Patrick Haggerty, trailblazing homosexual nation star, dies at 78

Muricas News  — 

When Patrick Haggerty was gearing as much as document his very first nation music album, he had a option to make.

He may very well be the industry-friendly nation star and stay within the closet, or he may use music to make an announcement about what it was like being a homosexual man in a deeply discriminatory world.

He selected the latter, and 1973’s “Lavender Nation,” Haggerty’s first album recorded below the identical title, is now extensively thought of the primary nation album recorded by an out homosexual musician.

Haggerty, an unflappable activist for LGBTQ and socialist causes and married father of two, for years was persona non grata within the music enterprise. “Lavender Nation” was a defiantly queer document, with songs like “Cryin’ These C**ksuckin’ Tears,” throughout a time when few musicians in any style have been comfy popping out as homosexual.

So it was stunning, most of all to Haggerty, when he obtained his likelihood in 2014 to re-release that historic album and document one other one, performing with different LGBTQ nation musicians and sharing his story with thousands and thousands. He turned a rustic music star in any case.

“The very factor that sank me within the first place is the very factor that jettisoned me into this place,” he informed Muricas News earlier this yr.

Haggerty, the pioneering septuagenarian nation crooner, died Monday, a number of weeks after he’d had a stroke, mentioned Brendan Greaves, a detailed good friend and document label govt. Haggerty was 78.

Haggerty by no means tried to tamp down or disguise his queerness. He was kicked out of the Peace Corps within the ’60s for being homosexual, he informed Muricas News earlier this yr. He discovered household in Seattle’s LGBTQ neighborhood, members of which helped persuade Haggerty, a self-proclaimed “stage hog,” to document an album. He informed Pitchfork in 2014 that his homosexual mates in Seattle have been “who we made it for, and that’s who we performed it to.”

Haggerty wrote “Lavender Nation” as an announcement to the music industry – he’d refuse to bend to the heteronormative requirements of the instances, and he definitely wouldn’t try and masks his queerness. “Lavender Nation” was a protest document. He assumed it will be his final.

“Once we made ‘Lavender Nation,’ we weren’t silly,” he informed Muricas News. “No style was going to take inventory of something that I needed to say.”

Within the a long time between his first and second albums, Haggerty devoted his life to activism. A staunch socialist – he typically referred to as himself a “screaming Marxist b*tch” – he advocated for HIV/AIDS consciousness, LGBTQ causes and the civil rights of Black People. He had two kids together with his husband and retired to a city throughout the Puget Sound, his musical desires lengthy dashed.

“I stuffed up my life with all types of attention-grabbing and interesting issues that have been significant to me that didn’t have something to do with music,” he informed Muricas News in March.

However in 2013, a document collector bought Haggerty’s document on eBay and shared it with Greaves, who “cold-called” Haggerty and mentioned re-releasing the album on his label, Paradise of Bachelors. Haggerty was suspicious, Greaves remembered – Haggerty, as he informed Muricas News earlier this yr, was principally performing for nursing dwelling crowds without spending a dime at the moment.

That decision with Greaves was step one to reintroducing Haggerty and Lavender Nation to new listeners, a lot of whom had been hungry for an out homosexual nation star. Paradise of Bachelors would go on to re-release Lavender Nation’s eponymous first album, which was as soon as solely out there by mail order at the back of another newspaper in Seattle.

Inside a matter of months, Haggerty was thrust into an industry he lengthy believed had shut him out.

“Lastly, like 35 years of repressed grief about ‘Lavender Nation’ burst ahead and I’m identical to in a puddle of tears,” he informed Muricas News concerning the day he obtained the decision from Greaves. “My life modified fully and ceaselessly that day.”

As extra folks heard “Lavender Nation” and discovered Haggerty’s story, his contributions to nation music have been acknowledged and appreciated extra extensively. He even starred in a 2016 documentary quick about his life and legacy, and his music soundtracked an unique ballet carried out by an organization in San Francisco.

He carried out the songs he’d written greater than 40 years earlier with new homosexual nation stars like Orville Peck and Trixie Mattel, who’ve each discovered appreciable success for integrating their identities into their acts.

Peck remembered Haggerty because the “grandfather of queer nation” in an Instagram publish.

“One of many funniest, bravest and kindest souls I’ve ever recognized, he pioneered a motion and a message in Nation that was virtually unparalleled,” wrote Peck, together with images of the 2 performing collectively. “A real singular legend.”

Over the past yr, Lavender Nation performed reveals throughout the US in assist of its second document, “Blackberry Rose,” performing with different LGBTQ nation acts like Paisley Fields, who remembered Haggerty as a “trailblazer, fearless and outspoken.”

Realizing Haggerty modified Greaves’ life, he wrote on the social accounts of his label, and leagues of others. Much more than his music, Greaves informed Muricas News, the recollections of Haggerty rehearsing in his front room, enjoying with Greaves’ son and instructing him the best way to make banana cream pie are treasured to him.

“He taught me the best way to be a greater father and a greater individual,” Greaves informed Muricas News. “As outspoken and loud as he was, and for all of his diva conduct, which was sort of legendary and tough at instances, he was additionally a really mild, variety household man and good friend and mentor.”

Haggerty by no means aspired to nation stardom within the conventional sense and had no regrets concerning the winding highway it take to get him there. He nonetheless expressed disbelief that he may dwell his dream – performing music with a message – and do it his manner.

“In secret, I needed to be a hambone all alongside, I admit it,” he beforehand informed Muricas News. “However now I get to make use of my hambone-edness to foment social change and wrestle for a greater world.”