Lavender Country, which released the first openly gay country album 49 years ago, just put out their second album today! Check out this piece from our ReaderArchives (2014) by imLeor 👇
None of the six musicians accompanying Haggerty at Seattle Pride next weekend was in Lavender Country during its original 70s run, but one of the new members has been playing with him for more than a decade. Harmonica player Bobby Taylor, a Chicagoland native who turns 75 on June 19, met Haggerty in 2001, after leaving Nashville for the Seattle suburb of Bremerton. Haggerty and his partner, J.B.
In the 1980s, Taylor headed to Nashville to “chase the dream” of playing the blues. As he found his footing, he picked up work wherever he could, mostly in restaurants—he washed dishes, cooked, and shucked oysters. The group that lasted longest was the Bobby Taylor Blues Band in the late 80s. “I had some really fine musicians playing with me then—I always felt like I wasn’t up to their caliber,” he says. “We did the blues, but with a lot of positive energy—we had a lot of fun.
The label route wasn’t an option for an openly gay country band in the early 70s. A nonprofit called Gay Community Social Services of Seattle pressed 1,000 copies of, selling it through ads in underground gay papers. The album hardly caused an immediate sensation, but its influence is still being felt.
Haggerty and Taylor’s collaboration got an extra spark from their backgrounds in different genres. “It was like two worlds crashing together,” Taylor says. He first heard Lavender Country about a week into his and Haggerty’s partnership. “I thought it was clever, and the content kinda slapped me upside the head,” Taylor says. “If country music is up for it, then it’s pretty cool.”