Johnson Mixes The Neal McCoy

Nashville, TN (December 11, 2024)—Neal McCoy has been a flagbearer for country music ever since he first hit the charts in the early 1990s. Still on the road today, he’s been mixed for more than half his career by FOH engineer Daryl Johnson, playing around 100 shows a year. Keeping up with the times, Johnson recently began using an Allen & Heath Avantis console for McCoy’s concerts.

Johnson uses an Avantis Solo model at front of house, managing the 41 channels in McCoy’s show with the six fully customizable layers available on the console, assigning instruments and vocals to dedicated layers while keeping key outputs visible at all times. Having come up in a world of analog consoles, Johnson had to adapt to the touchscreen workflow. “It took about two shows,” he says with a laugh. He highlights the responsiveness of the touchscreen, allowing him to make nuanced mixing adjustments on the fly. “I like that you don’t have to make a big change to hear a difference. It has great sensitivity.”

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Johnson uses the Dyn8 dynamic EQ on McCoy’s vocals to control harsh frequencies, but has been experimenting with it on the kick drum to add warmth and punch. For gigs when McCoy’s guitarist can’t use his amplifier, the Two Stage Valve preamp from dPack helps recreate authentic tube tones and saturation directly from the console.

Over at stageside, McCoy’s monitor engineer mixes on a dual-screen Avantis, connected to a GX4816 stage box and a DX168 expander at the monitor position in a digital split; the setup streamlines their signal flow and setup, eliminating their previous bulky analog snakes for a more efficient load in and teardown. “People in touring know it’s all about ‘the out’,” Johnson says. “It’s about after the show, getting it packed up and getting to bed. Our new system has made that a lot quicker.”