Welcome to Rainbow Rewind! Patrick Haggerty and his band Lavender Country recorded the first known queer country album, Lavender Country, in 1972. While there has been a resurgence in interest in queer country artists with the rise of Brandi Carlile and Orville Peck, queer country artists have been producing amazing art between 1972 and now. This column shines a light on albums that are a part of our collective queer country history.
Kandia Crazyhorse released her self-described Affrilachia album Stampede in 2013 and, cowpokes, it holds up. (Our friends at the Country Everywhere directory recently highlighted Crazyhorse’s work.) Since the relase of Stampede, she has played with Ross Martin in their duo Cactus Rose at the Brooklyn Americana festival, the Another Country festival (organized by Karen Pittelman, whom we featured yesterday), and sang at Lincoln Center in the choir of Bernice Johnson Reagon (Sweet Honey in the Rock) and Toshi Reagon’s opera adaptation of Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Crazyhorse, who is Pamunkey, is also active within Indian Country. All of that creative energy is at work on Stampede, a country album that defiantly celebrates the legacy of Black and indigenous culture within Americana music.
Stampede highlights Crazyhorse’s impressive voice and versatile range. “Congo Square” is an irresistible stomp-and-rocker, a worthy heir of the New Orleans tradition and celebration of cultural preservation and defiance in the face of inhumanity. “Gunfight at the Golden Corral” takes us into some trad-country territory, though the lyrics — comparing a lover’s weekly quarrel to the legendary gunfight — have a more contemporary smirk to the lyrics. Once you’ve been immersed in the rock stylings of “So Many Enemies” and the delicate vibrato of “Soul Yodel #3,” you have to wonder if there’s anything Crazyhorse can’t do.
Crazyhorse will be fundraising for her next album in 2024, and you can bet we will be covering it here.