YOU CAN imagine one of alt-country's leading bands, based on the edge of California's Mojave Desert, heading down something as mythically titled as the Great Western Road in search of a recording studio for their latest opus. Just not the one in Glasgow. And yet (with a sharp right turn at Anniesland Cross) that's the route followed by Willard Grant Conspiracy as they laid down the tracks for their seventh album.

The journey of these Americana cult favourites towards Bearsden begins in 2003, when Scottish composer and musician Malcolm Lindsay saw the band at the Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham. However, it was after a gig closer to home, at Barfly in Glasgow, that Lindsay made the first move, handing a CD of his classical work to singer Robert Fisher.

Originally formed in Boston in 1995, Willard Grant Conspiracy's loose collective these days revolves around the emotive baritone vocals of Fisher, the band's songwriter and only continuous member. "Anyone else who tells you they play on this probably does" is a regular line following the musician credits on Willard Grant Conspiracy albums, recognising the spread of collaborators that Fisher pulls together. Lindsay, having opened up his Bearsden home studio to Fisher, where they co-wrote, recorded and arranged the songs that would form new album, Pilgrim Road, can now count himself as part of this international family.

Lindsay's musical background is nothing if not eclectic. He arranged the strings for David Byrne's score for Young Adam and has composed soundtracks for feature film Exodus and TV drama Mysterious Creatures; he played guitar in a band with Ricky Ross in the years prior to Deacon Blue then formed his own group, The Moors; his classical string quartets have been played by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Scottish Ensemble and the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble; he collaborated on radio programme A Map Of British Poetry with poet laureate Andrew Motion and has a CD of lounge jazz in the works.

It's a rich mix that paid dividends as Lindsay and Fisher spent weeks trading musical ideas, using stand-in samples for an entire orchestra of available instruments. Then it was time to call in the collective.

"We sent the album out to everyone, and Robert's collaborators started sending back parts," says Lindsay, picking up the story. "There were some vocals recorded in New York; drums, trumpet, saw and bass were also recorded in the States; and the persephone was recorded in Croatia. And then there was a whole host of Scottish musicians that we knew." Included among these are Iona MacDonald and Paul Tasker of Doghouse Roses, folk-blues guitarist Jackie Leven and Scottish Opera cellist Robert Irvine.

Actually, Willard Grant Conspiracy's Scottish sojourn does have a personal basis. "I think Robert's granddad used to preach in Gaelic in America," explains Lindsay. "Robert learned to play the bagpipes when he was young, and he can trace his family back to the 1600s in Scotland." This cultural exchange works both ways. "Conversely, when I was a kid, I loved American music and played American songs in a little folk band," Lindsay continues.

Fisher has always been open to outside influences, and previous Willard Grant Conspiracy albums have revealed unexpected textures for a band who tend to throw a gothic shroud over country music traditions. The Visitor, the stand-out track on third album Mojave, winds a spooky John Cale fiddle through its epic crescendo; Let It Roll, the title track of their last album, has the dark swagger of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds.

On Pilgrim Road, the textures are guided by Lindsay's hand. Closing song Vespers borrows the mood of Estonian composer Arvo Part, while The Pugilist is held together, barely, by harp and pizzicato strings. Most surprising, perhaps, is The Great Deceiver, which draws in Paul Tasker's bluesy, Bert Jansch-style guitar, before Iona MacDonald's supporting vocals steer the song away from American country twangs towards a British folk tradition, and then the sudden entrance of a choral backing transports the listener to a kirk on a remote Scottish island and the sound of the Lewis psalm singers Despite the computerised samples and internet connections used by Fisher and Lindsay during the album's construction, Pilgrim Road is a triumph of intimacy over technology.

"The orchestration on this record is very much about emotion through individual instruments rather than pressing a button for big string and horn arrangements," says the composer. "Robert and I thought very hard about each individual part as we were creating them. You can go into a phase of music that's just pizzicato strings, and it sounds like it's not a huge expensive orchestra doing it but six people playing in your lounge."

Or perhaps two men in a room off the downstairs hall in a house in Bearsden, where the west coast of America came visiting the west coast of Scotland.