Ashley MacIsaac's record company distanced itself from the controversial Cape Breton fiddler yesterday.

MacIsaac stunned fans at a New Year's Eve performance in Halifax when he began hurling verbal abuse at the crowd and left the stage after 20 minutes.

In a press release yesterday, Toronto-based Loggerhead Records said, "Ashley alone is responsible for his own actions."

MacIsaac ended his brief performance at a Halifax rave Friday after swearing at the crowd and reportedly making racist remarks. He was scheduled to play a 70-minute set.

It is unclear whether he was pulled off the stage or left voluntarily.

"We are offended by Ashley's recent behaviour," Loggerhead president Andrew McCain said in yesterday's statement. "We signed Ashley for one reason only: His musical talent."

Witnesses of the New Year's Eve debacle said MacIsaac played four notes repeatedly before launching into a tirade that largely featured gibberish.

It wasn't the first time the fiddler's behaviour has angered audiences. Fans walked out in disgust at concerts in Port Hawkesbury, N.S., and Charlottetown in the summer of 1998 complaining of obscene language and lewd behaviour.

In an interview with CBC-TV in Toronto on Monday, MacIsaac said, "(I don't think anyone should) have any concept in their minds that what I did was how I was musically going forward. Obviously I don't think so. I thought it was a one-off, I didn't think it was a story.

"I thought I was speaking to the children who were there."

MacIsaac's career has been coloured by outlandish behaviour and comments since he emerged as a championship Celtic fiddler and step-dancer in the mid 1990s.

Just two months ago, he confessed to The Sun's Jane Stevenson that he had recently emerged from a 2 1/2-year crack-cocaine habit.

"I did it maybe three or four times a month at the height of it, and that was pretty much to completely remove myself from the job of making a record," MacIsaac said.