Tales from the bar: When Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman hit Neil's Lounge during Stagecoach

From the archive: This story first published in The Desert Sun's Desert Magazine in August 2016.

Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace

The first time Stacy Wolf walked into Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace was in 1984, when a sign hung out front prohibiting motorcycle club patches from being worn inside. She joined the staff seven years later, and watched the bar evolve from a locals’ gathering place into the renowned music venue it is today.

Wolf has seen artists like Lucinda Williams and David Catching pass through the building – “never in my life have I ever served as many bottles of tequila as I did that night for David Catching’s birthday party,” she says of the 2015 event – and she was there during the last year of former owner Claude “Pappy” Allen’s life from 1993 to 1994.

“Pappy, bless his heart, he was always a man’s man,” she explains. “The guys would come in, they’d sit down at the bar and they’d order shots of whiskey.”

But that year, Allen made an effort to abstain from alcohol so as to not worry his wife, Harriet. Wolf was aware, so one night she “slipped him a shot of Coke – half Coke and half water” instead.

“I set the whiskies down, I’m like, ‘Bottom’s up, boys,’ and Pappy shot the whiskey and set it down and looked over at me and gave me a wink,” she says. “Nobody ever knew. I never served him another shot. It was Coke and water, and he winked every time.”

Melvyn's Restaurant in Palm Springs

To appease his mother, Mark Myrick wore a three-piece wool suit to his interview at Melvyn’s Restaurant in 1986. In August. In Palm Springs. It’s been 30 years since he got the job, and he still hasn’t lived down his outfit.

Adjacent to the Ingleside Inn, Mevlyn’s is a hot spot for celebrities – one of its most well-known patrons was Frank Sinatra. Myrick never served the singer but says he was on a first-name basis with New York mobster turned FBI informant Henry Hill and former Los Angeles Police Department Chief Daryl Gates. “I told [Gates] he’s the only person that my mother actually talks back to the TV, back when everything was going on,” Myrick says.

His “claim to fame,” however, came in the late 1980s, when he arrived at the restaurant to find singer Dinah Shore at the bar. He says he promptly introduced himself and complimented her trademark television jingle. “See the U.S.A in your Chevrolet,” Myrick says, “she used to sing that.” The night went on before Shore began to exit the restaurant, catching Myrick’s eye on the way out. She stopped abruptly and called him by name to say goodnight. “Everybody behind her bumped into her,” Myrick recalls, using his hands to demonstrate the domino effect. “It was perfect.”

Neil's Lounge in Indio

When regulars start filing into Neil’s Lounge at 10 a.m., Mike Kearney knows exactly what they’re drinking. He’s been at the Indio establishment for 18 years, along with two other bartenders each with more than a decade of experience. “Someone pretty much has to die,” Kearney explains, for someone new to join the rotation.

His busiest shift of the year is the night before Stagecoach Festival, when country music fans pour into the Western-themed water hole. On that evening in 2010, Kearney says the place was at capacity when he noticed a couple drinking water on his side of the bar. “Not exactly what you want on your busiest shift of the year,” he recalls. The next day, he got a call from owner Jacqueline Leon-Babington to see if he took good care of the patrons – the couple, he learned, was musician Keith Urban and his wife, actress Nicole Kidman.

“I said, ‘First of all, I wouldn’t know Keith Urban if he slapped me in the face.’ ” he says. “I said, ‘Secondly, boss, it’s the busiest shift of the year. We’re going like crazy and I’ve got two people taking up two of my six bar stools drinking water. I’m not guaranteeing great service.’ ”

That’s hard to imagine, though, as Kearney respects his craft with quiet stoicism. He has two rules – “We don’t do politics and we don’t do religion” – and when probed about high-profile patrons, he’s tight-lipped. “As a good bartender, you listen to everything; you don’t say anything,” he explains. “You don’t repeat that kind of stuff.

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The Tack Room in Indio

Last Halloween, Tack Room Tavern bartender Nelson Amaya dressed up as Nacho Libre, a fictional character played by actor Jack Black in a movie of the same name. He came to work in full garb: red cape, shaved chest, white mask and red boots. He’s still recognized around the valley because of his costume.

He’s also known for his mixology – he created the bar’s Empire Desert Rose cocktail using muddled roses from the Empire Polo Club rose garden – and can be found at owner Alexander Haagen III’s private Tiki bar on the grounds during the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and Stagecoach Festival. Located on Medjhool Lake, the bar is exclusively for Haagen’s friends and family, and Amaya has seen Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, actor David Faustino and UFC champion Chuck Liddell pass through.

He won’t share much more than that about his life at the club, citing an unspoken code of silence in the profession. He does reveal that Oscar de la Hoya dropped into the Tack Room in 2015, and Black sat in the back corner with his family about two years ago. Unfortunately, Black’s appearance was before Amaya’s Halloween homage, but if the actor comes back, Amaya might just stop by the table: “Everybody [wants] me to go over there and [say], ‘I’m the Hispanic version of you,’ ” he jokes.

Hair of the Dog in Palm Springs

“Fire in the hole!” a man yells from his barstool at Hair of the Dog. “Fire in the hole!” He says it three times before bartender Julie “Jules” Mazet tilts her head back and blows a mouthful of Bacardi 151 rum toward the match she’s holding. The flame erupts into a ball of fire, and everyone hoots and hollers.

This is just one of Mazet’s trademarks – the seasoned veteran has been at the Palm Springs pub for the past six years and before that, spent 13 at Zeldas and the now-shuttered Cecil’s on Sunrise. She’s served Evel Knievel, Sylvester Stallone and Tiger Woods, but her fondest memory takes her back to Cecil’s in the ’90s when a man and a woman approached her at the bar.

“I said, ‘Hey, welcome to Cecil’s on Sunrise, my name is Jules, what can I get for you folks?’ ” she recalls. “The guy, being a gentleman, said, ‘Oh, I think she is first.’ And I go, ‘Oh, you’re not together?’ And they both looked at each other and they giggled. They [were] kind of shy, and they go, ‘No, we’re not together.’ And I go, ‘Oh, well, do you wanna be?’ ”

Mazet poured each a drink before sending them to the dance floor. She says it was about a year later when a limousine pulled up to the building and out walked a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a wedding dress. It was the same couple – on the way to their honeymoon – stopping in to thank her. “That was just the coolest thing ever,” she says. “… They say if you do something you like, you never work a day in your life.”

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Stagecoach celebrity sightings: Keith Urban, Nicole Kidman at Neil's Lounge