Patrick Haggerty, the leader of the pioneering queer country group Lavender Country, has died at 78. The news was shared on the band’s official Instagram, which noted: “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 community near Port Angeles, Washington. He taught himself how to play the guitar and performed at local venues. After college, he joined the Peace Corps. but in 1966, he was kicked out for being gay. He moved to Seattle in 1970 to attend a graduate program at the University Of Washington.

He began writing folk and country songs soon after, ones that reflected his own queer experience, and he started Lavender Country in 1972. Their self-titled debut album was released the following year in partnership with the organization the Gay Community Social Services Of Seattle, with which Haggerty was involved. The band performed at the first-ever Seattle Pride event in 1974 and in other places around the Pacific Northwest, but they broke up in 1976.

Haggerty continued his work as an activist, running for political offices a couple times, and he played with a number of bands in the Seattle scene. Lavender Country reunited in 2000 after being featured in an academic article focused on queer country musicians, and they got back together again in 2014 when their debut was reissued by Paradise Of Bachelors. In 2019, the band recorded and released their first new album in almost 50 years, Blackberry Rose And Other Songs And Sorrows, which was reissued by Don Giovanni Records earlier this year.