At Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace • Thursday, October 13, 2016

About

An intimate & surprise concert played by Paul McCartney and band in a 300-person capacity club, a couple of days before the second Desert Trip show.

Announcement on paulmccartney.com:

PAUL McCARTNEY TO PLAY PAPPY & HARRIET’S TONIGHT
THURSDAY OCTOBER 13th 8:30pm
Tickets Available ONLY at Pappy & Harriet’s Box Office From 6:30pm

Paul McCartney’s domination of the desert continues with the most intimate show of his record breaking ‘One On One’ tour: Tonight at 8:30pm, Paul and his band will take the stage at the venerable Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace.

Tickets go on-sale exclusively through Pappy Harriet’s box office only at 6:30pm, with no line-ups permitted prior to 3:00pm. Tickets will be limited to one per person, and are first come, first served. You will need to enter the venue immediately upon the purchase of your ticket. There will be a strict no readmittance policy. All tickets are CASH ONLY, and will be priced at $50 (including taxes and fees).

About Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace:

The legendary Pappy&Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace has been delighting locals and travelers alike since 1982, with its mesquite barbeque, live music, dancing and friendly service. There is also a long history here. 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. […]

In 1982, Harriet and her husband, Claude “Pappy” Allen, opened “Pappy&Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace”. While the bikers still hung around, Pappy&Harriet’s presence created more of a family atmosphere. With family style Tex-Mex cuisine and live music featuring Pappy, Harriet and their granddaughter Kristina, P&H quickly became a local favorite with all walks of life getting along under one roof!

Pappy died in 1994 and his friends and fans flew from all over the world to be at P&H for a celebration of his life.. Victoria Williams, a good friend of Pappy and touring partner wrote the song “Happy To Have Known Pappy” off her critically acclaimed record “Loose”, that talks about that day. Harriet sold the bar to a family friend who gave it up after a few years. Enter Robyn Celia and Linda Krantz, two New Yorkers who loved P&H and wanted to see it returned to it’s glory days. The girls bought the club in 2003 and have done just that. Musicians from Robert Plant to Vampire Weekend to Leon Russell to Sean Lennon and many more have graced the P&H stage. The legendary bar has become an indie rock favorite with a vibe that can’t be matched. Pappy&Harriet’s continues the tradition of live music, great barbeque, and good times in memory of Pappy and all those who came before him.

From The Press Enterprise, October 14, 2016:

This is the show I’m going to talk about on my deathbed–the day Sir Paul McCartney turned a high desert roadhouse into a modern day Cavern Club. It sounds like a dream, but it really did happen.

In between his Saturday night sets at Desert Trip, McCartney and his band blew in like tumbleweeds that can sing in perfect harmony to Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace on Thursday, Oct. 13, to play for a crowd of only a few hundred super fans who just found out about the show that morning when Macca announced it.

Some had seen McCartney’s monster set at Desert Trip last weekend while others were headed to the Empire Polo Club this weekend. And there were high desert locals, like brothers Jaime and Mario Correa, 25 and 26, respectively, of Joshua Tree, who plunked down $50 each, in cash, for the show of a lifetime.

Jaime Correa was working on a car engine when he heard about the show Thursday morning.

“This is crazy,” Jaime Correa said. “I didn’t wake up this morning expecting to be here.”

None of us did–well, except Macca and his band, and the merch guys, since there were posters ($10) and two different Pappy & Harriet’s McCartney T-shirts for sale ($30).

Fans started unofficially lining up around noon, Jaime Correa said, and within a short time after the official line started a little before 3 p.m., the show was at capacity.

The lucky ones started being let in around 5 p.m., a little more than three hours before McCartney would take the stage for a 100-minute, 22-song set that ran the gamut from Beatles’ favorites (“Love Me Do,” “Cant Buy Me Love”) to Wings’ hits (“Band on the Run,” “Let Me Roll It”) to songs from McCartney’s 2013 album “New” (“Save Us” and “Queenie Eye”).
When a man passed out in the early evening, the courteous crowd immediately said they would save his spot and cheered when he returned from being attended to by paramedics before McCartney took the stage.

It was just another surreal moment in a night full of them. Outside, giant tour buses were parked out back, having navigated the windy, hilly road leading to the venue, a sharp juxtaposition to where gunfighters play in the day.

In the hours before McCartney appeared, fans kept talking to each other about how incredible it all was. They couldn’t believe they were there. They couldn’t believe he was going to be there, too.
Rumors were whispered among the crowd that fellow Desert Trip performers Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would be showing up to guest star. They didn’t, but desert music king and Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme was hanging out to watch the show.

“This is the biggest gig we’ve ever played,” McCartney quipped as the band took the stage.

It was so unbelievable that I actually pinched myself a couple of times during the show, to make sure this wasn’t a vivid dream with the best soundtrack ever.
No matter the size of the audience, it’s clear that McCartney, now 74, loves to perform. A wide smile spread over his face every time he locked into the groove with his top-notch band, which features guitarist Rusty Anderson, drummer Abe Laboriel Jr., bassist and guitarist Brian Ray and multi-instrumentalist Paul “Wix” Wickens.

The musicians that played the heck out of Pappy & Harriet’s tiny stage, just as much as they rocked a stage that was closer to the length of a football field at Desert Trip.
And even when Laboriel isn’t on a jumbotron, he still made wacky faces as he emoted the lyrics to some of the most beloved songs of the last 60 years. […]

“Midweek, we decided we’d just do a crazy pop-up thing, at this biker’s roadhouse in Pioneertown, which is near the Joshua Tree National Park. We actually arrived in the area a bit early, so we could go to the National Park. We all went, got out the car, had our photos taken with the Joshua Trees and even though we didn’t stay long, it was nice, it was sunset. It was great and we had a band photo taken. And then we sort of hopped off and then went to Pappy and Harriet’s, which is this biker roadhouse. A great little gig. It was pretty magical because there was a little barn, where we got to rehearse in. But all our gear was at the little gig, so we didn’t have any equipment. We just had to rehearse acoustically! So you know, when it was time for the guitar solo of ‘Junior’s Farm’, like, ‘Take me down, Junior!’ We all had to go really quiet, so you could hear Rusty.

“It was great though. Somebody, a reviewer I think, was with some kids who couldn’t get in, and they actually really enjoyed this little rehearsal – they could hear it! And they had to have listened hard, because we had to play so quietly! But it was fun when the solo came around, we all just went to like zero volume almost. That was a good thing, it set us up. Then we did the gig, which was just hot and sweaty.

“And we’d invited David Hockney, a great English painter. He came and I said, ‘David, I hope you’re gonna sketch this!’ He said, ‘Oh, I haven’t got anything with me.’ And I said, ‘Well, what about your iPad?’ He’s really good on the iPad, he paints on it. And he said, ‘Oh, I haven’t…’ And then somebody said, ‘Your iPhone!’ So he did. He sketched on his iPhone. I haven’t seen any results yet, but he loved the gig apparently. He sent us a note saying that that he loved it. It was a very special little show.”

Paul McCartney – From paulmccartney.com, December 21, 2016

Last updated on March 7, 2021

Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace

This was the 1st and only concert played at Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace.

Setlist for the concert