#patrick haggerty

Rest in peace, Patrick Haggerty, it was a blessing to have met you. Haggerty was a country singer and queer activist, whose 1973 album Lavender Country is widely considered to be the first openly queer country album ever made. I originally became hip to Patrick through his 2016 StoryCorps short called “The Saint of Dry Creek”, a Sundance Film Festival selection that tells the story of being young and gay in rural america, and his father, a dairy farmer, who impressed upon him the beauty in being true to yourself.

“‘Look, everybody knows I’m a dairy farmer. This is who I am.’ And he looked me square in the eye. And then he said, ‘Now, how bout you? When you’re a full-grown man, who are you gonna go out with at night?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know.’ And he said, ‘I think you do know. Now, I’m gonna tell you something today, and you might not know what to think of it now, but you’re gonna remember when you’re an adult. Don’t sneak. Because if you sneak, it means you think you’re doing the wrong thing. And if you run around spending your whole life thinking that you’re doing the wrong thing, then you’ll ruin your immortal soul.’  And out of all the things a father in 1959 could have told his gay son, my father tells me to be proud of myself and not sneak. My reaction at the time was to get out in the hay field and pretend like I was as much of a man as I could be. And I remember flipping 50-pound bales three feet up into the air going, ”I’m not a queer. What’s he talking about?” But he knew where I was headed. And he, he knew that humiliating me and making me feel bad about it in any way was the wrong thing to do. I had the patron saint of dads for sissies, and no, I didn’t know at the time, but I know it now.” - Patrick Haggerty/Lavender Country

Patrick boldly made music that I know not only touched the lives of many of us, but provided a sense of comfort, confidence, and the power of feeling seen to his queer audience. He spent his life doing the opposite of sneaking, and left us with his art and spirit. 

Lavender Country Lavender Country 1973, Gay Community Social Services of Seattle Inc.

There’s an anecdote Patrick Haggerty tells in the little zine that comes with the 2014 Paradise of Bachelors reissue of Lavender Country that always makes me tear up. Haggerty was raised one of ten children on a tenant dairy farm in northern Washington in the 1950s. It was obvious to Haggerty’s father from a young age that his boy was gay and, perhaps surprisingly given the times, he was quietly accepting of it. By the time Haggerty was in high school, he enjoyed cross-dressing, and he decided to try out for the head cheerleader position at his school.

Dolled up for his tryout in glitter and “a big lipstick smile” the future singer, in a perfectly teenage moment, dodges his father (who’d come by the school to pick him up)—not because it occurred to Haggerty that his father would be embarrassed by him, but because he was embarrassed to be seen with a dad “with cow crap all over his jeans, his snaggle tooth, his four-day beard and his beat up old fedora hat.” After the tryout, they talked in his father’s car:

He said, ‘Listen to me. I don’t have time to change my clothes just to run up to the high school to go and pick you up. I’m a dairy farmer—these are the clothes that I wear. I’m proud of what I do. I don’t have to change my clothes; I don’t have a reason to change my clothes. Now, were you proud of yourself up on that stage with all that glitter and lipstick?’

I said, ‘Well, I think I’m gonna win.’

He said, ‘Yeah, I think you’re gonna win too, but that’s not what I asked you. I asked you if you were proud of yourself.’

I said, ‘Uh… er… well… um.’

He said, ‘Listen, when you leave this valley and go to the University of Washington Drama School, like you say you’re gonna do, who are you gonna run around with at night?’

And I said, ‘I don’t know.’

He said, ‘I think you do know. And it’s not gonna be that McLaughlin girl I’ve been trying to get you to date.’

At this point I am slinking to the bottom of my seat. I know full well exactly what he’s talking about—pretending like I don’t. My father says to me—my father is ill; he’s like a year and a half away from the grave, and he knows it, and so do I—and he says, ‘You know, I’m not gonna be here when you’re a full grown man.’

I said, ‘Yeah, Dad, I know that.’

He said, ‘Well, I’m gonna tell you something right now, and I want you to remember it.’

I said, ‘Okay, Dad, what?’

And he said, ‘Whoever you run around with at the University of Washington Drama School when I’m gone, don’t sneak. Because if you spend your life sneaking, it means you think you’re doing the wrong thing. And if you think you’re doing the wrong thing, you’ll ruin your immortal soul. So whoever you run around with, don’t sneak, and be proud of it. Do you hear me?’

And I said, ‘… Yes, Dad.’

Haggerty, who passed away in 2022 just one year shy of the 50th anniversary of his Lavender Country’s self-titled debut, grew up to be a skinny little guy, but one who didn’t sneak around anybody. Like a lot of lefty artists of the ‘60s and ‘70s, he believed sincerely that absurdity, surrealism, and satire were forces that could reveal the contradictions of systems of oppression, and thereby cause them to collapse. But he also believed shared appreciation for weirdo art was as important to the unity of a movement as a shared politics or philosophy. Lavender Country’s songs are intended to be sung at protests, a pink answer to oddball folkie anthems like Country Joe’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” and Phil Ochs’ “Love Me I’m a Liberal.” In 1973, a group of people singing a song like “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears” was a message to the singers and the straight world alike: there are more people who can relate to this out there than you ever thought. I don’t think that message would be lost at a protest in 2023 either.

Lavender Country was a feeling listeners could take home with their copy of the record, even if that home was a place where it didn’t seem like there were any gays or long-hairs for miles. It was originally pressed in an edition of 1000, and the copies were moved hand to hand and via ads in alternative weeklies and the like over the next few years. It was eventually rediscovered in the late ‘90s, and CMT has even highlighted its historical significance as “the first openly gay country record”—though I imagine its gleeful vulgarity would present a tougher pill for the network to swallow than its queerness.

Taken purely on its musical merits, I’d recommend Lavender Country to anyone with a fondness for folk or country. By his mid-20s Haggerty already had the reedy but relaxing voice of a sentient rocking chair, and he leads his homespun band through a collection of fetching songs, like sweetly horny opener “Come Out Singing” and high-lonesome gender protest duet “Straight White Patterns.” It’s “I Can’t Shake the Stranger Out of You” that rises above the rest, a should-be country standard reminiscent of The Flatlanders. Haggerty weaves a braid of cocksure boasts and compliments (“I can hit the sack like an aristocrat / If you’ll let me be your tricky box of Cracker Jack’s”; “You’re hotter than the popcorn dancing in the pan”), but it’s all raging against the closing of a door—the same old fiddle dance with a lover who won’t ever truly open up.

“Are you familiar with Blackberri?” Patrick Haggerty asked me, partway through our interview about the Don Giovanni Records re-release of Lavender Country’s sophomore album.

“You mean your album [Blackberry Rose]? Yeah?”

“No, I mean my friend Blackberri.”

“Oh. Um, I’m not, no.”

“Blackberri is my age. He wrote the first openly gay blues album, called Blackberri and Friends in maybe like 1979.”

As a queer man, fan of the blues, and student of music history, I was embarrassed at my ignorance, but eager to learn. My interest was piqued.

Haggerty, nearing 80, is a wealth of such information. Just under half a century ago, he and his band Lavender Country recorded and released the first openly gay country album, selling out all 1000 copies despite being isolated from the country music scene – or any music scene at all. The second Lavender Country album, Blackberry Rose, released independently in 2019, was re-released on Don Giovanni records on February 18th.

In his improbable 21st-century renaissance, Haggerty has become something of a godfather to the burgeoning queer country scene, and his unique character and history have turned him into a cult figure.