Hank Early's Rabbit Habitat
Mercury Lounge
July 17, 2024
When a musician could, ostensibly, play anything, then I think about their artistry as a matter of choice or taste. There’s at least a dozen-deep roster of shredders performing in Tulsa every night of the week, swapping configurations with ease and creating little pop-up conglomerates, shoulder to shoulder onstage with hours-long sets tossing solos to each other. This is its own kind of joyful, chaotic magic, much-beloved by a large base of listeners, and something this city is known for.
I expected Mercury Lounge’s current Wednesday happy hour residency, Hank Early’s Rabbit Habitat, to follow this pattern of operation as well—running on vibes as much as or more than a distinct plan, especially since the project debuted only in April. But according to my partner, who also plays Early’s instrument of choice, the pedal steel, “Steel players are weird.”
As such, I should have known better than to expect merely a tangent of Early’s primary gig as steel/auxiliary instrumentalist for Turnpike Troubadours. Advanced steel players can do things other musicians can’t do and hear things other musicians can’t hear. The pedal steel houses equal capacity for barroom twang, jazz, and atmospheric psych rock, and as such, Early’s full-fledged compositions touched on it all, with a sprinkling of pop hits, too. With Early as a minimalist frontman but airtight bandleader and the steel serving as vocalist, it was unlike any happy hour I’ve had in a while.
If you find this intriguing and can’t make it to the Merc at 5:00 on Wednesdays, I have some homework for you from aforementioned steel-playing partner, who says if I listened to Buddy Emmons and Speedy West I would have known what I was in for. I would add to that a few YouTube videos of Barbara Mandrell playing steel, for fun.