It’s getting a little hard to ignore the unique life story of the 78 year-old country star, who released his second LP a few weeks ago. Blackberry Rose comes several decades after his debut 1973 album, Lavender Country, which is now regarded as the first ever gay country music album.
Blacklisted from the music industry for decades after his outlandishly queer and radical debut album and its most jaw-dropping single “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears,” Haggerty and Lavender Country are back and better than ever, as they prepare to play their first-ever run of Florida shows. Haggerty and his eclectic group of accompanying musicians head to Tampa’s Hooch and Hive on Thursday, March 24, in between gigs in Gainesville and Orlando.
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Haggerty says the only time he’s ever been to Florida was about 35 years ago when he visited a friend in Leesburg (outside of Orlando.) Consistent with his anti-capitalist politics, he was abhorred at the thought of visiting Disney World—and still is.
During the 40-year gap between excommunication from the music industry and being welcomed back decades later, Haggerty continued his radical activism in the greater Seattle area and pursued non-traditional ways of parenting. For money, he crooned Patsy Cline and Connie Francis songs to the old folks in retirement homes, who had no idea that Lavender Country ever existed.
Even with Lavender Country’s 21st century revival, his radical politics are still at the center of his art—amidst a political climate that’s becoming “increasingly fascist,” as he says. Although the Florida Senate just passed the hateful and discriminatory “don’t say gay” bill, Haggerty and his crew will unabashedly push their leftist, queer agenda all throughout the Sunshine State next week.
“I cant escape my queer Marxist origins, and I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” Haggerty tells CL. “I made Lavender Country to be a vehicle for social change. That was my motivation in the 1970s, and it hasn’t changed since.”
The dialectical method analyzes the relationship between contradicting phenomena—typically between people, their ideas, and the material world that surrounds them. According to Marxists.org, it’s a method of reasoning that aims to understand reality, as the same forces that create these contradictions, can also become their solutions. American society, which once excommunicated Haggerty because of his outlandishly gay music, welcomed him back with open arms almost 50 years later; an example of contradictions becoming solutions.
Haggerty thought that Lavender Country and its queer ballads were dead forever—but the rest of the world just really had to catch up.
“The beauty of the Lavender Country project and its dialectical nature is that now I get to be a star playing the same music that once excommunicated me— and I’m using it for the very same reason I wrote it in the first place,” he says.
His adopted son, Afro-Cuban filmmaker Amilcar Navarro, describes Lavender Country as Haggerty’s revolutionary obligation.
“Amilcar told me that the universe handed me a magnificent opportunity to use my music as a pro-Marxist tool to get the word of anti fascism out to exponentially more people,” Haggerty explains.“If I passed up the opportunity, it would send me to what he calls revolutionary hell.”
I quickly interjected to say, “We’re living in America, Patrick. We’re already there,” and was met with a loud chuckle from Haggerty.
His son is right to say that the universe handed him the opportunity—Lavender Country’s recent revival randomly fell on Haggerty’s lap almost a decade ago. Shortly after a stranger put “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears” online, a representative of the indie label Paradise of Bachelors called Haggerty up and offered him a record deal.
Since then, there have been multiple documentaries about Haggerty’s life—including Dan Tabersky’s award-winning 2016 film— an album reissue, a glowing review from Pitchfork, a Lavender Country ballet, and multiple collaborations with modern country artists. Both “RuPaul Drag Race”’s Trixie Mattel and masked country crooner Orville Peck have collaborated with Haggerty—artists that he ultimately paved the way for decades ago.
At the end of the day, the brilliance of Lavender Country lies in unadulterated self expression and steadfast authenticity. Throughout the entirety of his career, Haggerty has never lost sight of his true self, or true politics.
“If I wanted to be a fucking star, I would have stayed in the closet, went to Nashville, and wrote drippy heterosexual tunes,” Haggerty explains. “I had the capacity to do that, and I deliberately chose not to. Because I’m a loudmouth queer Marxist activist—and in 1973, you couldn’t be both of those things.”
And at this upcoming Tampa gig, there will be no deficit of politically-charged commentary, as the ever-so-charming Haggerty will MC and facilitate the show as well. “If I wanted to be a fucking star, I would have stayed in the closet, went to Nashville, and wrote drippy heterosexual tunes.”
Haggerty and his backing band of Austin Lucas, Paisley Fields and Native activist and musician Mali Obomsawin, will boast a roughly 90-minute show. They’ll all serve as each other’s backing bands and play each other’s songs, but Haggerty will be the only original member of Lavender Country present.
And of course, the beloved and dialectical “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears” will see the light of day on Hooch and Hive’s stage, alongside other singles from this year’s Blackberry Rose album, like the tongue-in-cheek “Stand on Your Man” and “Gay Bar Blues.”
Haggerty also hopes to incorporate a cover of Connie Francis’ “Where the Boys Are” into his setlist too—one of the many classic country songs he crooned to old folks before Lavender Country came back from the dead.
“I can be a screaming Marxist bitch that sings blatantly revolutionary country music and get away with it, ” Haggerty says through a laugh. “I’m getting away with murder! The world just had to catch up with me!”
As our almost two-hour conversation about anti-fascism, working class solidarity and commodified queerness came to an end, Haggerty paused and told me that I wasn’t just an interviewer—but that I was his comrade.
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2022.