* 7th Studio album from California-based Robert Fisher's collective
* collaboration with, amongst others, the composer Malcolm Lindsay (Exodus/Young Adam)
* Willard Grant Conspiracy Pilgrim Orchestra Tour with special guest Howe Gelb - May 2008

"an album of sombre majesty" Allan Jones / Uncut

In fine Willard Grant Conspiracy tradition Pilgrim Road is the result of chance meetings, online transatlantic communication, dozens of musicians plus recording & songwriting sessions the world over. Overseeing the whole process is the driving force behind the band, one Robert Fisher. Now based in California, Fisher has been at the helm since the WGC's conception in Boston during the mid 90's and has always possessed a keen ear for potential and genre-defying collaborations. The band's two previous albums Regard The End (#4 in Uncut's Albums Of The Year 2003) and the follow up Let It Roll personified this. While the former tapped into an age old folk tradition to deliver a mainly acoustic album of heartbreaking ruminations on mortality and the strength of the human condition, the latter release - with featured guest spots from various members of Lambchop, Madder Rose, The Walkabouts and Dream Syndicate - swung the opposite way and simply rocked out with an unexpected but totally delightful vigour. Fisher's journey along the Pilgrim Road began in 2003 when he met Malcolm Lindsay after a particularly harrowing show at Glasgow's Barfly. At the time Fisher was completely unaware that Lindsay was carving himself out a niche as one of Scotland's most promising composers - he would soon go on to work with David Byrne and score film & TV dramas including Channel 4's Exodus and the award winning Young Adam, starring Ewan McGregor. Nonetheless Lindsay's offer to put together string or orchestral arrangements for any future compositions intrigued him. Robert Fisher takes up the story "Over next few years, during many post gig evenings and late night emails we hashed out a plot to try to write some songs together but it wasn't until just the Fall of 2006 that we were able to get together in Scotland for an intensive ten day period of writing and recording in his home studio. We had the better part of a record sketched out and after about 5 weeks of touring I returned to Scotland with another couple of songs written on the road.

During the following 11 months we would invite people from WGC and from the Scottish music community (Jackie Leven, Doghouse Roses) to participate in Glasgow or from their home studios until we had all of the arrangements executed and ready for mixing." The result of such a fortuitous liaison will tick all the right boxes for the devoted and will hopefully draw in the uninitiated as Lindsay's evocative arrangements bring a subtle yet dramatic maturity to the party while the band's soul searching 4am vibe recalls Tom Waits at his Asylum-era best. This transatlantic meeting of minds between Fisher and Lindsay may well result in Pilgrim Road being hailed as a west-coast classic, albeit one that derives from the western coasts of two very different countries.