Photo Blog - High Desert Hootenanny

From Click Here to View Album 23.

About two and a half hours east of Los Angeles, nestled in the High Desert hills surrounding the Yucca Valley, lies the strange, little legacy of an era of western films, Pioneertown. Built by some Hollywood investors as a set in 1946, the township's solitary, main street has provided the setting for The Cisco Kid and Buffalo Bill Jr to name a couple.

Many of the original buildings remain in ghostly Pioneertown, with a collection of colorful characters inhabiting the tiny town either as full-time residents or as nearby residents who run businesses from there. The scattering of buildings on the edge of the majestic but martian-like, Joshua Tree National Park - while giving the impression of having stepped back in time - smack of the hokiness of a theme town surviving on the dime of sidetracked road trippers.

But in among all the shoot-'em-up, wild, wild west re-enactments and other such tourist lures, is a place that - while maintaining the general, thematic look of the rest of the town - has what appears to be a whole lotta heart. Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace is a honky tonk serving up good, ol’, Tex-Mex fare (including mesquite barbeque), a range of brews in Mason jars and more than a few fantastic gigs.

Originally a gas station (with the façade used as a Cantina set), Harriet’s mother and father bought the building in 1972. They established a biker, burrito bar that endured the scorching desert heat and winter snow for ten long years. Wanting to keep it in the family, they passed it on to Harriet who - along with her husband, Claude “Pappy” Allen - opened Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace in 1982. Performers themselves with a great love for music, Pappy & Harriet kept the musical acts rolling on in.

Owned now by two cousins from NYC, the musical tradition of Pappy & Harriet’s continues to provide a dream setting for music lovers today with a cute indoor stage, a décor of distressed timber, rustic mingled with kitsch knick-knacks and Christmas lights, and an open-air, dirt-floor stage which has been traversed by everyone from Wanda Jackson and Calexico to Robert Plant, Michelle Shocked and Gram Rabbit. With a diverse, relaxed and unpretentious crowd, Pappy & Harriet’s is a rollicking stopover for a refreshing brew, good food and great live music.

This past weekend, we loaded up the bus full of Venetians and camping gear and hit Highway 10 east to Pappy & Harriet’s, for the 2nd annual Clean Air & Clear Stars festival. With three stages and some thirty acts over three days, I got to dance as if in a trance to the Black Angels, sway with my husband to the beautiful acoustic rhythms of Black Rebel Motor Cycle Club and stomp and jump and clap the house down to Restavrant. All under the dark, starry skies of the high desert we danced. Hipsters coddled in blankets, cowboys wrapped in woolen jackets, bikers swathed in prison tattoos and children suited in faux-fur and mounted on their daddies' shoulders, swayed and twirled in the ice-cold, night air under a waning moon.

Between it all, I managed pulled-pork and coleslaw, apple pie with cream, cups of tea and the warmth of someone’s violin by a fire. And then I laid me down to sleep in the perfect warmth of my luxurious swag, letting the silhouettes of the Joshua Trees dance on as I counted the shooting stars until I could count no more.