About Skruffy Records
Created by Musicians, for Musicians
Skruffy Records was born out of frustration and love in equal measure—frustration with an industry that too often treats artists as commodities, and a deep, unshakeable love for music that genuinely means something.
We’re an independent record label, and proud of it. Independence means we answer to our artists, not to shareholders. It means we make decisions based on what’s right for the music, not what’s easiest for a spreadsheet. And it means that when we sign an artist, we’re making a genuine commitment—not just a commercial bet.
The people behind Skruffy Records are musicians themselves. We’ve been in the rehearsal rooms, on the stages, in the studios. We’ve dealt with the contracts that weren’t what they seemed and the deals that didn’t deliver. We also have extensive knowledge of sales and marketing, including a history of building and developing digital technology. That combined experience is exactly why we do things differently.
What We Stand For
Fair deals. Every artist we sign gets a contract that’s transparent, honest and designed to work in their favour as well as ours. We don’t hide things in the small print.
Creative freedom. We sign artists because we believe in their vision—so we’re not going to turn around and tell them how to change it. Our job is to support and amplify what they do, not to homogenise it.
Real support. Being signed to Skruffy Records means having a team genuinely invested in your success—from release planning, physical production and distribution to PR, social media and building your presence in the places that matter.
Long-term thinking. We’re not chasing viral moments. We want to put great music in front of the people who’ll love it, and give it the best possible chance of lasting.
Why a Punk Dog?
The People Behind Skruffy Records
Skruffy Records was founded by four people who between them have spent decades making music, putting on events, building audiences and navigating the music industry. Here’s a bit about each of them.
Jerry Evans
Jerry Evans has spent a life in and around music. At 19 he was already involved with Optimistic Records, an independent label in Plymouth, while running band nights at a local venue and playing in bands himself. By his early twenties he had moved to London, working for music equipment hire companies and servicing recording studios, venues and BBC TV shows—among them Top of the Pops, Wogan and Saturday Superstore.
His aspiration to perform never left him. For a time he worked as a keyboard player and programmer for artists including Pete Wylie, Craig Charles and Kevin O’Dowd. At 30 he founded Tickle, a music services company that worked with some of the biggest acts of the day—Blur, Simply Red and Queen among them—providing specialist recording equipment and building temporary and permanent recording studios for producers and bands. He also owned and ran The Old Dairy, a musicians’ studio complex in West London.
By 2014, Jerry was ready for a change. After selling up in London and a brief foray into politics, he discovered a passion for renovating derelict buildings—most notably The Old Post Office in Haverfordwest, now a thriving community centre and live music venue. Alongside this, he got serious about music again, joining Mick Rossi’s Gun Street and forming his own act, The Great Recycle.
Gun Street’s self-titled 2023 album was critically acclaimed and the band are regulars at Blackpool’s Rebellion festival. As The Great Recycle, Jerry has released his debut self-titled album and is currently finishing a second record, The Clown That Confronts, produced by Cameron Craig—whose credits span Adele, Joe Strummer, Annie Lennox and Sia.
Jerry built his own recording studio after moving to Devon, where he has recorded with Gun Street, Slaughter and the Dogs and The Great Recycle. He is a co-founder of Skruffy Records—a label that, like everything else he has done, is built from genuine love of music and real-world experience of how the industry works.
Jerry’s collaborative history is equally varied, including work alongside Pete Wylie, Craig Charles and Kevin O’Dowd. As a solo artist, he records and releases music under the name The Great Recycle—a project that reflects his restless, genre-fluid approach to songwriting. His debut album under that name is available in the Skruffy Records shop, with a second album, The Clown That Confronts, in production.
Colin Massie
Colin Massie and Jerry Evans go back further than Skruffy Records by several decades—all the way to college, where the two of them formed their first band, Bad Habits. That band eventually became Old Habits, and they still play the occasional gig together today.
Colin is a prolific songwriter and performer, with hundreds of gigs behind him across solo sets and stints as lead singer and guitarist in a variety of bands. He has performed original compositions at everything from small venues to large corporate conferences, and has a particular fondness for writing personalised songs for friends, businesses and occasions—the kind of thing that makes a room feel both seen and entertained.
Away from the stage, Colin volunteers with Sightlife, a Cardiff-based charity supporting people who are blind or visually impaired. He set up and leads a guitar group there, which ranges from complete beginners to experienced players, and which has now performed publicly at formal and fundraising events. It is, perhaps, the most direct expression of something that runs through everything Colin does: a belief that music is for everyone, and that sharing it matters.
He has spent time in many studios over the years and has a substantial catalogue of recorded material. He understands from his own experience how hard it can be to get music out into the world—and it’s that understanding, as much as anything else, that drew him to co-founding Skruffy Records. Alongside a successful career in sales and marketing, he was on board from the very first conversation. His debut album as Massie, Wise, is one of the first releases on the label.
Tennant
Tennant was a behind-the-scenes figure at some of the most high-profile dance music events of the early 1990s. As one of the original Universe promoters, he was the event organiser for six events between 1991 and 1993—including production for the original Tribal Gathering on 30 April 1993, held at Lower Pertwood Farm near Warminster, Wiltshire. That first Tribal Gathering drew 25,000 people to hear Laurent Garnier, Carl Cox, Aphex Twin, Pete Tong and others, and is widely regarded as a landmark moment in British dance music history. Universe won the MixMag award for ‘Best Rave of 1992’ and live personal appearances at Universe events included Bizarre Inc, D:Ream, The Prodigy and C+C Music Factory.
Since then, Tennant’s career has been rooted in marketing. He is founder and director of cforce, a Wiltshire-based integrated marketing agency he has run since 1995. Since 2015, Tennant has also been working indirectly with rock royalty: designing and producing the regular official fan club magazine for Queen, one of the biggest and most enduring bands in music history. It’s a role that speaks to both the breadth of his experience and his meticulous eye for quality.
That combination of deep music industry instincts and professional marketing expertise makes Tennant an invaluable part of the Skruffy Records team—responsible for making sure our artists’ music reaches the right people in the right way.
Jim Iddiols
Jim Iddiols describes himself as a frustrated musician. He loves music with a passion—playing an instrument, however, was beyond him, so he channels it instead into singing bass in the Stewart Academy Choir. He has been close friends with Jerry and Colin since childhood, and both have long recognised Jim’s eclectic and somewhat maverick musical taste: he has a habit of pointing out extraordinary talent well before anyone else notices. Björk and Wet Leg are just two examples.
Professionally, Jim’s career has taken him deep into the business of music and technology. He spent many years at IBM, including stints as European Head of the Media and Entertainment Industry and Head of Digital Media. It was in that latter role, in 2002, that Jim found himself at the centre of one of the defining moments in music’s digital transformation.
Jim led IBM’s participation in a pioneering project alongside Oasis, the Sunday Times and Spero Communications. IBM provided groundbreaking digital rights management (DRM) technology to deliver a CD—given free with the Sunday Times—featuring tracks from the band’s forthcoming album Heathen Chemistry. The initiative was a remarkable success: the Oasis album went straight to number one, the Sunday Times achieved its second-highest ever sales figures and IBM earned significant recognition for its innovative technology. It was an early signal that digital music, handled thoughtfully, could work for artists, labels and fans alike—a belief that sits at the heart of Skruffy Records today.
More recently Jim worked for the UK Trade Remedies Authority. At Skruffy Records, his combination of music passion, industry knowledge and commercial experience makes him an invaluable part of the founding team.
Want to be part of Skruffy Records?
We’re always listening. If you’re an artist who makes music that means something—who’s got something to say and the craft to say it—we’d love to hear from you.
We don’t have a rigid genre checklist. Our roster spans alternative rock, punk, new wave, indie and beyond. What we do look for is authenticity, great recorded music that’s ready (or close to ready) for release, and artists who are serious about getting it heard. If your album is professionally recorded and mixed and you’re looking for a label partner to help release and promote it—we’d love to hear from you.
How to pitch to Skruffy Records
Complete the form below to send us a short message introducing yourself and your music, with links to two or three tracks—or ideally your full album—that best represent what you do. Tell us about your recordings: when they were made, how they were produced, and whether they’re mixed, mastered and ready for release. Let us know where you’ve already taken your music (live shows, streaming, social media) and what you’re looking for from a label partnership.
We listen to everything we receive and we’ll always come back to you, even if the answer is not right now. We know what it feels like to send that email into the void.
