Spice up your life with an honestly independent guitar man
Castlemilk musical hero Gerry Cinnamon is the second-biggest live act in the UK behind Ed Sheeran but he’s done it without playing the usual media game, discovers Dave Fawbert
‘Gerry f**king Cinnamon” announce the T-shirts at the merch stands at every sold-out gig. But who the f**k is he?
Cinnamon, Scotland’s wiry, Adidas-clad mod-alike with a loop pedal, has sold 132,000 copies of an album he made himself for next-to-nothing.
Having completed a UK and Ireland tour to 125,000 fans – making him the second-biggest live act in the UK (behind Ed Sheeran) – his stadium show at Hampden Park (scheduled for 18 July and now looking somewhat doubtful) sold out in less than a day.
Only, nobody really knows who he is, or – without a record label, press strategy or manager (though his human rights lawyer wife has ditched her day job to look after him) – how he got here.
Gerry Cinnamon, real name Gerard Crosbie, is 35 years old and comes from the Castlemilk district of Glasgow. Before pursuing music as a career, he worked as a scaffolder, plumber, chef, joiner and in a coffee shop, while forming a band, The Cinnamons, releasing a sole EP in 2010.
Eventually he decided to try his luck alone, retaining the name as his stage surname. In a 2017 interview – one of only a handful he has given – he explained: “My lyrics are honest almost to a fault, it gets me into trouble. I think people appreciate that… The music I write is what I want to hear myself. What other artists play acoustic guitar and their gigs are bouncing? That’s all I’m looking for.”
From years playing on Glasgow’s
pub circuit, his fan base grew, and he started to sell out venues across Scotland, even before his debut album, 2017’s Erratic Cinematic, was released.
His life experiences – including being sent to London when he was 14 after getting into “a bit of trouble” – have translated into relatable songs, such as live favourite “Belter” (“I think I love her/ She gets underneath my skin/ But I’ve been stung a few times/so I don’t let no one in”) and the confessional “Sometimes” (“Breaking bones and sniffing gear/pouring blood and sweat and tears/in a nutshell I suppose/it’s the way the water flows”).
It has been more than 20 years since Napster opened up the internet floodgates and changed the way we listen to music. Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen were among the first to use it, promoting their own music via Myspace, Soundcloud and Youtube – or seeing fans share it there. But Cinnamon might be the first superstar who has eschewed both the traditional music industry and the media in general. You won’t have heard him on radio, seen him plugging his work on breakfast TV, or baring his soul in the broadsheets.
There have been just a couple of newspaper interviews and a BBC profile in 2017, before he went back underground until December
I don’t deal with people I don’t trust. And I don’t trust people I don’t know. That’s my only rule of thumb
GERRY CINNAMON
last year, when he broke his silence in style magazine The Face. “I don’t want any exposure,” he said. “I don’t deal with people that I don’t trust. And I don’t trust people that I don’t know. So I don’t deal with any c**t… That’s my only rule of thumb, and any time I’ve broken it, I’ve ended up with a lot of f**king shit.”
Anyone close to his circle – his agent (whom he took on only in January 2018, after he’d already sold out two nights at Glasgow’s 1,900-capacity Barrowlands), and publisher (again, a recent acquisition) offer only the clichéd explanation that his success is down to being a “great artist”.
But there are plenty of other great artists out there, also making fantastic music, who no one has ever heard of, because they’ve never had anyone to help give them exposure. What’s different about Cinnamon? And if he can go it alone, can anyone?
Undoubtedly, geography has played a part. Scottish music fans fervently support their own artists – just look at how the Scottish scene has nurtured acts such as Biffy Clyro, Chvrches, The View and Lewis Capaldi. But rather than remaining parochial, Cinnamon soon proved he had an audience much further afield, selling out concerts across the UK when he ventured out of Scotland in early 2018.
Why? First, with his mod haircut and stylings and his “authenticity” (read: playing an acoustic guitar and being resolutely working-class), Cinnamon – unwittingly or otherwise – tapped into the huge Oasis market, the same fans who made The Courteeners (critically derided but fiercely defended by their fans) such a huge live draw, in particular north of the Watford Gap.
If you have three chords, the truth and choruses that you can sing along to shoulder-toshoulder with your pals after downing 10 pints, you can’t really go wrong.
Second, again perhaps by design, there is a tipping point when it comes to publicity. If you are big enough, not doing any press is more powerful than actually doing it. In an age of social media, when you can know what your favourite pop star is eating for breakfast each day, all allure and mystery has disappeared. If you retreat, and reveal nothing, you become an enigma.
Everybody loves the cultural cachet of discovering a new artist for themselves, rather than being told to like it by the zeitgeist or the mainstream media. Cinnamon offers fans this priceless social asset – plus, listening to an artist’s music and coming up short when you try to find out more about them only fires up further intrigue and mystique.
It is a dangerous tactic – it takes confidence to resist the benefits of publicity as a new artist starting out; without press, you run the risk of no one hearing about you. But time it right, and you can fuel the fire of word of mouth with the petrol of absence. Adele knows this game, Daft Punk have played it, too – but when you have a record such as Someone Like You or Get
Lucky, you can afford to. Cinnamon doesn’t yet have a song to match those (sorry, Gerry), but he does have momentum.
In 2016, Cinnamon said: “I hope I can show young working-class bands and writers that you don’t need to rely on anyone but yourself. Don’t feel threatened by the fact that you’re skint and up against bands whose mums and dads fund their every move. Stick to the tunes.”
Perhaps, then, his is the purest form of artistry – by sticking to the tunes, he lives or dies by the quality of his music, and without the approval of peers, industry bigwigs or critics, all of whom must now be wondering whether his formula can be repeated. The answer is: probably not.
*Gerry Cinnamon’s new album, The Bonny, will be released on 17 April on Little Runaway Records. He is scheduled to play Hampden on 18 July.