Wee will rock you: Scotland market report
Let’s talk about Scottish independence. We’re referring, obviously, to Gerry Cinnamon, the staunchly indie, Glaswegian guitar-basher who has packed a career’s worth of touring milestones into the past two or three years.
There was the pair of sold-out shows at Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom in 2017 – the first unsigned artist to manage such a feat. Then Cinnamon really went up in the world, with two Christmas 2019 gigs at Glasgow’s SSE Hydro and one at Aberdeen’s 15,000-capacity P&J Arena – the biggest indoor show ever in Scotland. And, surely capping it all off, next summer’s show at Hampden Park: 50,000 tickets… all long gone.
“He grew up literally a stone’s throw away from Hampden, in Castlemilk,” says Geoff Ellis, CEO of DF Concerts. “We sold it out in a day.”
The fact that Cinnamon has also quickly converted local-hero status into arena-filling UK and Ireland success underscores Scotland’s status as a rigorous proving ground for its own artists, of whom he and Lewis Capaldi, are just the latest to break in a big way.
“If you go down well here, you are not going to be too shabby when you go out in the rest of the world,” theorises Hold Fast Entertainment’s Donald MacLeod, who operates Glasgow venues the Cathouse and the Garage.
Scotland in 2020 isn’t necessarily an easy place to get ahead, but it is bursting with local talent, busy promoters and full venues. The nation’s live industry added £431 million to the broader economy last year and sustained 4,300 full-time jobs, as well as drawing 1.1m music tourists – a jump of 38% from 2017 [source: UK Music].
Scotland in 2020 isn’t necessarily an easy place to get ahead, but it is bursting with local talent, busy promoters and full venues
There are all sorts of storylines in the wider drama of Scotland’s live music business. Edinburgh is on the up, with the tantalising prospect of an arena on the horizon at last. Glasgow, traditionally a supercharged music city with a perpetual tendency to steal the thunder of the more genteel capital, a 45-minute journey away, still does the business, but it isn’t having its best moment after losing the pivotal O2 ABC to a devastating fire last year.
Meanwhile, the festival scene evolves – out with T in the Park, in with TRNSMT and others. The Highlands, islands and notable towns and cities work hard to make the case that there is life outside the Central Belt. And Scotland’s thriving trad scene makes the case that there is more to life than pop.
But still the talent keeps coming. “We are not short of talent and bands coming up. We punch well above our weight,” says MacLeod.
Biffy Clyro, Franz Ferdinand, Calvin Harris, Young Fathers, Chvrches, Paolo Nutini, Amy Macdonald and Tom Walker have all attested to that in recent years, and Scottish venue calendars are reliably stuffed with local favourites: Capaldi, Simple Minds, Texas and Deacon Blue at the SSE Hydro this year; Jesus & Mary Chain and The Twilight Sad at Barrowlands; Edwyn Collins and Susan Boyle at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall.
And new artists, too: “Walt Disco, Slow Readers Club, Tamzene, The Snuts, The Dunts – are all selling out venues above 1,000-cap,” says Ellis. “We have got a really good, healthy scene at club level and that gets people engaged a bit more in terms of live music.”
“We have got a really good, healthy scene at club level and that gets people engaged a bit more in terms of live music”
Promoters
You might imagine Scottish promoters were a tough, rivalrous bunch, but a photo tweeted by Donald MacLeod in December was a picture of harmony: the key figures from DF Concerts, Regular Music, PCL Presents and Triple G, smiling on the fairway at Loch Lomond Golf Club at an away-day put on by SSE Hydro.
“Aye, that was a good laugh,” says MacLeod, who in addition to his Glasgow clubs is a director of promoter Triple G, chair of Nordoff-Robbins Scotland and a columnist for The Sunday Post. “It’s a lot of promoters for the size of the market. But we all get on well. We are not bitter rivals, we are frenemies. We will all, at times, work with each other.”
Glasgow-based DF, part of LN-Gaiety Investments since 2008, is Scotland’s largest promoter, proprietor of the three-year-old TRNSMT at Glasgow Green, and the Summer Sessions series in Edinburgh and Glasgow each August, as well as shows from club- to stadium-level, and the celebrated King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut on St Vincent Street in Glasgow.
“2019 was a great year for us as a business,” says Ellis. “I think it was great for the market generally in Scotland. But it’s not easy – you have to get the pricing right, and you have to really work it. Scotland is only five million people. If you are doing a show at the Hydro, you are selling to all of Scotland.”
There are numerous independents, including PCL, Triple G, Synergy, 432 Presents, EDM specialists Fly Events and Electronic Edinburgh, and Highlands and islands specialist Beyond Presents.
“Scotland is only five million people. If you are doing a show at the Hydro, you are selling to all of Scotland”
But the largest is Edinburgh’s Regular Music, which continues to do large-scale business. Its properties including the annual concerts at Edinburgh Castle’s Esplanade and Summer Nights at Kelvingrove Bandstand in Glasgow. Eleven of the latter’s twelve 8,500-cap nights sold out in 2019, with stars including Teenage Fanclub and Hue & Cry, plus Suede, Patti Smith, Burt Bacharach and The National.
“We only promote in Scotland, and that’s our identity,” says Regular’s John Stout. “We are always conscious that Live Nation and AEG can offer Europe-wide and kind of exclude us. But we have got good relationships with a lot of bands that come back to us year after year. Stereophonics come back to us every time; we are working with Bon Iver and Lana Del Rey, so it’s not all going to the big guys.”
Another Regular regular are local boys The Proclaimers, who are in a career purple patch. “In Scotland alone, between September 2018 and September 2019, we did just over 70,000 tickets,” says Stout. “That includes two sold-out Edinburgh Castle shows, a sold-out Hydro, and a theatre tour. They will tour any town that has a 500-capacity venue. They have built that audience through hard work and quality.”
Beyond Events, which operates from Ullapool on the north-west coast, 45 miles from Inverness, has operated for 20 years across the great open spaces outside the two largest cities, from festivals down to tiny rooms, and latterly sometimes in Glasgow and Edinburgh, too.
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432 Presents launches the Great Western festival
Brian Reynolds-led 432 Presents is bringing the Great Western, a new multi-venue music and arts festival, to Glasgow, Scotland this November.
The festival, taking place on Saturday 23 November, will host over 50 live acts across ten venues in the west end of Glasgow, including Malian desert blues collective Songhoy Blues, Californian dance punks !!! (Chk chk chk) and US singer-songwriter Cass McCombs.
Alongside live music programming, the Great Western is working with local restaurant and bars to provide a range of food and drink options. A variety of community workshops will also be on offer.
Veteran Scottish promoter Reynolds, formerly of Synergy Concerts, launched 432 Presents in January this year, along with the majority of the former Synergy team.
432 Presents promotes over 500 events each year, including ongoing collaborations with Scottish events Celtic Connections, Doune the Rabbit Hole and Edinburgh International Festival.
Venues under 432’s operation include Glasgow’s Hug and Pint (100-cap.) and the Blue Arrow Jazz Club (200-cap).
Limited early bird tickets for the Great Western have already sold out. Full price day tickets are still available for £28 plus booking fee.
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Former Synergy Concerts team launch 432 Presents
Veteran Scottish promoter Brian Reynolds, formerly of Synergy Concerts and now-closed Glasgow clubs the Arches (2,000-cap.) and Barfly (400-cap.), has launched a new concert business, 432 Presents.
After six years, Reynolds and his Synergy partner, Grainne Braithwaite-Vedamanikam, have parted ways in an “entirely amicable” split, with Reynolds and team establishing 432 Presents and Synergy Concerts continuing under the direction of founder Braithwaite-Vedamanikam.
Despite the rebranding as 432 Presents, the majority of the former Synergy team – which formed in 2012 and promote more than 500 shows annually – remain in place, as do the former company’s operations, with 432 Presents retaining ownership of the Hug and Pint (100-cap.) and the new Blue Arrow Jazz Club (200-cap.), both in Glasgow.
“It goes without saying that the coming year is set to be the busiest yet”
432 Presents will also continue to promote the National Whisky Festival and work closely with Celtic Connections, as well as booking Doune the Rabbit Hole in Doune and the Spree Festival in Paisley, which last year hosted Martha and the Vandellas and post-punk legends Gang of Four.
Other upcoming shows include the Dandy Warhols at the Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow on 30 January, Poppy Ackroyd at the Blue Arrow on 16 February and Daughters at CCA Glasgow on 18 April, as well as a collaboration with Edinburgh International Festival in August.
“It goes without saying that the coming year is set to be the busiest yet,” says the company in a statement, “and with that in mind, the team at 432 Presents are very excited to be kicking off 2019 with a fresh start.”
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