in various venues and I liked it, so I was happy to specify it for this tour," he says. "It's good for me because you have all the advantages of a digital console, but I have to mix the show on the fly because of John's unorthodox style of grabbing the microphone and singing through the harmonica. You're riding the faders every song, often it's virtually every couple of lines - you've got it up for the vocals, you've got it down again for the harp and then back up again.
"John will bring everybody down and then he'll throw solos out. Or all of a sudden you could get a drum solo or a bass solo and you never know when they're coming, there's no set pattern. It all happens in a split second and we never have a set list. It's the way John's operated for decades and you have to react quickly, but the M7CL is very good for mixing like that."
The only outboard Taylor is using is an Avalon VT-737SP valve preamp on Mayall's vocal mic and a BSS FCS-966 stereo graphic EQ. "Because of the way it works with John, I like to be able to push something in or take something out as necessary, so the Avalon is very useful for quick adjustments. As well as riding the faders, I'm always tweaking that," he says. "Similarly, with any digital desk I like to have a set of grab graphics for the room."
(Jim Evans)
