page_title: Lavender Country
section_title: Revival
hierarchical_section_title: Lavender Country / Revival
caption_attribution_description: English: Lavender Country live at The Starling in Sonoma, California
context_page_description: Lavender Country is an American country music band formed in 1972, whose self-titled 1973 album is the first known gay-themed album in country music history.
  Based in Seattle, Washington, the band originally consisted of lead singer and guitarist Patrick Haggerty, keyboardist Michael Carr, singer and fiddler Eve Morris and guitarist Robert Hammerstrom.
context_section_description: In 2000, the Journal of Country Music published an article on gay country musicians, focusing in large part on Haggerty and Lavender Country. As a result of the renewed attention, the album was rereleased on CD in December 1999, and in 2000 the band released a five-song EP, Lavender Country Revisited, which featured three rerecordings of songs from the original album and two new songs. The band reunited briefly in 2000, performing the album in its entirety at Seattle's Broadway Performance Hall in January 2000, and at that year's Seattle Pride. In addition, the album was archived at the Country Music Hall of Fame by former Journal of Country Music editor Chris Dickinson.
  Their song "Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears" was included in the 2012 compilation album Strong Love: Songs of Gay Liberation 1972–1981. The 1973 album was rereleased on independent label Paradise of Bachelors in 2014, and the band have played several reunion shows in 2014 to support the reissue.
  Haggerty recorded a story for StoryCorps about coming out to his father in 1959, which was adapted into the animated short film The Saint of Dry Creek in 2015. In 2016, director Dan Taberski directed a short film titled These C*cksucking Tears which starred Haggerty and told the story of his life and career.
  In 2017 and again in 2019 Robert Dekkers' Post:Ballet company staged a modern ballet performance of Lavender Country, choreographed by Vanessa Thiessen and performed at the Z Space theater in San Francisco with Patrick Haggerty performing live with a new Lavender Country band featuring guitarists Dennis Fortin and Mark Newstetter, violinist Calvin K. Murasaki, Mya Byrne on bass, James Wilson on piano and Joyce Baker on drums.
  In 2019 the band released Blackberry Rose and Other Songs and Sorrows, their first full-length album of new material since 1973.
  In 2020, Haggerty was featured in a version of Trixie Mattel's reprise of "I Can't Shake the Stranger Out of You", titled "Stranger" on her album Barbara.
caption: Patrick Haggerty performing live with Lavender Country in Sonoma, California, in 2019
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