“In early June 2021, Joseph “J.B.” Moresco and Lisa Elin, co-owners and general partners of Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, the renowned high-desert watering hole and music venue in Pioneertown, Calif., changed the locks on the doors of their new property.
A few months earlier the L.A. couple had, with the financial backing of Tony-nominated producer Stephen Hendel, Knitting Factory Entertainment Chief Executive Morgan Margolis and others, successfully purchased the famed business, set amid a ramshackle town (population 558) four miles north of Yucca Valley and not far from Joshua Tree National Park.
Imagined, like the “Mane Street” area of Pioneertown itself, as a western movie set in the mid-1940s, Pappy & Harriet’s reputation had been cemented after the namesake owners, Claude “Pappy” Allen and his wife Harriet, bought it in 1982. In their hands, it evolved into a kind of oasis for motorcycling misfits and thirsty desert musicians…”
