Two Boats Under the Moon is an album offering two perspectives – traditional, and contemporary – from Scots singer, songwriter, piper and inventor of the groundbreaking Lindsay System Chanter, Donald WG Lindsay.

The contemporary songs on the first disc draw on themes including displacement, distance, separation, longing, love, fatherhood, place, and the natural world – in particular, providing in two of the songs “Casuarina” and the title track “Two Boats Under the Moon” vivid and almost tactile descriptions of the immediate environment of Two Boats Village, the village in the interior of Ascension Island where Donald and his family spent three years from 2019-2022.

Donald WG Lindsay is probably best known to the community of Scottish piping and Scottish traditional music as the developer of the Lindsay System for Scottish smallpipes. Fans of piping may be well aware of this innovative design, and of the impact it has been making in the fields of traditional and contemporary music. By comparison, perhaps relatively few are aware of his long fascination with and exploration of traditional song.

Says Donald: “Since my teens, in addition to my involvement in Scottish bellows piping and pipemaking, I’ve been singing traditional songs with and without accompaniment, and writing songs in both contemporary and traditional style. Last year, myself and my long time friend Alasdair Roberts decided to begin touring together as a vocal and instrumental duo. While preparing myself for this, during the summer of 2024, I made a series of informal videos in front of the dish rack in my kitchen at home singing a selection of traditional songs. These songs were recorded live, fairly raw, accompanied on a 12 string Eko Ranger strung with unison courses, and in one or two cases a set of Bb Lindsay System Scottish smallpipes, and were shared directly to Facebook. I was taken aback by the warm reception these videos received – both from friends old and new, and from professional Scottish folk and traditional singers many of whose music I admire, and whose careers I have followed over the years. This made my mind up, over the following weeks, to record and self release a solo album of songs.”

All of the music featured on Two Boats Under the Moon was recorded live at Watercolour Music in Ardgour, with the indispensable Nick Turner engineering, mixing and mastering the recordings. The album features the tremendous emerging talents of Roo Geddes on both fiddle and piano. Donald adds: “In a very real sense, Two Boats Under the Moon is a series of duets between Roo and myself. It would be an entirely different album without not only Roo’s playing, but his intuitive and spontaneous arrangements and improvisations on both instruments, his unmistakeable musicality and energy, and his deep understanding of the repertoire. I’ve known Roo since his school days, and we have often talked about recording an album of songs together, so this is the fulfilment of that and I hope may be the first of many such recordings. It was an absolute privilege to work with both Nick and Roo in this way.”

Two Boats Under the Moon is available to pre-order through Crowdfunder.co.uk until Thursday 3rd April 2025, and will be out on all platforms from Thursday 1st May 2023.

Two Boats Under the Moon is being funded by donations from supporters on the crowdfunding platform Crowdfunder, with all donations being match-funded by Creative Scotland through their Crowdmatch scheme.