Patrick Haggerty, founder of groundbreaking queer country band Lavender Country, died Monday (Oct. 31) at the age of 78. Rolling Stone reports that Haggerty died "from complications related to a stroke he had suffered in September."
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Haggerty was born on Sept. 27, 1944, in Port Angeles, Washington. In 1973, he made history as a member of Lavender Country — the Seattle band that in 1973 released the first gay country album, thematically speaking, with funding from the Gay Community Social Services of Seattle. Though its original run of 1,000 copies soundtracked key moments in the gay liberation movement for peers in the Pacific Northwest, the album's lack of wider-spread traction seemed to back up Haggerty's assumption about the limited reach of his message.
"I had to make a very stark choice in the early '70s about who I was and how I wanted to live my life," Haggerty told Wide Open Country in June. "I couldn't be a queer, Marxist country music star. I could be a queer Marxist or pursue being a country music star, but I couldn't be all of those things at the same time. That was out of the question."
Lavender Country's self-titled debut album got its due in the 21st century, starting after the song "Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears" gained traction on YouTube among seekers of lo-fi rarities. In 2013, reissue label Paradise of Bachelors made Lavender Country widely available on vinyl for the first time.
"You all caught up with it, and frankly, Lavender Country is a very useful device artistically in terms of the fight against fascism," Haggerty added. "People are using it for that reason, and that's what it is for. It took 50 years, but now it's been made into an elegant tool for the very reason that I made it in the first place. It doesn't get better than that."
Earlier this year, the band's second album, Blackberry Rose (first issued independently in 2019 as Blackberry Rose and Other Songs and Sorrows), got a wider release by Don Giovanni Records.
During Lavender Country's second act, Haggerty became a mentor to a new generation of queer country singer-songwriters, such as Trixie Mattel, Paisley Fields and Mya Byrne. Mattel covered Lavender Country's "I Can't Shake the Stranger Out of You" on her 2020 album Barbara, while Fields, Byrne and others have been tour mates and band members for Haggerty.
"Patrick was a trailblazer, fearless and outspoken," Fields wrote on Twitter. "He was also one of the kindest and funniest people I knew. Most importantly, he was my friend. I'm going to miss him so much. RIP, girlfriend."
Ultimately, Haggerty got his due as a pioneering voice in American music.
"It may have taken 50 years, but guess what: I got the last laugh, because at this point I say humbly and without aspiring to it that I am a country music notable," he said. "More and more people are acknowledging that's the truth. I ended up being wrong. I get to be an extremely queer, Marxist country music notable anyway. That's who I am these days, so ha ha! I got you in the end, so I'm having fun with that because I ended up with the whole enchilada."
Haggerty is survived by his husband, Julius "J.B." Broughton, and his two children.
