Lavender Country, the band formed, re-formed and fronted by Bremerton’s Patrick Haggerty, will play a 40-minute set at the fabled South by Southwest music festival.
Additionally, a 15-minute documentary film about Haggerty and the band, “These C*cksucking Tears,” will be screened on three occasions during SXSW’s film festival. (The photo of Haggerty below is a still from the film.)
Haggerty, now 72, wrote the songs for Lavender Country’s
eponymous album, which was released in 1973. Touted as the first
openly gay country music, it received limited exposure at the time
and fell into obscu
rity until it was
re-issued in 2014 by an archival label and garnered both critical
acclaim and considerable media attention.
SXSW’s Web site describes the album “Lavender Country” as “nothing less than an artifact of courage, a sonic political protest document of enormous power, clarity and grace.”
Haggerty, in a May 2014 Kitsap Sun story, said he considered the album, at the time it was first released, to be “a bootleg, basically. It was a lyrical description of the problems gay men were facing at the time.
“And now, here’s this younger generation of aficionados who are behind this revival. They want to hear what it says. That represents a huge cultural shift.”
The film, directed by Dan Taberski, gets its title from one of “Lavender Country’s” songs, “Cryin’ These C*cksuckin’ Tears.” The 15-minute documentary covers Haggerty’s upbringing in rural northern Washington, the making of the album and its discovery 40 years later by the North Carolina record label Paradise of Bachelors.
Lavender Country perform a SXSW showcase set at noon March 19 at the Hideout Theatre.
Information: SXSW.com
— MM
