MITCH DALTON
The studio guitarist’s guide to happiness and personal fulfilment, as related by our resident session ace. This month: Strictly Between Ourselves.
The instruments have been selected, set up and in some cases, acquired. The latter includes a Barnes & Mullins tenor banjo direct from China, the home of bluegrass. Also making a wallet melting contribution to my credit card statement are a surprisingly expensive ukulele case, spare sets of strings for seven instruments and an aluminium case full of the usual accessories. The lid comes down on my suitcase a cosy 30 seconds before the car arrives to waft me to Gateway Services, the exclusive resort set beside the picturesque M1 bridleway. It is here that we are to rendezvous with our luxury tour bus, replete with kitchen, loo and an exclusive gathering of wandering minstrels, who then proceed to avail themselves of the acres of available space (and alcohol) in sybaritic comfort.
And so our odyssey begins. A couple of hours and three or four minor motorway-speak ‘incidents’ later, we pull up at Birmingham's Malmaison Hotel. The paparazzi are already poised to snap a lens at the drop-off of a celeb. Unmolested, I march past the throng into the lobby and its brothel chic interior. And so begins four weeks wrapped in a cloak of invisibility.
Rehearsals commence next morning at the arena with a call for the band onstage. The man who matters is our backline/ assistant stage manager, Colin Newton, who photographed and made notes of my set-up during the previous week of London rehearsals. And here it awaits me, guitars in their rack, volume pedals, effects board and Mesa Boogie Nomad 45 amp (plus spare) all plugged up and firing. The tenor banjo and ukulele are both miked up conventionally, while the Taylor acoustic is fed to front of house via a retrofitted LR Baggs pickup into a DI box. I receive the aural information that I require via a set of in-ear monitors attached to a small wireless transmitter with personal volume control that resides in my suit jacket pocket. In this way I am fed the click track for each song plus any essential count-ins or spoken cues. The monitors are a perfect fit, having been custom made. They thus serve a double function in shutting out the on-stage sound, enabling me to receive the mix of my choice for each tune. Luncheon is served courtesy of Eat To The Beat, an organisation that deserves an article (or even a TV show) of its own. A choice of four miraculous main meals is offered twice a day, with food constantly available. Failure to exercise a modicum of self restraint will result inevitably in returning home to a depressingly draconian diet. The afternoon kicks off with the band sound check. David Arch, our Music Supervisor and in-house genius, prowls the arena until sound and music perfection have been achieved. We begin to run the dance items with the couples in chronological order. It’s the first of four long days, finishing at around 10.00pm. We repeat to fade, adding the opening and closing group dance sequences and links. This culminates in two complete runs of the show and a full dress rehearsal on the day of opening night. The adrenaline released by performing finally to a live audience of around 9,000 gets us through and we stagger back to The Mal. A weekend of four further performances finishes with a pack down and a night drive to Nottingham and our new hotel. The tour is up and running. The band is down and sleeping. We proceed to slalom our way around the UK’s finest sheds. I note that my musical contribution is relatively stress free this year, notwithstanding opening the second half with 16 bars of completely solo ukulele for Bring Me Sunshine and a solo acoustic version of Can’t Help Falling In Love in the first. However, it’s worth remembering that dancers and celebs often don’t ‘hear’ music in quite the same way as we do. They might rely on a specific riff or figure to cue their moves rather than the quaint method of counting bars that we musicians find so endearing. Omit it, or play it early by mistake and anything can and does - happen. And that dear reader, is why we’re paid the medium bucks. FAB-U-LOUS!
For more on Mitch and his musical exploits with the Studio Kings, go to: www.mitchdalton.co.uk