RIP Patrick Haggerty "Lost Pioneer of Gay Country Music"

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/arts/music/patrick-haggerty-dead.html...

A great read if you've got the time!  A few snippets;

<<In 1973, he put out a little-noticed album of songs about same-sex love and social protest. Forty-one years later, he became an unlikely star.

<<In 1972, he launched himself on what would become his most enduring form of activism: creating a band called Lavender Country, essentially a solo project in which he got help from a few friends in Seattle. He wrote most of the songs, played acoustic guitar and sang lead on the group’s debut album, also called “Lavender Country,” which was sponsored by a local gay social services group.

It was musically traditional: Mr. Haggerty sang with a twang, and the ensemble of piano, fiddle and acoustic guitar played comfortingly repetitive melodies. The music sometimes made for a contrast with the lyrics, which could be campy — “Back in the Closet Again” imagined a revolution in which “a battalion of gay men brought up the rear/Packing two grenades in each brassiere” — but there were also songs of protest and lament.

Addressing a closeted lover in “Georgie Pie,” Mr. Haggerty asked: “Would your Adam’s apple flutter,/Would both knees turn to butter,/Would you sputter, would you mutter and deny?”

Lavender Country attracted local attention, performing at gay pride parades in Seattle and San Francisco and eventually selling out a run of 1,000 copies of its album. But none of that constituted a living, and after a few years the group disbanded.

<<In other ways, Patrick stood out. He won a statewide cooking contest as the only boy contestant among hundreds of girls. He auditioned, successfully, for head high school cheerleader, in drag.

His father — a snaggletoothed farmer wearing a beat-up fedora — attended the tryout. Patrick saw him there and avoided him until it was time for the two to return to the family farm.

“Were you proud of yourself with that glitter up all over your face and your lipstick smile from ear to ear?” Mr. Haggerty recalled his father asking. He felt nervous and did not reply.

His father, he said in the Lavender Country documentary, continued: “If you sneak, it means you think you’re doing the wrong thing, and if you spend your whole life sneaking, you’ll spend your whole life thinking you’re doing the wrong thing — and if you do that, you will ruin your immortal soul.”

The father said that if Patrick was proud of himself, then he would be proud of Patrick. The elder Mr. Haggerty died soon thereafter, when Patrick was 17.

Lavender Country - Full Session - Daytrotter Session - 4/30/2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TZkyziC1Ag