Having established a following in his native Scotland, singer-songwriter, acoustic guitarist and harmonica player Gerry Cinnamon has made increasingly frequent appearances at major festivals. In 2019 he supported Liam Gallagher in Cork and on his Australian tour, then played headline shows at the new P&J Live venue in Aberdeen – which broke the record for highest attendance at a Scottish indoor event with 15,000 people.

Monitor engineer Martin Capaldi and FOH engineer Will Nicholson worked extensively with Cinnamon through 2021 as live performances picked up post-Covid. The shows were some of the first in the UK to use DiGiCo’s new Quantum 338 at FOH, with an SD12 on stage, both supplied as part of the audio package by Wigwam, part of the Solotech Group.

With Cinnamon’s UK and Ireland tour, scheduled for early 2020, moved back a year, a series of stadium shows has now announced for 2022.

Capaldi had used various DiGiCo models over the years, but mainly as house desks. His first show with Cinnamon was with an SD11 for the Liam Gallagher support slot, with only a couple of days to find his way around it. Moving to an SD12 was the logical step up, providing access to more faders as is his preference. He now runs Cinnamon’s shows with all the inputs on the left fader banks and outputs on the right, making it easy to easy to jump between mixes while still being able to access what’s being sent to them, whether IEMs or floor wedges.

‘Going forward, I’m looking into possibly moving to Quantum 5, as I’ve always been a fan of large analogue desks and this would feel more suitable with more faders, more screens and more going on in front of you,’ he says

Cinnamon’s band requires around 64 inputs including shout lines. One of the features of his DiGiCo he has recently started using is ducking the shout mics, makes it easier to get information clearly from backline techs or production. He has also started to use the onboard UB-Madi connectivity for multitracking.

‘I wasn’t aware that the SD12 came as standard with a UB-Madi out that could be used for this purpose, but this is a great feature not only for multitracking shows, but also for running virtual soundchecks,’ he says.

At the other end of the multicore, Nicholson joined the entourage for the 2021 Leeds Festival. ‘It was cathartic from a personal perspective,’ he recalls. ‘Things were starting to pick up and to come back off the past 18 months and work for an artist like Gerry was special.’

The choice of DiGiCo was Nicholson’s, following direction from production to hire what he wanted and though rehearsal time was minimal, he is able to work quickly on a DiGiCo. Tom Bush from Wigwam offered him a Quantum 338, which could more than accommodate the number of inputs required for the shows. Nicholson mixes around 54 inputs from Cinnamon and band. The musicians move on and off stage during the show, and he uses the console’s automation to take into account the fluidity of the line-up and nuances of the set.

‘Gerry is a wet gig and a lot of beer gets thrown,’ Nicholson says. ‘I had a beer cover out front which Wigwam made, but looking at the screens becomes trickier as I have to pull it further down.’ The miniature TFT screens above the faders on the Quantum 338 allowed Nicholson to cover the majority of the desk, protecting it from flying contaminants while still seeing his metering.

‘DiGiCo’s Mustard Processing stuff is also excellent,’ he adds. ‘With an artist like Gerry, who’s singing contemporary songs that have a real place in the lineage of rock and folk music, having the ability to colour the sound exactly how we wanted within the board was a big step forward, and whenever it’s needed I get the usual top support from DiGiCo. The screens and the feel of the surface is lovely, it’s like driving a new car.

‘Gerry is a unique artist,’ he reflects. ‘No-one else does music like him - he doesn’t have a label, and his success is down to his own hard work. He has such a positive attitude to his audience and wants to give everyone 100 per cent all the time, for them to have the best night of their lives.’

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