Musician Patrick Haggerty, trailblazing gay country star, dies at 78

“After we collaborated with him to reissue and inform the story of his 1973 album, extensively considered the primary overtly homosexual nation file ever launched, Patrick lastly noticed the deserved recognition and accolades that had eluded him for many years,” Greaves continued. “However for us, he was greater than a hero; he was additionally a buddy, mentor, comrade, and fatherly determine for us and our households. He was hilarious too; it was at all times an journey spending time with him.

“His songs and his instance – as an artist, activist, and father, as a human being transferring by the world, preventing hatred and cruelty, making an attempt to boost a righteous voice for love – proceed to encourage me, and I hope you too … Sending like to all who cherished him, as we did.”

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

He could possibly be the industry-friendly nation star and stay within the closet, or he may use music to make a press release 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 beneath the identical identify, is now extensively thought-about 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 file, with songs like “Cryin’ These C–ksuckin’ Tears,” throughout a time when few musicians in any style had been comfy popping out as homosexual.

So it was shocking, most of all to Haggerty, when he obtained his likelihood in 2014 to re-release that historic album and file one other one, performing with different LGBTQ nation musicians and sharing his story with hundreds of thousands. He grew to become 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 instructed CNN earlier this yr.

From obscurity to stardom

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 instructed CNN earlier this yr.

He discovered household in Seattle’s LGBTQ group, members of which helped persuade Haggerty, a self-proclaimed “stage hog”, to file an album. He instructed Pitchfork in 2014 that his homosexual mates in Seattle had been “who we made it for, and that is who we performed it to.”

Haggerty wrote Lavender Nation as a press release to the music {industry} – he’d refuse to bend to the heteronormative requirements of the instances, and he definitely would not try and masks his queerness. Lavender Nation was a protest file. He assumed it will be his final.

“After we made Lavender Nation, we weren’t silly,” he instructed CNN. “No style was going to take inventory of something that I needed to say.”

Within the many years between his first and second albums, Haggerty devoted his life to activism. A staunch socialist – he typically known as himself a “screaming Marxist b—h” – he advocated for HIV/AIDS consciousness, LGBTQ causes and the civil rights of Black Individuals.

He had two youngsters along with his husband and retired to a city throughout the Puget Sound, his musical desires lengthy dashed.

“I stuffed up my life with every kind of attention-grabbing and fascinating issues that had been significant to me that did not have something to do with music,” he instructed CNN in March.

However in 2013, a file collector bought Haggerty’s file 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 instructed CNN earlier this yr, was largely performing for nursing house crowds without cost 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 obtainable by mail order behind 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 am identical to in a puddle of tears,” he instructed CNN in regards to the day he obtained the decision from Greaves. “My life modified utterly and perpetually that day.”

He grew to become a rustic star his means

As extra folks heard Lavender Nation and discovered Haggerty’s story, his contributions to nation music had been acknowledged and appreciated extra extensively. He even starred in a 2016 documentary brief about his life and legacy, and his music soundtracked an authentic 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 put up.

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

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

Understanding Haggerty modified Greaves’ life, he wrote on the social accounts of his label, and leagues of others. Much more than his music, Greaves instructed CNN, the reminiscences of Haggerty rehearsing in his front room, enjoying with Greaves’ son and educating him tips on how to make banana cream pie are valuable to him.

“He taught me tips on how to be a greater father and a greater individual,” Greaves instructed CNN. “As outspoken and loud as he was, and for all of his diva conduct, which was sort of legendary and troublesome at instances, he was additionally a really light, type household man and buddy and mentor.”

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

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

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