Dog Tags is a Local, Queer, Liberated Soul Collective
Liberated soul. That’s how Dog Tags, a Denver-based, predominantly queer soul and R&B band, describes themselves. “Your friendly neighborhood soul band,” is what they call themselves. Started as a duo with Regi Worles (they/them) and Michael Merola (he/they), Dog Tags became about their love story and coming together as a couple. Then, over time, Merola and Worles expanded the band into an eight-piece complete with a trumpet, saxophone, and keyboard to really round out the sound. The result is a sound that’s soulful, groovy, and celebrates queer love.
Merola and Worles also benefitted from the demise of local for-profit music college DIME (Detroit Institute of Music Education) which existed for only a couple of years in Denver as a partnership with Metropolitan State University, leaving a number of musicians in Denver with non-transferrable credits and a lot of wasted talent. While Merola and Worles weren’t students of the defunct college, they managed to snag a few former DIME students for the band, including drummer Diego Lucero. While the implosion of yet another for-profit college is sad and difficult for the students themselves, Dog Tags proves that a positive can come out of a negative.
OFM sat down with Merola, Worles, Lucero, and a few other members of Dog Tags to talk about the band, the love story behind it, and their upcoming debut single due out very soon.
So how did this project get started, first of all?
Regi: We started in 2021. Kind of the summer of 2021. Just us sitting, like, in my room with my dog and a guitar just, like, playing music. And it started off showing each other different songs that we had worked on independently. And then, like, little by little, we started just playing some chords here and there.
Michael: I would just bring my guitar over. This was before we were dating. So we were just friends.
Regi: And then one day, we started writing this one song. And it was going back (and forth) in between us. And then that was one that I think we actually recorded, like on our little phone or something.
Michael: And I think it was kind of loud in my house if I remember because Gavin was bringing the fish tank. (So we) went in his room instead. And Rory the dog was there.
Regi: And when we were listening back to it, pretty much all we heard was, like, the chords, maybe me singing, but then the sound of my dog’s little tags jingling in the distance. And so that’s how we got our name, too.
Michael: Not military affiliated. But soldiers, if you will.
And what was it that got interested in music in the first place? Just to go back even farther.
Michael: Yeah, I actually started guitar when I was, like, 10 years old. My father taught me. And he was always an amazing guitarist, and he always wanted to be a songwriter and never thought his stuff was good enough. And so I felt like I took up that dream from him. He taught me everything he knew. And I kept going, and I learned jazz especially. And I was always interested in original music. I’ve had some projects before this, but never had I really been in a band like this. And now this is the most special project I’ve ever been in because it feels like an actual team. I’m not just playing music.
Diego: Well, I didn’t start out on drums, is the thing. It’s a similar thing to Michael. My dad and his dad, they played guitar. I have cousins that play guitar. So guitar is my first instrument. I picked it up at some point early in high school. And then at that point I was already doing percussion in band in high school. And before that, I played the euphonium, and so I guess the first thing I ever played was a euphonium. But then it just developed, and I play a little bit of everything. I went to music college for a year. Rest in peace (MSU’s) DIME Denver.
DIME Denver?
Diego: Yeah, I don’t know if you heard of it. It was interesting on paper. It looked like one of the coolest music colleges you could attend. Like songwriting, music business, and then performance, but it only lasted, like, three years.
Michael: (Regi and I) didn’t go there, but I always thought the coolest story about DIME was that it closed down in the pandemic, and then, like, all the students and musicians were left out to hang, and this new music scene came out of that. So there’s been, like, a lot of musicians from DIME now starting their own bands and companies around the scene. We caught a few of them in our band.
Regi: I’m from Memphis. It’s a music city. And I just think music was everywhere. I was in choir in school for a long time. And I have a vivid memory of my third grade teacher being like, “Oh, you’re not a good singer, you need to do something else.” So then she put me in a guitar class. And I was not a good guitar player. And then I just kept singing and kept singing and kept singing. And I’ve been singing since—I’m 25–so (I’ve) been singing at least since I was in the second grade. And yeah, I’ve always just struggled relying on my voice as a person. I feel like I’m pretty shy. These people probably don’t think that. But I think that about myself. And I’ve always been able to rely on singing to get me through the door to other conversations through that awkward stuff.
So you talk about being a predominantly queer band, how does that inform what you do? Or how would you like it to inform what you do?
Regi: I think music, it’s like an emotion to me. I think queerness is a way of being. And so to me, there’s not a way for me to exist in any structure or system without that system being made queer. And so since I made this with my friends, it just had to be queer. So I think for me, that means that the way we move is different. It doesn’t make sense sometimes what we do. I think we put a lot on the line. Three weeks ago, we were talking about what’s our genre because we keep meeting artists that are our age, and they’re like, oh, my music is post-apocalyptic gospel. And so I was like, what’s our genre like that? And I think about it as liberated soul.
Thinking about it as like, not just traditional soul music, because we’re not necessarily neo-soul all the time. We’re not necessarily R&B all the time. But it’s that energy in that intent to bare our souls to each other. A lot of our songs that we write together are about (mine and Michael’s) relationship and how we have come to each other as two different people. And I think, in that coming together, the story is super queer. We were not dating, and we had all the time to date. And then we decided to date when we became roommates. That’s the gayest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. There’s so many pieces of our own story that are queer in content, but I think in action, I think the way that we write the things that we write about in the way that we approach the music in general is queer. And it’s not necessarily something that other people get.
Michael: I think family has a lot to deal with queerness mainly because you meet any queer person you’re like, what is your relationship like with your parents? Yeah, that’s always one of the first questions people get for both of us. We do have very complicated relationships with our parents. When I started this project, I wasn’t even out to them. And because there was always such dissonance and feelings of abandonment from our own families, Dog Tags became a way to build our own family and build communities, and I think community is one of the most central parts of our band. We finally came up with our slogan, “Your friendly neighborhood soul band,” and we mean that. We’re a Denver band, a Colorado band, and when we succeed, Denver succeeds, Colorado succeeds, we all do. And that’s our goal with that, just to have that support system that Regi and I couldn’t have because of being queer and making this into a queer project.
One thing I really love—because I get to interview so many different genres of bands and but usually all queer—and I get to ask the same question of different genres, which is how accepted, within the circle that you’re in is the idea of being queer in music? Do you run into any difficulties with that?
Michael: Honestly I feel like we’ve run into a lot of support. There’s a decent amount of queer bands in the scene. And as far as queer R&B goes, I don’t think there’s too many other R&B and soul bands in the city, and the ones we do come across are supportive. I think that’s one of the beautiful things about Denver is, it’s not really about who’s popping or who’s straight. It’s like who’s doing themselves the best. And that feels really authentic to be a part of.
Diego: I’m going to sort of contradict what Michael said. The scene here feels very cliquey and weird. I do agree that the scenes that we’ve come across or that we’ve found ourselves have been super accepting and supportive and cool. But I think there’s a lot of people doing it because they think it’s cool and not because they love it. Just because I love to do it, I really feel like it’s my life. I feel like I fall into depression when I can’t play shows, or more specifically, play drums. And I just don’t know that a lot of other groups feel that even a little bit. It’s really all for show. Not so much like it’s a part of them, that they’re really expressing themselves.
Regi: I think it depends on what scene you’re talking about. Because the reason why our scene also feels different is because we are different. And the people that we’re interacting with and bringing on a journey with us are different. And so I think sometimes it’s really interesting because I think what both of you said is really true. And at the same time, it can both be true because sometimes we’re operating within a space that we’ve built. We put together this event; we invited everyone who came; we put out the advertisement for it. And I do think that that we’re building a scene too. And it’s not just music. The music scene is one thing, but this circle of artists who want to be in community in this other way is something different.
And so we as musicians, and artists, and all other things, can move throughout all of these things, all the time, but that doesn’t mean that the scenes themselves are changing. What’s happening, I think, is that we’re building our own community as we’re building our own things to support us as we go, which I think is certainly my favorite part of what we’re doing. Like going to a space that didn’t feel as fun the first time and then the next year going there, and it feels better because people know us and they’re coming out to support us. And you can look in the crowd, and you can see yourself in the people who are there that time versus the other one.
What would you say your immediate goals or plans are for the future?
Michael: We want to start a yearly R&B festival in Denver.
Regi: That’s a pretty big one. Very immediate, we want our first single to go out. That’s, I think, slated for early August, early- to mid-August. That’s going to happen, and we’re really excited about it. The festival is true, too. We had, like, this market at our house, and we had a band open, or maybe there was two bands, I don’t know. But it was a really cool thing, and we had vendors there. I think we also want to do more of that where we can, like, make spaces, too.
Michael: We’d love to play the Pride Parade next year.
Can you talk about your single a little bit?
Michael: It’s the first song we finished together. It was called “Song About Roses.” Originally we played it like this R&B acoustic jam and, as the band has grown, we’ve changed the style of it, and now there’s a lot of different versions of it. The one that we recorded is back in March at CU Denver. We got a spot in their studio. And since then, (I’ve) just (been) trying to produce it, engineer the single, shooting for this really thick mix with a lot of stuff going on in it. The song takes you on a journey, too; there’s lots of different parts of it. It’s almost six minutes long.
Regi: The song is about when you, like, have a crush on somebody and you’re like, “Hey, I’m here, and you can keep pursuing everybody else, but I’m here, and I’m special.” There’s so many shiny things that are more beautiful or more interesting or whatever that come into our lives about love, but love is something that’s special. And if you miss it, then you’ll miss out. I think what I was writing the song about it was also my most honest moment being like, “Hey, I really like you; do you like me? Click yes or no.” I don’t know. Did you know?
Michael: Every time you describe it, I hear something different. I like this one a lot.
Regi: Did you even know that I was doing that? Or did you just think I was just writing?
Michael: I mean, I knew.
Diego: And coming up the iceberg from there, it’s just groovy. It’s Latin. You’re going to want to dance for sure.
Keep an eye out for “Sumn Bout Roses” by Dog Tags on your streaming platforms and follow them on Instagram @ddogtagss.
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