Bagpipes and bluegrass might seem unlikely musical bedfellows, but for the brilliant Scottish piper Fred Morrison, one of Celtic music’s most profoundly skilled and audaciously inventive exponents, they form a wholly natural alliance. His latest album project, Outlands, featuring such top Americana luminaries as producer Gary Paczosa (Dolly Parton, Dixie Chicks, Nickel Creek), banjo/guitar ace Ron Block (Alison Krauss & Union Station) and Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien, sets out to explore the inherent connections Morrison perceives between their traditions and his.

Although Morrison was born and raised near Glasgow, it’s the celebrated Gaelic piping tradition of his father’s native South Uist, in the Outer Hebrides, that forms the bedrock of his intensely expressive, uniquely adventurous style which finds expression in a unique way in “Outlands”

His current bluegrass project, meanwhile, has him more fired up than ever before – and given Morrison’s uniquely impassioned approach to music, that’s saying something. “The point I’ve reached now with my playing and my writing – it’s like everything’s just kind of at one,” he says. “I’ve never felt I was quite there with it before, but now I know where I’m at, I know what I want to do, and I know I can do it. I heard this Uist-Irish-bluegrass connection in my head, and I knew I could make it work.”

“Outlands is now available on general release on Ridge records or as signed copies from
www.fredmorrison.com and track samples are also available on www.myspace.com/fredmorrison
this site also provides further biographical detail