#lavender country

[deeraredear]

brokeback mountain fanart 18 years too late

#brokeback mountain #ennis del mar #jack twist #gay art #gay #fanart #my art #digital illustration #lavender country #Spotify

[lauraepartain]

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. 

Taken at the OG Basement in Nashville years back after his show there.

#patrick haggerty #lavender country #queer music #queer country #country music #kodak #kodak professional #hasselblad #on camera flash #lauraepartain #laura e partain #nashville tn #Downtown Nashville

[fliegenengel]

hello my dear angels. hope you are fine and sleep well. if you may have some time to spent, watch this short little documentary please. be blessed

#be blessed #lavender country #crying these cocksucking tears

[joy-haver]

Old people are so cool

#lavender country

[cistematicchaos]

OKAY, I know most of y'all probably don't give af about country/folk music but I am blessing you today with some gay joy, okay?

This is by Lavender Country, a gay 'US' country band from the '70s and I don't think I have to tell you how monumental a gay-themed album was in the '70s, but I do have to tell you this song is just a bundle of gay joy and y'all should listen to it. Enjoy. <3

#Its just. #The song is so full of joy #so im sharing it #here #lgbt #pride month #Lavender Country #Music #Chaos is speaking #Spotify

[orvillepeckofficial]

come out, come out, my dears, to lavender country, sashay over and give our way a try!

#lavender country #uploads #audio #Spotify

[jacobwren]

But after an anonymous YouTube user uploaded his groundbreaking music, a flurry of streams and blogs led to 1973’s Lavender Country being unleashed anew. A reissue from North Carolina label Paradise of Bachelors heralded a wave of accolades and interest for the self-declared “screaming Marxist bitch”. In the autumn of his life, Haggerty’s world turned upside down. And no one was more shocked than Haggerty himself. “It catapulted way further than I expected,” he said in 2014, of the album’s overdue embrace. “Lavender Country is going down in fucking history, and I lived to see it.”

#lavender country #patrick haggerty

[purplealbumoftheday]

today's purple album of the day is: Lavender Country by Lavender Country!

#purple #purple aesthetic #purple albums #purplecore #1970s #country music #lavender country #lavender

[mywifeleftme]

69: Lavender Country // Lavender Country

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.

69/365

#lavender country #patrick haggerty #queer country #gay country #gay cowboy #country music #vinyl record #music review #'70s music #'70s country

[uglyseasonmp3]

❤️‍🩹

#hip hip hooray im glad im gay!!!!! #lavender country

[voidingintotheshout]

#lgbt #lgbtqia+ #lavender country #patrick haggerty #lgbtq musicians #lgbt country #rip #obituary

[loveboatinsanity]

R.I.P. Patrick Haggerty

#patrick haggerty #lavender country

[riggingsmusicok]

On my Substack (yeah I got one) is the first chunk of me talking about Patrick Haggerty, the frontperson of Lavender Country, the first gay country band.

Though knowing Patrick I became a more empathetic musician, creatively and socially.

Chunk One is me meeting him and getting the offer to be in Lavender Country for One Night Only in March 2019.

#lavender country #durham #queer country #queer music #lgbtq music

[mscryptix]

#music #lavender country #SoundCloud

[orvillepeckofficial]

i tell you i’m done, sir, crying these cocksucking tears!

#lavender country #audio #uploads #Spotify

[jacobwren]

Lavender Country - Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears

#lavender country