Patrick Haggerty, the chief of the pioneering queer nation group Lavender Country, has died at 78. The information was shared on the band’s official Instagram, which famous: “After suffering a stroke several weeks ago, he was able to spend his final days at home surrounded by his kids and lifelong husband, JB. Love, and solidarity.”
Haggerty was born in 1944 and raised on a dairy farm in a small rural neighborhood close to Port Angeles, Washington. He taught himself find out how to play the guitar and carried out at native venues. After faculty, he joined the Peace Corps. however in 1966, he was kicked out for being homosexual. He moved to Seattle in 1970 to attend a graduate program on the University Of Washington.
He started writing people and nation songs quickly after, ones that mirrored his personal queer expertise, and he began Lavender Country in 1972. Their self-titled debut album was launched the next 12 months in partnership with the group the Gay Community Social Services Of Seattle, with which Haggerty was concerned. The band carried out on the first-ever Seattle Pride occasion in 1974 and in different places across the Pacific Northwest, however they broke up in 1976.
Haggerty continued his work as an activist, working for political places of work a pair instances, and he performed with plenty of bands within the Seattle scene. Lavender Country reunited in 2000 after being featured in a tutorial article centered on queer nation musicians, they usually bought again collectively once more in 2014 when their debut was reissued by Paradise Of Bachelors. In 2019, the band recorded and launched their first new album in nearly 50 years, Blackberry Rose And Other Songs And Sorrows, which was reissued by Don Giovanni Records earlier this 12 months.