On the evening of Sept. 5, the second annual Lavender Prairie Queer Country Music Festival kicked off at Judson and Moore for an ironic and joyful night of celebration. Though the festival, which also went on all day Sept. 6, was intended to embrace the entire queer community, this second installment also played as a tribute to musician, producer, and activist Patrick Haggerty who passed away in 2023.
Haggerty, whose band Lavender Country is credited with creating the genre of Queer Country Music, was not only known for his music and humor but also his activism. Many of the artists performing at the festival spoke out about President Donald Trump’s threat to send the National Guard into Chicago with a beefed-up ICE presence while acknowledging Haggerty’s grassroots activism and fury in California in the ‘60s.
Despite the looming terror of President Trump, the festival blew a raspberry in his face by celebrating queerness in all its many forms.
Producers Andrew Sa and Sullivan Davis made the effort to include something for everyone, and the result was an emotionally explosive “homo-hootenanny” which was full of joy, intimacy, thunder, ribald humor and hours of excellent music.
For those who found a way to get bored between musical sets, there were tables of queer arts, representatives from the Illinois Gay Rodeo Association holding lasso lessons, and a tattoo artist on site.
Friday’s show kicked off with Mya Byrne, who put the festival in perspective with “Meet Me Where the Lavender Grows,” the romantic “Let me Lend you a Hand,” and the furious “Devil In My Ear” and “Burn this Statehouse Down.” Paisley Fields, adorned in black with pearls and silver crucifixes a-jangling, ripped through a rowdy set of jolly twangy rockers reminiscent of Nick Lowe with “Party Girl,” “Run Cowboy Run” and the saucy but blunt “Hands Off the Hat.”
The valentine to their late grandmother, who would encourage them to be themselves and wear earrings when Fields was five years old, “Not Like the Other Boys,” was wistful and haunting. The smirking cap on their set was a rowdy rewrite of “Wagon Wheel” dubbed “Fuck Me Daddy” and featuring lyrics like, “face down, ass up” in the chorus.
Far more restrained was an all-star tribute to Lavender Country featuring artists who knew, had written for, or sang with Haggerty. The set got off to a lazy start with “Waltzin’ Will,” but the momentum picked up with the standards “Cryin’ These Cock Sucking Tears,” “Gay Bar Blues,” “I Can’t Shake the Stranger Out of You” and “Lavender Cowboy.” Bassist Lyn Rye nearly stole the show with her quiet reading of the complex “Straight White Patterns,” which hushed the room.
The kicker was the activist anthem “Which Side Are You On” with a 2025 rewrite and angry vocal back up from bassist Nedezuga. The temperature and the anger in the room came down considerably with Sa’s winsome reading of “Treasures that Money Can’t Buy” followed by Haggerty’s utopian vision for the LGBTQ+ community, “Lavender Country.” Sa gently sang, “There’s nothing left but holes in your weary sexist roles, time to trade them old P.J.’s for a Goodwill negligee…” and the once rowdy crowd literally swooned in unison.
Saturday’s roster started with Iris Marlowe and Richelle Gee tearing through Lee Hazelwood’s “These Boots are Made for Walking” as an opener, closing with the rowdy self-penned “Piss Poor Example of A Man.” Rachel Swain’s pleasantly tart and twangy voice made her cover of Jessie Coulter’s “Gone So Long” pop while her own “Bad Guy Boots” and “Houston” were lyrical and nuanced. Creekbed Carter Hogan cracked that she was the only trans man who could not grow a moustache, and then dutifully whipped out a Magic Marker and drew one on their face.
Eliciting giggles their entire set, they started with the giddy “Hot Dog! Apocalypse,” followed by a song for their father “If I Was” and a tip of the hat to their Catholic faith in “The Relic Song.” The trans fronted Growing Boys was the festival’s poppiest offering with guitarists Sid Copeland and Kaya Seeber roaring through charmers “The Girl’s a Gift” and “Katie’s Got Bangs.”
As pleasing as the songs were, the pure pleasure of the performance was the cohesion of the band within the pocket percussion by bassist Calvin Horsley and drummer Daniel Tuohy— and Jack Tekilas’ slide guitar snaking through every song like vapor hanging in the air. No one was ready for New York’s Lizzie No and her accompanist Will Green, whose intricate playing and interplay was undone by her trembling vocals which at times bordered on tears.
Standing on a hardback book, No cracked that it was actually The Collected Works of Robert E. Lee, and that “It’s good to stand on your enemies.” Her humor helped keep the room balanced as her haunting songs dealing with trauma delicately silenced the room. “The Heartbreak Store,” “Sleeping in the Next Room” and “Morning Dove Waltz” were searing low-key operas that begged for a second listen.
Michigan’s Bootstrap Boys finished the festival with an eclectic set fueled with their hardscrabble Southern Boogie, which brought the adoring crowd to its feet for a wild melee. Cher’s “Believe” benefitted greatly from this hard country treatment as did the opener, a delirious rip through Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky.”
“City Living” was brazen and tartly twangy, as was a surprisingly chipper cover of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” The closer, “Thank You for Being A Friend,” the theme song from the queer favorite The Golden Girls, seemed appropriate for the entire festival.
