It's affectionately regarded as the Celtic Connections of the North and while the Northern Roots Festival at Bogbain Farm, two miles south of Inverness, doesn't have the budget or the multiple locations of its big city cousin, it does share a similarly open musical outlook.

It's also bringing some of the acts who have graced Glasgow's phenomenally successful January festival to what is essentially still a family farm.

Now in its fourth year, Northern Roots is the brainchild of Bruce MacGregor, the instigator of iconic folk band Blazin' Fiddles and presenter of BBC Radio Scotland's folk and traditional music programme, Travelling Folk. As a musician who has toured the world, with Gaelic group Cliar and various other aggregations as well as the Blazers, MacGregor is slightly shame-faced to admit that he hadn't realised that he had a venue literally on his own doorstep.

His parents bought Bogbain Farm some 20 years ago – his father had played on it as a boy – and the family had tried other ways of expanding the business, including a children's activity centre. Even now when you call the main telephone line you'll be offered, in no particular order, go karting, wedding reception and paintball facilities. It was a call from Kevin Morris, of Glasgow Americana promoters the Fallen Angels Club, looking for advice on local venues for a tour he was organising by Virginian singer and multi-instrumentalist Tim O'Brien, that made MacGregor decide to turn promoter himself.

"Putting on Tim O'Brien in the restaurant area we'd built was a fantastic way to begin as a venue," says MacGregor. "We started putting on gigs with a capacity of around 120 and four years ago I thought, this is something we should be building on as a lifelong project, let's run something a bit bigger that'll draw attention to what we're doing round the year."

With the farm barn, which dates back to 1811, offering a potentially ideal room for music and a larger capacity, once his father could be persuaded to move his vintage tractor and implement collection out and the electrical wiring could be overhauled, MacGregor set to work on the first Northern Roots.

"Luckily my dad agreed to shift his stuff, otherwise the idea wouldn't have got very far, and when we tried out the barn, the acoustics were as good as I'd thought they'd be, maybe even better," he says. "We've had bands like the Low Anthem and Kassidy come and play and they've raved about the sound quality. Musicians like the intimacy, too, and while we realised that we couldn't compete with Eden Court, for example, we thought we could capitalise on the atmosphere and find bands that people might not have heard of but that we were sure they would appreciate if they'd take the risk."

Developing audience trust has played a large part in establishing both Bogbain's regular gigs and Northern Roots. In the festival's first year MacGregor promoted one of this year's attractions, Groanbox, alongside popular local blues singer-guitarist Andy Gunn, thinking – correctly, as it turned out – that Gunn would pull in the audience and Groanbox would win them over with their rootsy, ultra-committed bluesy singing and deft musicianship.

With five concerts over the weekend and late-night club sessions on all three nights, this year's Northern Roots line-up is, MacGregor concedes, ambitious in a climate where public subsidy is increasingly difficult to generate. He's hoping, however, that the quality of music on offer, allied to free camping, craft beers and attractions such as the Bogbain accordion museum (which houses the world's second largest vintage accordion collection) and an atmosphere that sees musicians and audiences mingling comfortably, will draw in the numbers required.

"We have some really great musicians lined up, including Le Vent du Nord from Quebec, the fabulous Furnace Mountain from Virginia with their gorgeous singing and brilliant mandolin playing, and high-quality traditional Scottish music from Gaelic singer Kathleen MacInnes and, dare I say, Blazin' Fiddles. Wizz Jones, who's been an influence on rock legends like Keith Richards and is an acoustic guitar legend himself, will also be here plus we have some of the most spectacular views in Scotland up here, if the weather behaves. We can't guarantee that but we can promise people a brilliant time."

Northern Roots, June 1-3. www.northernrootsfestival.co.uk