A recording of songs, smallpipes, fiddle and piano in the Lindsay System’s tenth anniversary year
Honeymoon Bridge, the new double album from Donald WG Lindsay with Roo Geddes, brings years of playing together into sixteen tracks of songs, ballads, airs and dance music. It arrives ten years after other pipers began adopting the Lindsay System chanter, alongside Dreaming Pipes, the touring exhibition following the project’s development.
The record follows Two Boats Under the Moon, which received five stars in BBC Music Magazine and four stars in both Songlines and The Scotsman. Honeymoon Bridge has already been named Album of the Week by Celtic Music Radio. Dreaming Pipes is fully booked at venues across Scotland for 2027, with the exhibition diary now filling through 2028 and 2029.
On much of the album, Lindsay accompanies his singing on the smallpipes, taking the place occupied by guitar on Two Boats Under the Moon. The extra range allows the pipes to follow the songs and shape their accompaniment. Lord Randal and Sir Patrick Spens sit alongside Lindsay’s own songs and his setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Inversnaid. Geddes plays fiddle and piano; the title song is for voice and piano.
The partnership has developed through close attention to the pipes. Geddes spent time exploring the chanter’s scale on his fiddle against the drones, finding the intonation and harmonies that became part of their shared sound. For one track, the studio piano was retuned to the pipes. The album was recorded together at Watercolour Music in Ardgour in April 2026, with Nick Turner recording, mixing and mastering. Studio films and the musicians’ own account of the sessions accompany the release.
The Lindsay System has meanwhile continued to develop through other people’s making and playing. Malin Lewis, Cameron Stahl and Flynn Butler Fraser are among the players who have taken it up; instruments using the design feature on the soundtracks of The Outrun and My Old School. Examples of Lindsay’s prototypes are on permanent display in the Museum of Piping at the National Piping Centre in Glasgow.
That shared development remains central to the project. PRINT & PLAY, developed with Zexuan Qiao, makes the chanter available to build and adapt under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. A Virtual Chanter offers a way to explore its fingering in a browser. Dreaming Pipes follows the history through instruments, prototypes, film and music, with its first year’s presentations at An Lanntair, The Rockfield Centre and Dundee Central Library.
Lindsay also plays in a duo with Alasdair Roberts and made History of Sleep, an improvisational record for smallpipes and electric guitar, with Richard Youngs.
Honeymoon Bridge is available digitally here. The double CD is scheduled for October 13, 2026; copies for posting will follow stock arrival.
Donald WG Lindsay: voice and Lindsay System Scottish smallpipes. Roo Geddes: fiddle and piano. Recorded, mixed and mastered by Nick Turner. Cover art: Taylor Bernard.