Green Corn Rebellion + David Hernandez
Thelma’s Peach
March 20, 2026
Normally when I go out to listen to local music, it’s just me, a notebook, a pen, and my thoughts. I listen, I write, I leave, and sometimes I come back. I’ve been soaking up music in Tulsa ever since I moved here, finding my way into the city through its sounds, but until now my writing about it has mostly lived in my notebooks. Last week, as I headed out for my first review assignment, I knew I’d be writing for someone other than me. I was writing for you, and that changed how I listened, changed what I saw.
Listening to live music in Tulsa, for me, is a time to wander between venues. I'm not one to sit and stay. Time becomes relative, where suddenly it's not about the hour—it's about the music. Musicians intermingle onstage and off, blurring the boundaries between "out there" and "in here."
When I got to Thelma's Peach on Friday night to hear David Hernandez and Green Corn Rebellion, the heat of the day still hung in the air. In the parking lot, I met GCR’s Chris Foster (aka Poppa Foster), his partner Joy, and Peter Tomshany, who was peeling an orange. Peter offered me a couple wedges, freshly peeled, and they were delicious.
I walked to the door to pay my cover. It was AJ’s first night working the door, at least I think it was. I see him around lots, but this was his first posting I’ve seen. Johnny Murrell was on his phone, sharing pictures on Instagram to promote the show: “This music is sick. We need more bodies here.” He was right.
Standing in the parking lot and on the patio, I could hear guitars and fiddle wafting into the cooling night air. A song ended just as I walked inside, the small crowd applauding as the strings picked up again: David Hernandez on the guitar, Gary Sizemore on the fiddle, and another guitarist whose name I forgot to write down.
Usually if you see a couple of guitars and a fiddle on stage in Tulsa, you’re listening to folk or bluegrass. Not tonight. Hernandez plays the Spanish guitar, and I loved watching his fingers strum, pluck, and slide while he sang in smoky smooth Spanish. With each new song, a new patron arrived. When it came time for their call-back song, the whole bar was singing along: “Up above my head, there’s singing everywhere.”