[soft instrumental music] [waves crashing] - Once upon a time, in the Scottish highlands above the famous Loch Ness, lived a woman.

[background chatter] - Careful.

- A woman with a magical aeroplane.

Magical aeroplane that would take curious explorers on a journey.

A fantastical journey to the source of the mystical melodies that have haunted musicians since time began.

[horn beeps] - An elusive source shrouded in myths... [background chatter] ...monsters, and legends.

Little did these wonders know what strange adventures and people lay ahead.

[upbeat music] - I'm Mark Allen, a singer-songwriter with a guitar in my back.

Connecting with people one musical conversation at a time.

♪ Traveling down this open road ♪ ♪ It's me and you and the Holy Ghost ♪ ♪ I hear the call, we're getting close ♪ ♪ Around the bend there's a sign post ♪ ♪ To places, faces, through the moon and its phases ♪ ♪ This melody keeps us alive ♪ ♪ Have guitar, will travel ♪ ♪ Have guitar, will travel ♪ ♪ Oh-dee-oh-dee-oh ♪ ♪ I have guitar, will travel ♪ [upbeat guitar music] - Funding for "Have Guitar, Will Travel World" is provided by: [Irish song plays] ♪ Chuaigh mé isteach I dteach aréir ♪ ♪ Is d'iarr mé cairde are mhnaoi an leanna ♪ ♪ Is é dúirt sí liom "ní bhfaighidh tú deor ♪ ♪ Buail an bóthar is gabh abhaile ♪ ♪ Níl sé ina lá, níl a ghrá ♪ ♪ Níl sé ina lá is ní bheidh go maidin ♪ ♪ Níl sé ina lá is ní bheidh go fóill ♪ ♪ Solas ard atá sa ghealaigh ♪ - When life gets confusing and you don't know where you are, they say, "Keep your eye on the horizon."

[chuckles] - Easier said than done.

- Be careful.

- But the best way, get to the highest point.

- So, here we are getting to the top.

It's gorgeous.

- I don't think this is even the castle.

[wind whooshing] [heavy panting] - Everything looks like a castle.

[heavy breathing] - This is either one of two things, a grotto to shelter yourself from the wind, which it does, so, it could have been.

Or it could be a toilet.

But I kind of doubt it.

What do you think?

Let's go on.

I believe, and I'm pretty sure, that looks like a castle or a very large chess piece- I think.

- And if my next experience was anything like the first, things were about to get even more surreal.

It was starting to feel like I'd fallen down the rabbit hole, or maybe I'd fallen up.

- This show is 100% accurate, by the way.

We've meticulously done our research.

We have an entire research team going through all of the [sniff] facts, figures.

- I'd landed in a place with chess pieces perched high above the sea, almost randomly, - ...kind of hard.

- all of us together, taking in the beauty of it all.

- We could ask our crack research team to tell us if this is sheep dung or cow dung, but I'm pretty sure that's sheep.

- Yet I was here to get my bearing.

♪ Níl sé ina lá, níl a ghrá ♪ ♪ Níl sé ina lá is ní bheidh go maidin ♪ ♪ Níl sé ina lá is ní bheidh go fóill ♪ ♪ Solas ard atá sa ghealaigh ♪ - How you feeling?

- I'm dying.

[music continues] - A lot of worse places you could be doing that.

[wind whooshing] - So you got to come join me.

- In my case, following my compass has always meant... - More a little bit more up the hill.

- ...following the music.

- I'm tired.

- So, who better to guide me than the local shaman of sound?

- Yeah, I'm in the back of a van in Inverness, Scotland, being hosted by Rob Ellen, our new found friend here, music promoter.

He's a-a tchotchke professional.

I'm in a, I'm in a, the medicine show, mobile studio.

A Medicine man gave me some medicine.

- I got my friends from Inverness here with me tonight.

[upbeat music] - And one of the cool things I get to do in Nashville, I get to play in a pub in Nashville, we usually would end the song- end the night with this song.

And I had no idea that this is the actual pub that they got their brick out.

They played this song, I'm sure they did.

♪ Da-da da da (Da-da da da) ♪ ♪ Da-da da da (Da-da da da) ♪ ♪ Da-da dum diddy dum diddy dum diddy da da da ♪ - Here we go.

♪ And I would walk 500 miles ♪ [car engine humming] - Enjoying Inverness yet?

- I'd say so.

I'm still recuperating from enjoying last night.

[laughter] - There was much, - There was plenty of joy.

[guitar strums] - If joy is the most magnetic force in the universe, then the musical conversation might just be the surest way to get there.

[guitar strums] My introduction to Inverness, thanks to Rob, brought me in touch with both musicians and kindred spirits, like his friend Andrea, with the magical plane in her front yard.

Folks whose heart and souls reflect the independence and pride of Scotland, and the best way to learn their stories?

Follow the music.

So, it was fitting that I found myself at Hootananny, on the Scottish National Holiday, Burns Night.

A day of national pride celebrating the rebel, activist, and national poet of Scotland, Robbie Burns, who fought to keep the Scots language alive, despite it being shut down by the powers that be over 200 years ago.

It's because of him we hear Scots spoken today.

And I was about to meet another activist keeping the language alive, the musician Brian O'Hara.

- This is, ah, one of the famous music venues in Scotland.

Um, started in the early 2000s.

It's really been the home of ah, folk and highland music for all that time, and it's won awards for the traditional music awards and things like that.

- So, there's this stage- would more traditional sessions be done here?

- Yeah, you'll have everything from ,um, just simple fiddle and accordion.

And then, you might have people singing a song either in Gaelic, ah, in Scots, or in English.

Ah, and then, you'll have more rocky kind of folk, folk rock bands.

Ah, and then, you'll have pipers up here with the big bagpipes, the highland pipes, and, ah, the audience just jumping.

And then, you'll have- But now and again, they'll have rock and pop.

- Brian's passion and love for Scottish Gaelic and the Scots languages brought him to a place where he could help others learn and preserve them as well.

- So, in Scotland, we have, um, two indigenous languages, Scottish Gaelic, or Gaelic, and, um, the Scots language.

- There's a Norwegian connection too of course because of the Vikings and how that influenced the cultures in both here in Scotland and Ireland.

- Um, hmm.

And so that's part of your heritage too right?

- Absolutely, and in fact some of the songs we've written are about, you know- the one of them is about St. Brendan who traveled from Ireland all the way up to Scotland to Shetland, to the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, and then landed apparently in, in Newfoundland or around that area, and that would have been around 700 and something.

And then, of course, the Vikings then made it to Newfoundland.

There's people coming from all over North Africa.

The thing is that people were traveling.

The easiest way to travel in the past was by boat.

- Mm-hmm.

- Therefore, we were on the highway.

- And that highway becomes a musical melting pot of styles and influences from around the world, all coming together in a new and fresh way.

- So even in the traditional song from Ireland, we call Sean-nós, and in Scotland, sean-nós means old style.

- Right.

- Um, you'll hear the- the turn of phrase.

So, I could give you an example of traditional singing from Sean-nós singing an Irish Gaelic and it would be, ♪ A yes a hryst a nach moran fial ♪ ♪ me bhenrolem niskani am lefa ♪ - Wow.

- So you can see that kind of either Eastern or, you know, - Yeah, you can hear that.

- Arabic.

- Yeah, you can hear the Arabic.

- And some people sing in a, a, different way but you can hear that.

- I want you to do more of that, you know.

[laughter] You brought your guitar, right?

- I did bring my guitar.

- Which you had fixed in Memphis, apparently.

- I did have fixed in Memphis many years ago.

- So you were singing that in Memphis?

- Well, the thing is when you sing like that you don't sing with the guitar.

- You're right, yeah.

- And when you, when you have a guitar all of a sudden it changes the way you sing, um, and I did notice that I teach, um, a Gaelic singing class every Thursday night online.

People from all over the world joining in, um, obviously on mute, you know, but singing along with me, thankfully.

[laughter] Ah, not because they're terrible, but just you could- that's the one thing when you're teaching a class, you have to have everyone on mute.

And it's about the celebration of Robert Burns, the national bard of Scotland.

- Okay.

- And the celebration of his works and his love of the Scots language.

- Mm-hmm.

- And this is one of the songs.

It's called, ah, "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose."

That's one of his most well-known songs.

♪ So fare thee well, my bonnie lass ♪ ♪ Fare thee well awhile ♪ ♪ And I will come again, my dear ♪ ♪ Though it were 10,000 miles ♪ [water rushing] - In Scotland, It's called the "carrying stream."

It's the stream of tradition, the stream of, um, consciousness, I suppose of-, and it was Hamish Henderson, the great folklorist who came-, who used that expression as well.

And it's something which we just dip into.

It's coming from the past, going to the future.

- We are here at this one point.

- Right.

- We drink from the stream.

We contribute to it as well, but it'll be there.

It'll be keep flowing after we're long gone as well.

[Celtic music] [water rushing] - Finding the headwaters of this stream takes you to some unexpected places.

I had some vague idea [drum beats] that the origin of American roots music included the history of Scotland.

[drum beats] But as I'm learning about that history, so much more starts to fall into place.

[drum beats] One of the most significant events in Scotland was the Battle of Culloden.

[bagpipe and drum beats] It was a 45 minute pitched bloodbath of a battle in April of 1746, that determined not only the history of Scotland but America as well.

Its repercussions are still vibrating to this day.

As Rob and I arrived at the site of the battle, I was about to learn just how much.

- It wasn't chosen for the battle grounded, and this obviously wasn't chosen for the battle there.

It was the wrong place for a Highland charge.

They hesitated as far as the charge was concerned, because that was the only weapon that they really had.

And they were decimated by artillery fire, wiped out by musket fire, and grapeshot from the artillery.

Then they fell, then the cavalry routed them from behind.

It only lasted 40 minutes.

- I want to catch a couple of quick things while we're sitting here.

- Yeah.

- Is the way this battlefield that we're parked at, the entrance to-to the m-memorial and the site itself, how this shaped the culture going forward and it swept across into America - Yeah.

- and includes the music.

And people in America celebrate the Highland Games (Yeah) and the Scottish heritage.

- And I'd swear, if you were to look at the phone book in Nashville, you'll find more Macs, Mackenzies, McGilvrays, all the Jacobite clans in the phone book than you'll find in Inverness.

And the other important fact to remember, and we had the Highland clearances, we had hundreds of thousands of people that were... - Right.

- ...affected by that.

So, there was a mass exodus out of the, out of the highlands.

Ah, our culture was banned here, so it only flourished in, ah, the Appalachians, and in particularly in Canada.

As I was saying, some of the music and some of the traditions is just finding its way back now.

- I think it's fair to say that this battle had a lot to do with the way our music sounds today.

- Yeah.

- Of course, a lot of the migration went into Ireland as well.

But they were Northern Irish mostly, that went to the Appalachians.

And they were followers of King Billy.

They were still ancestral Scots and they were so steeped in the Scottish heritage - Yeah.

- and that's where the term hillbilly comes from- - Mm-hmm.

- because they were supporters of King Billy.

- See, there you go.

- And we're back at the Jacobite battles.

- Yeah, right.

Raise a toast for us.

- Okay.

Okay, well, let's raise a toast and it's Burns Night.

- Burns Night, yes it is.

- And he came here, uh, only 40 or so years after.

- What's his first name for people that... - Robbie Burns, - Robert Burns.

- Our national bard.

It's his day today.

- I had to study him in college, by the way.

- Yeah, well, I'm pleased to hear that.

- I'm glad, i'm glad I did.

- And known- and this is all about his songwriting's as well.

He's known across the world for the one song that everybody sings on the bells at New Year's Day, New Year's Eve, - New Year's Eve, - "Auld Lang Syne."

- "Auld Lang Syne."

- And the Highlands left its influence on all of his works.

- Again, music, poetry, and- - Music, poetry, and... - whiskey.

- community, ah, whiskey.

- Community and food.

- Yeah.

- Haggis.

[chuckle] - And Haggis.

- Yes.

- So let's, let's, let's take a toast to the bards, let's take a toast to the wandering minstrels like yourself that are here to help and to show us our own humanity.

Thank you.

- Yeah, Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you, cheers.

[gentle guitar music] - Slange.

- Cheers.

Slange.

- After learning about the battle, I could never hear Scottish or American music the same way ever again.

[bell rings] That New Year's Eve bell clearly rang in my head.

I could hear the song trail from here in Culloden all the way back to Nashville and Bristol, Tennessee and Virginia.

Yes, it's in both states and it's also known as the birthplace of country music.

It's significant that Robert Burns' poetry and song are still celebrated to this day in Scotland.

He was capturing the life and opinions of ordinary people and commonplace things.

So, cue up the music of Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, and even Bruce Springsteen.

They're all singing about the same thing, life in its rawest emotional state.

And their songs reverberate back here from across the ocean a couple of centuries later.

So the chance to celebrate Burns Night in Inverness was becoming even more important to me.

I was lucky enough to meet up with another Burns, a self-proclaimed descendant of Robbie's, the singer-songwriter Dougie Burns.

- I don't think Robbie would be upset because, um, you know, he's probably my great, great, great, great, great, uncle.

[guitar strums] - And also, eh, he wrote this in 1757 or something, so it's out of copyright.

- Dougie's love of music is seen in everything he does.

- I had run an open mic night before, and it was a bit of a disaster because it's open mics, you know, Jimmy's gotta sing a song and [chuckles] - Jimmy's lying pissed in the corner.

[laughter] - But I, I said to them, I'll only do it if it's not open mic because I've seen lots of singer-songwriters in the area, a small cafe, but there were 40 to 50 people.

- Sure.

- Standin' room only, it was really successful.

- His passion is especially, apparent in his dedication to what I consider the heart and soul of music, inclusivity.

- Yeah, I've met lots of people through music, lots of people through live music, lots of people through the internet music- and, ah, I hate having no music.

- I would agree.

- If the cast area is broken I can't go anywhere.

[laughter] - And so, he invited me out to Ardersier International Folk Club just outside of Inverness, for a celebration of Burns Night.

- It's an honor to be here with you guys.

I just wanted you to know.

- Yeah.

- It's nice having you.

- Yeah, I'm glad to be here.

- Yeah.

- See you back after now.

- Okay.

- And what I found was a room full of people keeping stories and conversations about stories, alive.

[applause] - There's no membership and everyone is welcome to join in, sing a song, or simply just listen.

- It's been a week.

- [heavy Scots accent] Let's welcome everybody.

Welcome to everybody whose stop here before.

Welcome to all the visitors.

- The Ardersier Folk Club might be considered a modern-day roundtable.

A meeting of equals, whether young or old, new or not so new, all musicians coming together as lovers of story and song.

[guitar music] ♪ Her auld lang syne ♪ [guitar music] ♪ My trusted friend ♪ - Although I'd performed "Auld Lang Syne" for decades back in America on New Year's Eve or Hogmanay as it's called here, it took on new meaning for me at my first ever Burns Night celebration, as well as my first ever haggis.

I could hear in that carrying stream, a long chorus of voices both predating Robert Burns and now immortalized by him in the hearts and souls of Scots and honorary Scots everywhere.

[water trickling] [wind rushing] - Sometimes, I suppose, it just takes one voice to keep us focused on what's really important.

And I would hear that advice from "Auld Lang Syne" yet again, and another persistent voice, Steve Feltham, Loch Ness Monster Hunter and Guinness Book of World Records holder.

Steve's originally from Dorset, on the UK's Jurassic Coast, famous for its cliffs containing fossils of dinosaurs from 200 million years ago.

But he traded one legendary coastline for another, moving up here on the banks of Scotland's Loch Ness over 30 years ago.

- You've not come on the best of days, it's a bit... - Yeah.

- ...bit blowy today out here.

- It is.

- Yeah.

- Normally, you've got the whole of Loch Ness going straight off down there.

- Oh, wow.

- Which is quite a sight to see on a, on a good day.

- So how long have you been in this year?

- 31 years.

- 31 years now?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Wow.

- This is my home.

And for the first ten years, this van was mobile.

So, I'd drive round and round, Loch Ness, different vantage points.

This was always where I would come back to in the winter.

- When did you really get fascinated with looking for Nessie?

- Started when I was seven.

I came here on a family holiday, age seven.

Just got hooked on the possibilities of monsters in a Scottish Loch, but in the mid-twenties went into a job that I hated putting in security ala- alarms, in houses.

- Right.

- Hated it and instantly thought, what do I want to do with my life?

What is the thing that I'm going to regret if I don't do?

And, you know, this voice was just saying, get up there and find that monster.

- Like so much of its past, Scotland's history lies in its epic legends.

- The mystery first, is first written about in 565 AD, so 1400 years ago, and that was a saint, St. Columba.

He came up here bringing Christianity to the Highlands.

They were Picts before that.

And on his travels along that side of the Loch, he came across a funeral of a local tribesman and the tribesman had been attacked by something in Loch Ness.

So, the saint had to send one of his minions across the narrows of the Loch, down that end to get a boat that was on the other side, so that they could cross, and as he as the one of his crew were swimming across, this monster rose up in the water and came steaming towards this person swimming, and the saint apparently, made the sign of the cross and said, "Don't you touch him.

You stay away, back where you came from."

And this was all written down by the person that was keeping a diary of all the saint's great deeds.

That's the first written account of it, 565.

- Where was the iconic photograph taken that you see, the one that was in black and white?

- That neck sticking up?

- Yeah.

- Nobody re- is really sure.

There's a debate.

It was probably on that side of the Loch, ah, because the photograph is- the far horizon, it's just a black line.

You can't identify where it is.

And he never said exactly where he was, so- But it was a fake anyway, so.

- Have you developed a way of looking for it?

Have you ever seen it?

You think?

- Well, the methods I've developed they're all been unsuccessful so far.

- Yeah.

- But apart from once, I saw something at the other end which I wouldn't be able to say it was definitely an unidentified animal but it was a spray of water off the back of something, shooting through the bay like a torpedo.

- Really?

- Yeah.

Which there isn't a mundane explanation for that at Loch Ness, so.

But that was in the first year- And that really did make me think, "Gosh, it's going to be easy to solve this mystery."

- Right.

- And, yeah.

- I know that feeling.

- Yeah, turns out it's not as easy as I thought.

- What is your best guess of what it would be?

- Like I would guess it's-, I'm, I'm inclined to, I'd love to, you know, as a child, I wanted to find long neck dinosaurs, like everybody.

- Sure.

- Unfortunately, I don't think that's the answer.

- Oh, damn!

- Damn!

[laughter] - You're disappointed, I'm disappointed.

But, you know, it's not up to either of us what Nessie is- Nessie is whatever it is.

- Sure.

- And I-I'm inclined to think some kind of big fish.

- So as music, so tell me about your-your, you've got to listen to music of some type.

Do you, do you have a music?

Classical?

Is it traditional?

Is it like pop I mean?

- Does it change?

- Dance music, I'm very into.

- Yeah?

- Yeah.

Some good old Psytrance.

I do like some Psytrance.

- So, as we discussed music, I learned about the various ways people have tried baiting Nessie.

Some even with elaborate floating drums, recordings of the organ at Notre Dame in Paris, and even the music of Mozart, Handel, J.S.

Bach, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

- There was a French guy that turned up here in the mid-1990s.

He was a bit of a cult leader, sort of a heavy metal character, long hair, - Right.

- leather trousers, bare-chested.

And he hired a boat and he draped this boat in black bin bags all over it, and then he put on the roof of it, he put two massive kettle drums and then he spent a week anchored just out here, in front of me here, and he spent all day long on the top, bare-chested with these two big sticks going bang, bong, [laughter] bang, bong, bong, bong, bong, bang!

[laughter] - And so, and all... - Did you finally chase him off I mean...?

- Well, I thought, well, that's the best bait I've seen at the moment.

[chuckles] I'll watch him for the week if he's willing, if he's willing to do that.

- But the music that really speaks to him, besides psychedelic trance, is music that, like, "Auld Lang Syne", carries a life message.

- There's, there's one tune, it's quite an obscure tune, by a guy called Asaf Avidad, and it's called, um, "One Day Reckoning."

And the whole repetitive tune that is in that, he, the woman is singing, "One day we will all be old, " think of all the stories that we could have told."

And that hits home to me.

If I hadn't set off on this adventure, think of all the stories I couldn't tell because these adventures wouldn't have happened.

And that song really touches me.

- And Steve's message echoes that of Robbie Burns, calling us to celebrate life, to wander many a weary foot since "Auld Lang Syne".

- I mean, the universal thing about what I do for anybody to hear [guitar strums] and understand is not, "Is there or is there not a monster in a Scottish Loch?"

If you're interested in that, [guitar strums] there's a lot of evidence for and against.

The message that I represent is that, it doesn't matter what your dream is, it doesn't matter what it is that you passionately think, "Oh, I wish I could do this or that."

You could want to be a musician, you could want to be a painter, you could want to climb mountains, or swim the seas.

[guitar strums] Just do it.

- Music has always been my beacon and that passion is what certainly drew me here.

Every culture has a voice and music lets us hear it.

[drum beats] Now, my guitar and I set out in search of thus next bright light on the horizon, letting the musical conversation be our guide.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music] - Funding provided by: [outro theme music]