Honeymoon Bridge

Happy New Year! We’re building something new inside Scottish piping.

Honeymoon Bridge captures the core repertoire - Scots songs, original songs, airs and tune sets - that the Lindsay System Chanter "grew up" on.

The Lindsay System is a new innovation that has rapidly taken root within Scottish piping – a keyless two-to-three-octave design that lets pipers explore new ground, while staying rooted in the tradition.

Honeymoon Bridge is a new double album of Scots songs and tunes on the Lindsay System Scottish smallpipes and fiddle, played by myself and long-time collaborator Roo Geddes. Intimate, slow-burning, rooted in old music but very much alive to now.

My last crowdfunded album, Two Boats Under the Moon, began life on this platform and went on to:

• ★★★★★ BBC Music Magazine

• ★★★★ Songlines

• ★★★★ The Scotsman

It also found a home with US folk radio – reaching the NACC Folk and FAI Folk charts in North America – and drew kind words from musicians there, including singer-songwriter Tom Brosseau, who said it “will warm your heart.”

Crowdfunder backers made that album of old and new Scots songs – with my own distinctively Scottish folk guitar style and Roo’s top-of-the-line Scots fiddling – possible. This time, the pipes are stepping forward.

What is the Lindsay System?

On the surface, it looks like a set of Scottish smallpipes – the quiet, indoor cousin of the Highland pipes.

Inside, the Lindsay System is a different kind of chanter – one I’ve spent nearly twenty years developing. Instead of the usual one-octave range, it stretches to just over two octaves (and, with careful voicing, close to three) while still sounding like Scottish smallpipes and feeling natural under a piper’s hands.

In a tradition as careful with change as Scottish piping, it’s rare for a new design to take root at all. Since I first brought it out in Glasgow, the Lindsay System has moved from workshop experiment to a working tool and a reference point: it turns up in concerts, recordings and teaching as well as in my own work.

The extra space provided by the chanter's many "new notes", lets the music move more like a voice or a fiddle: changing key, travelling through old tunes that ordinary smallpipes can’t quite accommodate, and giving new songs more room to breathe.

Two early prototype sets are now in the Museum of Piping at the National Piping Centre in Glasgow, and the system has already appeared on film soundtracks such as The Outrun and My Old School, as well as on stage, on a range of critically acclaimed records, and in teaching.

You’re hearing that chanter in the short clips you may have seen online. Honeymoon Bridge is where I sit down with it and Roo to record the Scots songs and tune sets it grew up with in my hands – a full, pipes-led double album of that as-yet un-shared repertoire, carefully recorded.

If you’d like the full backstory, there’s a longer article I wrote for TRACS (Traditional Arts & Culture Scotland) about the instrument’s journey from Glasgow, through Ascension Island, to Orkney:

A Pipe Dream Made Real : Traditional Arts & Culture Scotland

It’s a good read, but you don’t need to read it to enjoy the album.

What will the album feel like?

On one level, it’s simple: an intimate duo record – smallpipes and fiddle, with my voice stepping in on certain songs and ballads, and the occasional piano from Roo.

We’re drawing on two strands:

Traditional tunes – the tunes that led to the chanter
Pieces like “Auld Springs Gie’s Nae Price” (“old tunes are beyond price”), “Echo Mocks the Corncrake”, “How Can I Be Sad On My Wedding Day?”, and other rare old Scots tunes that this newly designed instrument grew up with, and grew around.

New writing that’s grown out of the same ground
Songs and instrumentals shaped on the Lindsay System – including my older song “Honeymoon Bridge”, written for the bridge in Glen Croe on a perfectly frozen day, and new work such as a setting of the G.M. Hopkins poem “Inversnaid” (his waterfall on the east shore of Loch Lomond), plus more to come as the project unfolds.

The album sits in the same quiet, luminous world as Two Boats Under the Moon, but this time the pipes are the main storyteller, with Roo’s fiddle and piano close at their shoulder.

It’s also a rare thing: a contemporary singer-songwriter record where the singer accompanies themselves primarily on the pipes, alongside self-accompanied traditional singing and tune sets that have bonded strongly to one instrument over years.

Why now?

Over the last decade, the Lindsay System has been steadily taken up by pipers and has found its way into film scores, commissions and album projects. The instrument has arrived.

What hasn’t been gathered in one place yet is the strand of repertoire the design came out of in the first place – the kind of music it “grew up” on with me: the old tunes that made the instrument necessary, and the songs and melodies written with it in hand.

Honeymoon Bridge is a concentrated window into that repertoire – a living, playable songbook for this new voice in Scottish music, and a chance to hear an instrument that’s already moving through the world, brought back to its source and heard at full length.

The crowdfunder will run through to January 2026. As soon as it closes, Roo and I begin focused rehearsal and arranging, shaping the material in detail ahead of our studio dates in Scotland during April 2026. Your support turns that preparation and recording time into a finished, beautifully produced double album.

What your support will pay for

Every pledge, large or small, goes directly into:

• Studio time and engineering – time enough to record at a listening tempo, not rush through sets

• Fair fees for Roo and any guest musicians who join us on specific tracks

• Mixing and mastering, so the smallpipes and fiddle sound as rich on speakers and headphones as they do in the room

• Artwork, design and manufacturing of physical copies, plus a proper digital release

• The practicalities of postage and campaign costs, so rewards actually reach you

We’re also applying to Creative Scotland’s Crowdmatch programme. If accepted, a portion of what you pledge here will be matched by public funding – effectively doubling your help. We’ll update this page as soon as we know.

What you’ll receive as a backer

Here’s what your pledge can bring you:

• Digital album – a download of Honeymoon Bridge (with an early-bird option for those who like to hear things first).

• Signed CD – a pre-release Honeymoon Bridge CD, signed, with the digital album included.

• Two-album bundle – Honeymoon Bridge on CD, plus a CD copy of Two Boats Under the Moon if you’d like to catch up on the songs that came before this pipes record.

If you’d like to go further into the Lindsay System story, there will also be:

• Collector’s bundle – Honeymoon Bridge CD, Two Boats Under the Moon CD, and one of the last remaining copies of my 2017 EP Chanter 2 (the first recording I made on an early rainbow-coloured Lindsay System set, now in the Museum of Piping), all signed.

And for a very small number of supporters, a chance to own a piece of the instrument’s history:

• Lindsay System display model – a precision-made, non-playing Lindsay System chanter body, professionally 3D printed and finished for display, mounted on a wooden base with engraved plate, signed and numbered, together with the full collector’s bundle above.

Above all, whichever level you choose, you’ll know this record exists because you chose to help make it happen.

If the idea of old Scottish tunes and new songs carried forward by a new and innovative Scottish instrument appeals to you – whether you’re in Glasgow or North Dakota – please consider pledging.

Help us cross Honeymoon Bridge together, and give the Lindsay System smallpipes the double album they deserve.

Cover art - Bridge of Sighs, by Scott McLachlan (with permission of the artist - scottmclachlan.com)