Pappy & Harriet's Pioneertown Palace

So this started with me looking for live music on a Sunday evening. Several bands were relatively nearby, but I was getting a little bit picky, and almost hung it up for the evening (I’ve recently been spoiled by meeting a lot of people who I’ve put on the air for a bunch of years). Just when the evening almost boiled down to deciding what I needed from Lowes, my buddy Tom Bell told me about Pappy & Harriet’s, and we went online to check out the house band. We decided, “Eh, this could be good”. This was an incredible understatement.

Pioneertown is near Joshua Tree, making it ideal for visitors from Palm Springs, Redlands, 29 Palms, and anywhere in between. People from around the world come to this area. I mean - It's Joshua Tree. A lot of people even come to the area simply because of U2's album (it is a great album). From the website, "In 1946, Pioneertown was founded by a group of Hollywood investors with dreams of creating a living movie set -- an 1870's frontier town with facades for filming and interiors open to the public...Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Russell Hayden, and the Sons of the Pioneers (for whom the town was named) were some of the original investors and personalities who helped build and invent Pioneertown. More than 50 films and several television shows were filmed in Pioneertown throughout the 1940's and 1950's." Pappy and Harriet's itself looks like something out of movie (or, two or three or...). There's good reason for this. At Pappy & Harriet’s, the floor is made up of rough-hewn old oak plank, and the walls are covered with posters and flyers of the many, many groups to have passed through. As soon as you walk in, it feels like a roadhouse. Don’t expect Patrick Swayze keeping order, with an occasional appearance by Sam Elliott. Here’s a mix of locals, college students, desert/mountain hippies, marines, and a few bikers. Everyone is there for the same purpose – to have a good time, have some good food, and experience some great music. The staff all have a cool aesthetic as well. This may be hard to put into words, but if ya go – you’ll understand. Maybe it's the tattoos, but maybe that's just me. It just feels like a hip crowd.

We timed the drive out well, and as the band got started as we settled in. Well, I should say that a few people on stage started playing. In essence -- one guitarist started pickin', another one started strummin', and the drummer started drummin'. Soon - before ya know it - two more guitarists are there - a bass as well. They all just slowly join in with what's going - giving a gradually thicker and thicker texture to what we were already enjoying. They launch into a few more numbers as yet another guitar or two show up, along with another percussionist. Somewhere between some Dylan and some (mostly) originals (and the band stopping to notice a new disco ball above them) I noticed that the guy partially blocking my view started playing the fiddle - later, keyboards. Turned out to be Bobby Furgo. You may find him on some of your Leonard Cohen discs. When some woman with a small guitar and a kalimba showed up - I thought it was some local hoping to play a bit. She was introduced to me later AS a local-yokel. Turned out to be Victoria Williams. She's been living in the area for the past thirteen years, and is there most Sunday nights. At some point, the band played Crazy Mary, and Tom leaned in to tell me they were covering Pearl Jam. I only found out later that this is a Victoria Williams tune. Pearl Jam covered HER. Another mainstay of the group is Tim Easton. I told him I knew his name, but didn’t know why. Hm. Coulda been his five albums. It also coulda been the fact that he’s been on World Café a few times, with another appearance slated for September. He gave me one of his discs, and it’s stayed in the cd player all day today. 

I don’t mean to take anything away from the other singers/players. The entire group is a veritable “who’s who” of players. At a cursory glance it may seem like a veritable “who’s that?” but if you dig just a bit, you find that even if you don’t know THESE folk – you know the people they’ve played with. Even today, people will just show up – with no warning. People like Ricki Lee Jones. People like Robert Plant. Others to make appearanes - Billy Corgan (of course there were pumpkins smashed that night), Dave Navarro, Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven...What IS this place?

4 ½ years ago, they kept one waitress on Sundays to handle the 3 tables that MIGHT be used. Today, Sunday Nights are popular in the area, and the place is packed. Not in an uncomfortable club scene kinda way, though. The tables are full, and the sand-covered beer garden area retains a comfortable sized crowd. It’s almost received some sort of cult status. It’s become a place where EVERY Sunday evening you can see a musical collective -- trading leads and supporting each other. Nice. They call it "church".

Earlier in the evening, as my friend Tom and I got there, we saw a guy with a guitar and amp walking up. I joked, "I guess the band hasn't started yet". This is a good time to mention that if you see a guy with a guitar walking up to a Pappy and Harriet's Sunday night gig - it doesn't necessarily mean the show hasn't started yet. It just means that there'll probably be 5 guitars that night. Or six. Or seven. Or...........

And all this because needed something to do when I got the date wrong on when I could go see Poncho Sanchez.