The renewed interest in Lavender Country lasted a couple of years. ‘Around 2004 it went dead again,’ Haggerty says. ‘I was retired, my husband was retired and I was having a nice life, but I was still singing’. Patrick was playing over 100 gigs a year ‘singing old songs to old people in nursing homes and Alzheimer’s units’ with his musician friend Bobby Taylor. ‘I love the old songs, I know hundreds, and that’s what those people want to hear – it’s joyful’. Then:
I’d been doing that for like a decade or more, then someone put “Cocksucking Tears” on YouTube. I didn’t know anything about it. Someone else heard it and said: “what is this?”, went to eBay, found and old, used Lavender Country album for sale and purchased it. He was a music aficionado, not gay, and he realised what Lavender Country was: he realised its historical significance. He took it to a couple of guys in North Carolina, straight men who had a label … and I still have no idea that anybody is talking about Lavender Country. I don’t know anything about what’s been happening. But they’re all talking to each other. The first time I knew anything was when the label called up offering me a contract. I didn’t believe them, I thought they were encyclopaedia salesmen; I thought it was a bunch of bullshit! The furthest thing from my mind would be having some voice on the phone offering me a record contract. I did not believe a word that was coming out of his mouth!’
The independent Paradise of Bachelors label, which specialises in ‘documenting, curating, and releasing under-recognised musics of the American vernacular,’ reissued Lavender Country in 2014. More than four decades after they first walked into a recording studio together, Haggerty and the rest of the band were about to get the recognition they, and their pioneering record, deserved.
‘These people were not gay,’ Haggerty adds:
They were straight white men who worked in the music industry. There’s not a whole raft of bigots running in to that career; musicians make really poor bigots! Musicians, promoters, people who write about music a lot of them are straight white men and they’re the ones who have the power – and the straight white men who occupy positions in the music industry in 2016 are completely different to who they were in 1973 and all of them are down with gay rights and equal rights. The time is right, and it’s right because all of these straight white men in the music industry are on board, and they have power and they’re going: “I want to stand up. I want to be part of this. I want the world to know what side of the fence I’m on.” It’s a really nice thing, and these straight white men are making it possible for everybody’s ear to open up. Lavender Country jumped out of the gay ghetto because these straight men in North Carolina with their brave new label allowed it in to the mainstream. What they’re doing is giving a whole bunch of straight people permission to go and listen. We’ve been doing a lot of shows to general, not gay-specific, audiences, and when people have permission they go nuts!
The careers of Patrick Haggerty and Doug Stevens might seem a little niche, but today more and more country artists – and bigger and bigger names – are finding the courage to come out. If you had anticipated a rush in the wake of k.d. lang’s very public self-outing, you would have been sorely disappointed; however, it seems that now – in the second decade of the twenty-first century – the audience is more than ready to accept an out country celebrity or two, and the people who run the business are finally getting there, too.
With a career that already spans more than 30 years, Canadian superstar k.d. lang’s androgynous look and punk attitude practically defined alt-country, the musical subgenre that includes artists that incorporate influences ranging from bluegrass, hillbilly and folk to rockabilly and punk rock. After independently releasing her debut album, A Truly Western Experience, in 1984 she was signed to a worldwide deal by Sire/Warner Bros. and issued two more albums, Angel With A Lariat and Shadowland in less than a year. Recorded in Nashville, Shadowland was produced by Owen Bradley, who had worked with lang’s idol, Patsy Cline. The album, which featured lang singing with country superstars Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn and Kitty Wells, made the Billboard Country albums Top Ten.
Within a year she was back in the charts with the Grammy Award-winning Absolute Torch and Twang, but it was 1992’s platinum-selling Ingénue (and the hit single ‘Constant Craving’) that not only established her status as one of the biggest country stars of the day but also helped her cross over into the pop mainstream and gave her the confidence to come out. Described as ‘the best singer of her generation’ by Tony Bennett6 (the pair collaborated on the 2002 release A Wonderful World), lang’s longevity is proof (as if it were needed) that someone’s sexuality need not be an issue.
k.d. lang may have been country’s first LGBT superstar, but Shane McAnally – who has written or co-written more than half a dozen Number One hits and countless other songs for artists including Kenny Chesney, LeAnne Rimes, Reba McEntire, Kelly Clarkson, Sheryl Crow, Keith Urban and more – is the biggest, and most influential, out-gay man in country music today. The Grammy Award-winner first rocked up in Nashville in 2000, quickly gaining a manager and a minor hit single, but the follow-up album flopped. Disillusioned, he took off to LA, partied hard, took a job tending bar and slowly rediscovered himself. After scoring the soundtrack to the gay-themed romantic movie Shelter, he felt ready to re-establish himself in his spiritual home, returning to Nashville in 2007 as an out-gay man. Known principally as a hit songwriter – as he says himself: ‘When I stopped hiding who I am, I started writing hits’7 – his lyrics are unusually revealing (as in Jake Owen’s mega-hit ‘Alone With You’) and his music shows influences of everything from Weimar-era cabaret to radio-friendly pop and stadium rock. ‘I think gay men by nature are more sensitive,’ he told The New York Times in 2013. ‘I think I’m able to tell a story in a way that relates to both men and women. Guys don’t usually sing about the shame or the sadness of sex. But men do have those emotions, those experiences.’8
Ty Herndon is a bona fide star, with Number One hits, massive-selling albums and almost 20 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart to his name. His debut album, What Mattered Most, was one of the biggest hits of 1995. For half a dozen years, his star shone bright, but his personal life was a mess. In quick succession he had to deal with a divorce from his second wife, bankruptcy, weight issues, a mugging at gunpoint (that, incongruously, occurred while he was promoting his then-current single, ‘Heather’s Wall’, about a man dying of a gunshot wound received in a hold-up), a lawsuit from a California dentist claiming that Herndon had not paid for emergency dental work and another lawsuit from a former manager for breach of contract. In 2004 he admitted himself in to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility. This was the second time he had undergone such treatment; the first spell followed an indecent exposure charge (later dropped after a plea bargain) for allegedly exposing himself to a police officer in 1995.
Finally coming out in 2014, having been inspired by his friend and fellow country artist Chely Wright (who came out herself in 2010) and Alex, his partner of six years, Herndon’s career – which seemed to be all but finished – is once again on the upturn. Both Wright and Herndon admit that their attitude towards their sexuality was affected by their Christian upbringing and beliefs. ‘I was a young, gay, Christian, farm girl from Kansas with dreams of becoming a country music star,’ Wright wrote. ‘Can you wrap your head around that? I really couldn’t.’9 Wright’s inner turmoil brought her to the brink of suicide in 2006: ‘I was alone, I was tired, I was hopeless and I was done. Early one cold winter morning in Nashville, I nearly took my life with a gun. Let me be clear, my decision to take my life was not because I am gay. The reason I was ready to end it all was because I didn’t know how to be me in this life that I’d carved out. I just didn’t know how to make those pieces fit.’10
*
Stories of those who have hit the big time and maintained their major label backing are few and far between, and k.d. lang would not have enjoyed such a long and successful career if she had
not made a successful transition from country to the pop vocal field. The vast majority of out-LGBT artists who have tried to establish a career in country music have had to do so without big-label budgets.
After years of struggling to have his voice heard, 2017 could be the year that Drake Jensen breaks big internationally. His first three, independently released, albums gained him many column inches, huge amounts of respect and a dedicated fan base, but with the backing of one of Australia’s biggest talent agents and European dates on the horizon, it looks like the time is right for the Canadian country singer: in December 2016 his single ‘Wherever Love Takes Us’ broke the Country Tracks Top 40 chart. His first album, On My Way to Finding You, received positive reviews and sold well, but like Shane McAnally, that was not his first attempt to start a career in country music. Ten years earlier he had, under his given name Robbie Meyers, issued a single – a cover of the Ann Murray hit ‘A Little Good News’ – which, although it gained some local radio play, didn’t exactly set the world alight.
‘That single cost me a couple of thousand dollars,’ he says honestly. ‘But I was working a minimum wage job and barely surviving at that time. Somebody opened a door that had been locked to me for my whole life, and gave me one little glimpse of something that I’d always wanted. You’ve got like a day to do it, to see what it’s like, and you tick it off your bucket list and you never think that you’re going to do it again.’11 It would be a full decade before he dipped his toes in the water again, but during that period he met and married Michael Morin, who became his manager and encouraged him to give his music career another try.
Shortly after the release of On My Way to Finding You, Jensen announced that he was gay. In a press release to help promote the album he revealed that he had suffered severe childhood abuse and bullying, and he dedicated the video of his current single, the title track of the album, to the memory of Ottawa teenager Jamie Hubley. Fifteen-year-old Hubley committed suicide after having been severely bullied at school; Jamie’s father Allan, an Ottawa city councillor, said that the bullying began when teens tried to stuff batteries down his throat on the school bus because he was a figure skater. ‘Jamie was the kind of boy that loved everybody,’ his father told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Ashley Burke. ‘He couldn’t understand why everyone would be so cruel to him about something as simple as skating. He just wanted someone to love him. That’s all. And what’s wrong with that?’12 Not long after, Drake released a new single, ‘Scars’ (which would appear on his second album, OUTLaw), donating the proceeds to the charity Bullying.org.
‘Even when the other kids were beating me up and kicking me in the face I was planning my world domination,’ Jensen reveals. ‘I was going to be a star. I had that in my head, and it’s interesting that all of those people who kicked me in the face are now listening to me on the local country radio station. I’ve gotten my revenge.’ OUTLaw received unanimously good reviews, with Cashbox Canada calling the album ‘eleven perfectly executed songs of love in all its redemptive beauty and a couple of reminders that love hurts, no matter where you find it.’
Jensen’s route has not been easy, and he and Michael – who maintains a full-time job as well as spending many hours a day managing his husband’s career – candidly admit that they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars out of their own pockets to get his career off the ground:
The music business is so expensive for someone who is not signed to a label, but if you do sign to a label then you sign your life away and I just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to be a slave to that. But every penny I earn goes in to music. What I would like to eventually get is a distribution deal, where we make the product and then they market it, but a lot of people are afraid of an LBGT artist in this genre so no one is willing to take that gamble. Michael and I have talked about not doing this anymore, or just doing local shows but the reach is less, but we both feel like we have a purpose in life with this. It’s a bigger thing that me being an artist and making music.
Other acts, including the San Francisco-based singer/songwriter Mark Weigle, have tried to pursue a career in music by going down the independent route, either through choice or because that is the only option open to them. Weigle got good reviews, spent time in Nashville writing songs for his third album All That Matters and saw interest from mainstream companies, including MCA and Sony, but that was in 2000, and record company executives simply did not understand how to market a gay artist – or refused to believe that there was a market for them. Despite playing hundreds of gigs and issuing seven albums, in 2007 Weigle called it a day, telling fans via his website that he ‘stopped my music career due to lack of support. I dedicated my muse and my career to the gay world, which seems predominately interested in straight celebrities, pretty 20-year-olds, porn stars and drag queens.’
So why choose a career in a genre that is notoriously difficult to make a living in (even if you’re not gay), when it may have been easier to try and make it as a pop singer? ‘I’d played in pop bands but I returned to country music because as you get older the voice doesn’t do what you want it to,’ Jensen admits. ‘It’s very difficult to constantly sing rock or pop music. Country just felt right for my voice … that and I always want to piss people off – I like being a thorn in someone’s side … but I’ve just been invited into the big country music station here in Ottawa to do a live session, which is amazing. The new single, Wherever Love Takes Us, is doing really well, we’re getting more radio stations adding us to their playlists, and if we can get enough radio play then we can chart, and if we chart that’s pretty momentous because an LGBT artist has never done that in country music before.’
Jensen cuts an imposing figure; a navy reservist with a gym-toned body and an image that feeds in to many gay men’s fantasies, he’s also incredibly shy and private when out of the public eye:
I’ve been hyper-criticised about not singing gay songs; you have gay artists in country who will never come out, and that’s because when people do come out there’s often a big shit storm, with people burning CDs and all sorts. I’ve always been careful not to shove it in people’s faces: I’ve always said that, you know what, I’m going to sing a love song and you can interpret it any way you want. But I’ve made it quite apparent that I share my life with a man and there is a threat from that for sure, but that’s also part of me being this anomaly – this renegade, maverick kind of guy – but that’s who I really am and I’ve been that my whole life no matter what I’ve done. I am what you see, and I make no apologies.
For a while I thought that I needed to tame it down, but then I realised that everybody is selling sex, and I’m a business person! I look at my photos and think: “I would buy that!” There’s no doubt that 50 to 60 percent of my audience are gay men, and they’re buying records based on the hard-on that they get when they see the pictures. They’re not searching for gay artists with great music … they’re horny! Madonna learned that a long time ago, and I’ve learned that too: sex sells and I’ve crafted an image.
Going down the independent route isn’t easy, and it limits your audience. Just 1,000 copies of Lavender Country were pressed initially and it took the album four decades to find its audience. Jensen freely admits, ‘Lavender Country is much more blatant than anything I have done: if that had been my first record it would have shut my career down. But I loved it and I think the concept is wonderful. We hadn’t heard of it in Canada when I first came out, it was very obscure. When I found out about it I thought: “wow! This is amazing!” But it’s so different to anything I would have done. That’s not a soft sell by any stretch of the imagination, but boy, I really respect it.’ There are many similarities between the acts: Jensen, like Patrick Haggerty and Mark Weigle before him, is fiercely independent, and he’s resolute that he and Michael will make a place for themselves in a genre that has a history of ignoring LGBT artists. ‘We’ve touched many people in our lives; we might not have seen a return in monetary terms, b
ut we certainly have in the satisfaction of knowing that we’ve made a difference.’ Weigle had already experienced similar hardships: ‘I’ve paid to record and produce all the CDs on my Visa, and have run every aspect of a record label by myself. I never wanted to be a businessman, and I’m still paying off debt,’ he said in 2007. ‘Stopping it all has been an extremely painful decision.’ Weigle and his partner Gerry now run a brace of bookshops in California.
Coming out right at the beginning of his career was a bold move, but it’s one that Jensen has never regretted:
I didn’t think I was going to come out; I was going to keep my private life private. I was going to make music and try and keep it about the music, and then I started to realise that it’s really not just about the music. Reba McEntire always talked about her husband, Dolly always talked about her husband – well I had a husband: what am I going to do? Am I going to hide him? Am I going back in the closet and deny who I am, and become something that I’m really not. I’ve already done that; I’ve already tried to conform to what my father and everybody else felt I should be. I identified with Boy George: that was me. His father wanted him to be a boxer. My father wanted me to be a man and get married – and I am a fucking man, I’m just a man who likes men.
Drake Jensen
I came to a point where I thought: “I can’t do this”. I really want to tell people about how much Michael has helped me, how he has been behind it all, how a lot of his money went to it and I couldn’t deny that. Who would I be? What kind of a man would that make me? I think when I put that press release out that was the scariest time of my career. I was coming out for the second time and I knew that was going to take me off the main road and I was going to have to take the long way, but here’s the thing about the long way: sometimes it’s not as fast, sometimes you’ll get stopped and sometimes you’ll hit a bump in the road – which I have – but sometimes the most beautiful scenery is along that road., and in the past five years Michael and I have seen many, many beautiful scenes. Would I have changed, would I have not taken that road? The answer is no, because it has helped form the man I am today and the artist I have become. Because it’s not just about the music, it’s about reaching people and drawing them in.
David Bowie Made Me Gay Page 21
