THE WAKKER WEEKLY – Issue #1832
Issue #1832 – Posted on: 06 – March – 2026
What a weekend this will be! A First Firkin Friday tapping of a BLOOD ORANGE BLONDE SOUR ALE and the annual FREE SATURADAY AFTERNOON BLUES SHOWCASE too! It’s gonna be a great time!
BUSHWAKKER SEASONAL BEER STATUS Our seasonally available BLOOD ORANGE BLONDE ALE, WHITEOUT STOUT, PICKARD’S OATMEAL CREAM STOUT, MOTHER-IN-LAW ALE (a blend of stout and bitter), 35th ANNIVERSARY DOUBLE HONEY IRISH RED ALE and HARVEST LAGER are currently available. There is also a batch of BARON BOCK working its way through the brewery!
Our WEEKEND SPECIAL DINING FEATURE for March 6th & 7th is CAJUN CHICKEN & SAUSAGE MAC & CHEESE. Our Saturday CLASSIC STEAK & A PINT SPECIAL as well as our Monday and Wednesday WINGS & A PINT SPECIAL and Tuesday PIZZA & A PINT SPECIAL are also great value deals. Please note you can also have a pop, lemonade, sarsaparilla, ice tea or coffee instead of a pint of beer if you wish!
MARCH WINE FEATURES: Our March featured Red is CASTILLO DE ENERIZ GARNACHA from Spain and the White is LEFT FIELD PINOT GRIS from New Zealand. Both are $8.95 for a glass and $23.95 for a half litre.
Our brand new Seasonal Menu was released earlier this week! Get ready to enjoy some hearty comfort food featuring some past Bushwakker classic dishes including:
Classic Bushwakker Potato Skins. Potato halves generously filled with tomato, green onion, jalapeno, bacon and topped with a cheese blend.
Bushwakker Clubhouse. Three slices of toasted multigrain with real turkey, ham, bacon, lettuce, tomato, cheddar cheese and roasted garlic aioli. Served with choice of side.
Chef Mike’s Pizza. Ham, mushroom, green pepper and pepperoni. It doesn’t have to be complicated to be good!
Cottage Pie with Beer Bread. Certified Angus Sirloin Beef cubes marinated with Palliser Porter in a rich gravy with vegetables and topped with garlic parmesan mashed potatoes.
Loaded Prime Rib Burger. A big prime rib patty topped with bacon, lettuce, tomato, red onion, pickles, mozzarella cheese and demi mushrooms on a potato scallion bun. Served with choice of side.
Baked Alaska. Chocolate cake covered in French vanilla ice cream and smothered in toasted meringue with a cherry sauce.
Congratulations to Tyler! So many people entered our draw for a chance to win our Frost Festival Prize Basket! Tyler will be comfy and cozy for the rest of the winter with his Frost toques and Frost scarves and City of Regina snuggly blankets. If he fills up his Bushwakker glasses with our Whiteout Double Honey Stout he will be set for the weekend!
UPCOMING EVENTS
Mar. 6: FIRST FIRKIN FRIDAY! Don’t miss this decades-old Bushwakker monthly tradition. A piper from The Regina Police Services Pipes & Drums leads a keg (the firkin) of special ale throughout the pub in a procession. A guest volunteer tapper is selected to wield the handmade wooden maul affectionately named, The Mighty Firkin Wakker, and attempts to tap the keg in one mighty blow! This month’s “can’t wait for spring-inspired” firkin offering is a BLOOD ORANGE BLONDE SOUR ALE! The fruity and refreshing suds-soaking spectacular takes place at 5:30 PM.
Mar. 7: FREE SATURDAY AFTERNOON BLUES SHOWCASE. Presented in conjunction with The Regina Delta Blues Association and The Mid-Winter Blues Festival Week, our Saturday afternoon showcase is a great way to warm up for the festival finale later that evening. Enjoy this special “Blues & Beyond” edition which features three great local live blues acts including: The 18th Avenue Blues Duo, Mark Radford’s Tribute to Tom Waits and The Backroad Howlers. Hosted by Regina’s #1 live music fan, Jeff “Redbeard” Corbett. No cover charge. Plan to arrive early in order to get a good seat! 1:30 PM – 4:30 PM.
Mar. 9: Monday Night Jazz & Blues. THE JAZZ BAND-ITS. The largest band to ever grace the Bushwakker stage returns to deliver big band, jazz and swing! 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM.
Mar. 11: Wednesday Folk Night. SUN ZOOM SPARX. A potent mixture of rock, funk, jazz fusion and psychedelia, peppered with monster riffs, Krautrock grooves, mid-70s ambience and left field curveballs. 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM.
Blue To The Bone: The History Of The Blues & The Relevance Of The Blues Today With Racism & Its Impact On Modern Music
“I’m an old Blues man, I think you’ll understand, been singin’ the Blues ever since the world began” — Jim Morrison
If you’ve lost your job or you’re broke or heartbroken, it’s safe to say you’ve got the Blues. If you’re down and out, or just low, or sad or in trouble, you most definitely have the Blues.
You’ve got the pain and melancholy in the lyrics mixed with smooth grooves and captivating riffs and licks on the acoustic guitar whether played fingerstyle or on slide; combined with the howls and moans and groans and references to a life of strife, describing the adverse predicament of those forgotten times like many Blues artists that emerged since the inception of the genre reflected in their music.
The Blues can be deeply and profoundly emotional, yet cathartic and meaningful. They fluctuate from intense sadness to happiness and hope, and an easy time, expunging the rather cruel treatment of the black community in early American history.
The Blues echo adversity and pain, but as a musical art form they are the very roots and foundations of Rock and Roll and the offshoots of Rock in modern music we know today.
The African-Americans of the 19th and later early 20th century would set the base, rather unknowingly, for the gradual development of modern music that grew as a natural progression from the Blues.
The Blues artists of the past set the ball rolling for most of the genres of music we know today. Whether Jazz, or Folk, Funk, or Country or Rock or the sub-genres that emerged from Rock such as Metal and later Punk, Grunge, and Alternative Rock, and right up to the birth of Hip-Hop; all these genres had their foundations and roots that originated from the cotton fields of 19th century America, and inadvertently, they all sprung to life from the Blues.
Simply put, if there wasn’t the Blues there wouldn’t be a lot of the music we know today.
The History Of The Blues
Early Blues Musicians
The actual origins of the Blues is rather unknown, loosely recorded, and lost amidst the myriad backdrop and stories of black Americans in the history of African-American culture in early American history.
The genre emerged from the shadows of the melting-pot of early America, mirroring the conflation of the poor treatment, oppression and adversity faced by African-Americans in the cotton fields and plantations of Southern America in the early 19th century.
At that stage of history, the African-Americans were predominantly treated as slaves and the music that began then was a way for the black population to get together and express their emotions, predicament, voice their views, and to celebrate in whatever way they could. That’s perhaps why the Blues is so deeply impassioned and poignant.
According to some accounts and myths, the name and term ‘Blues’ was perhaps given to the music because of the use of blue-indigo, which was used at death and mourning ceremonies by black people at the time, where all the mourners clothes were dyed blue.
As written in an article on Santa Fe it reads:
(The Blues began as)…..a fascinating mixture of African-American spirituals, traditional songs, work songs of the slaves, field hollers, shouts and chants, folk ballads, European hymns, contemporary dance music and rhymed simple narrative ballads. During their back-breaking toil in the fields of the Southern plantations, black slaves developed a “call and response” way of singing to give rhythm to the drudgery of their work.
The Blues began in the Mississippi Delta close to New Orleans and then began to spread slowly to other parts of America like Chicago and the mid-West by the early 20th century. However, it remained by and large a form of music made by black American musicians in the South.
In an account by composer W.C. Handy in his autobiography in 1903 while traveling South on a train running through Mississippi, he wrote:
… a lean, loose-jointed Negro who had commenced plucking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. … The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly… The singer repeated the line (“Going’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog”) three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard.
Blues Music
It remained predominantly in those formative years, the music of the South. As it reads on the website All About Jazz:
…..the legacy of these earliest blues pioneers can still be heard in 1920s and ’30s recordings from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia and other Southern states. This music is not very far removed from the field hollers and work songs of the slaves and sharecroppers. Many of the earliest blues musicians incorporated the blues into a wider repertoire that included traditional folk songs, vaudeville music, and minstrel tunes.
The Earliest Blues Recordings & Pioneering Musicians
Robert Johnson
The earliest recordings of the Blues were in the early 1920’s where musicians such as Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leadbelly, Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, Charlie Patton, and other contemporary and obscure musicians recorded studio albums that would form the basis of the music of the future.
All those early recordings had the aforementioned musicians singing and playing on only an acoustic guitar with no other accompanying instruments.
As those recordings began to spread across America and be heard by both the black and white population of the country, the Blues became a movement and a widely loved form of music and art form of 20th century America.
Leadbelly
By the time of the 1930’s musicians such as Sonny Boy Williamson, Tampa Red, Memphis Minnie, Big Bill Broonzy, Bukka White, and others were popular live Blues performers in Chicago. While in Detroit, and Atlanta, Memphis and St.Louis, other musicians such as John Lee Hooker, Robert Wilkins and others would head on to Chicago to perform along with other contemporaries as they then began to popularize the Blues gradually over the United States.
Electrifying The Blues & The Birth Of Folk, Jazz & Rock & Roll
By the end of WWII, a new generation of Blues musicians would take up the mantle of the genre with their own take on the Blues of the past.
Artists such as B.B. King, Howling Wolf(Chester Burnett), Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Lightnin’ Hopkins, J.B. Lenoir, Otis Rush, Albert King, Elmore James, Little Walter Jacobs and others started to experiment and electrify the Blues by adapting the music to being played on the electric guitar.
As the ’40s gave way to the ’50s the Blues exploded all over America and the electric guitar would enable this new style of Blues music to become widely heard, appreciated and enjoyed.
The ’50s Blues musicians began to also incorporate the drums and other instruments into their live performances which was the next phase in the evolution of the genre.
Jazz also began as an offshoot of the Blues for the more classically inclined musicians of the time, and for the black musicians who were more proficient on the piano and brass instruments, especially those who had their musical roots in Gospel.
Musicians like Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Otis Spann, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington and several others emerged with their spin on the Blues with the more technical and brass driven instrumental genre i.e. Jazz; while the ’50s saw white musicians like Chet Baker, Bill Evans, Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, and others also join in playing along with the black musicians on stage, something that was previously contentious.
As the records of the ’50s Blues musicians made their way to the U.K. and other parts of Europe, the musicians from Britain instantly gravitated to the music and were hooked.
The early British musicians were enamored with this new kind of music and commenced playing and adapting the Blues on the electric guitar which gave birth to early Brit-Blues.
Meanwhile in America, musicians such as Woodie Guthrie, Johnny Cash, and Bob Dylan adapted the Blues into protest songs and love songs giving birth to early American Folk music.
Bob Dylan(R) and Woodie Guthrie(L)
In Britain, British Folk also began to grow and develop slowly. Artists like Bert Jansch, Davy Graham, Donovan, John Martyn, and later Nick Drake and others would also adapt and evolve the Blues into British Folk music which was played fingerstyle and with more exploratory and happier themes and lyrics.
By the time the ’60s hit, Rock & Roll began in its infancy as a result of Brit-Blues and American Blues of the ’50s.
In America there was of course Elvis in the ’50s, but as the ’60s began, smaller obscure bands like The Allman Brothers Band, and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and several others began the next phase of electric-rooted American Blues.
Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton
While across the Atlantic, Brit bands like The Animals, Cream, John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers and musicians like Peter Green and Eric Clapton began performing and recording electric renditions of the Blues songs of the past.
What followed was bands like The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and American artists and bands like Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, CSNY, The Doors, and many others who came to the forefront of American music and pioneered Rock & Roll and the counterculture movement worldwide, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The Relevance Of The Blues Today With Racism & Its Impact On Modern Music
What started in the Mississippi Delta, and earlier in the cotton and share cropping fields of the South as an emotional outcry of black oppression became a worldwide phenomenon as the years progressed.
It’s important to note that perhaps the Blues, in its own pervading way, helped the African-American people break the shackles of suppression and ill-treatment of the past to become more widely revered, accepted and considered equal(and rightfully so) as time went on.
You could argue that the music helped the civil rights movement of the black community and contributed to the eradication of racial discrimination in America.
It further highlights just how powerful an art form music is, and how it can transcend boundaries and divides to unite and congregate people.
It further goes to show how music can touch people’s lives and help usher progress and unite people because music is transcendental by nature.
Modern music as we know it today, all emerged from and had its roots in the Blues.
Today’s music is by and large a culmination of black musicians’ culture, life stories, voice, and art. It has African-American origins that stemmed from the black community of the past and is the focal point and predecessor of the music of the 20th and 21st century.
It’s sad to see racism still prevalent around the world, and that’s why sports like football(soccer) in the Premier League in England sees players ‘take the knee’ before each game, because there is ‘no room for racism’ — A campaign started by the league in the UK.
Black people today need to be more aware of how not just Hip-Hop (in the modern era) but nearly every genre of music today was the brainchild and by product of black musicians and black people of the past.
Black people can hold their head up high knowing that modern music today was all conceived a result of black society with humble beginnings in black heritage and traditions.
Every kind of music we enjoy today has its beginnings and foundations firmly rooted in black African-American culture.
Black people all over the world today need to be more aware about the Blues and its origins and its history and how it gave birth to nearly every genre of music we know in this day and age.
The Blues holds its rightful place in the history of the world and the history of music. It’s safe to say, without being circumspect, that the Blues has slowly shaped and paved the way for a society that is more equal and egalitarian .
It will certainly go down in history as the genre that was conceived in the past but one that firmly built the future.
TIME OUT – How To Sing The Blues
Most blues begin with, “woke up this morning”.
“I got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line: “I got a good woman, with the meanest dog in town.
Blues are simple. After you have the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes.
E.g. Got a good woman with the meanest dog in town. He got teeth like Margaret Thatcher and he weighs 500 pounds.
The blues are not about limitless choice.
Blues cars are Chevys and Cadillacs. Other acceptable blues transportation: a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Not acceptable: Beemers, hot air balloons.
Walkin’ plays a major part in the blues lifestyle, as does fixin’ to die.
Teenagers can’t sing the blues, although they always try. Adults sing the blues. Blues adulthood means old enough to get the chair if you kill a man in Memphis.
You can have the blues in New York City, but not in Queens or Brooklyn. Hard times in Vermont or North Dakota: just a depression. The best places to have the blues are still Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City.
The following colors do not belong in the blues: violet, beige, mauve. You can’t have the blues in an office or mall: the lighting is wrong.
Good places for the blues: The highway (the best: a crossroads), the jailhouse, an empty bed.
Bad places: Ashrams, wine tastings, a weekend in the Hamptons.
No one will believe it’s the blues if you wear a suit, unless you are an old black man.
Do you have a right to sing the blues?
Yes, if your first name is a southern state, like Georgia. You’re blind, you shot a man in Memphis, you can’t be satisfied, “the man” doesn’t like you.
No, if you were once blind but now can see, you’re deaf, you have an IRA.
Neither Julio Iglesias nor Barbara Streisand (or their fans) can sing the blues.
If you ask for water and yo baby gives you gasoline, it’s the blues.
Other blues liquids include; wine from a bottle in a sack, Irish whiskey from a dirty glass, Muddy water (usually not for drinking.)
Not blues beverages: Any mixed drink or a drink with a little umbrella in it, any kosher wine, Yoo Hoo (all flavours.)
If it occurs in a fleabag hotel or in a shotgun shack, it’s a blues death. Other blues deaths: being stabbed in the back by a jealous lover, being pushed down an old mine shaft, crying yourself to death. You cannot die a blues death during a tennis match or while getting a liposuction treatment.
Some names for blues women: Sadie, Big Mama, Bessie.
Some blues names for men: Joe (including “Big”, “Old” or “Blind” alone or in any combination, but not “little”), Willie (Little Willie could work), Lightnin’, almost anything with “howlin’ in front of it.
Other name possibilities include physical infirmities: blind, cripple, wheezin’; fruit names: lemon, lime; names of presidents: Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore.
Persons with names like Sierra, Sequoia or Chauncey will not be permitted to sing the blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.
Close! But no cigar. Let’s set things straight. The blues will be good and the event will be free but the blues will be in the afternoon and the beer won’t be free. But yes, tomorrow is our annual SATURDAY AFTERNOON FREE BLUES SHOWCASE! Be sure to get here early to get a seat! Show starts at 1:30 PM and concludes around 4:30 PM.
