DOGTAGS Celebrates Debut Album on Influenced

This portion of the interview above has been edited for length and clarity:

Abi: Abi Clark here with Influenced and part of DOGTAGS, which just released an album. This next week you will be just releasing it. We're meeting a little bit early to get into this incredible debut full length album. With me are trumpet player Gavin Susalski, bassist Aaron Dooley, lead vocalist Regi Worles, and lead guitarist Michael Merola. Thank you so much for joining me on KUVO.

DOGTAGS: Thanks for having us! Thank you so much. It's our pleasure. Thank you.

Abi: It's exciting to have y'all in the studio. I feel like I've been watching you from afar on your socials, which by the way, I love the vibrancy, the invitational energy that you bring forth as a collective of nine, though I know it didn't always start that way. You've been inviting people in as you've been around. So can you bring me into a little bit of your backstory? I think I read you were a duo first and then started attracting your full band now.

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. Back in 2020, 2021, when Regi and I first started dating, I knew that he was an incredible vocalist. He knew that I was a guitarist and we shared some of our demos with each other, so it felt like a natural fit for us to start making music together. But we didn't. We were just hanging out. We were enjoying each other's company. It wasn't until 2021, I think that we started working together, babe, and eventually we started recording little demos on our phone. Regi had just gotten a little puppy named Rory.

Regi: That's the inspiration behind the name, the name "DOGTAGS".

Michael: He would be running around the room and as we were recording on our phone, all you could hear was the little dog tags jingling and less of our music. So Regi said, "why don't we call ourselves DOGTAGS?"

Regi: And it stuck. I think what's pretty funny about that, too, is that really the whole time that we've existed have sort of had to become ready for the next thing that was offered. We randomly went to an open mic. At that open mic, someone was like, "we have a show for you". So we were like, "oh my gosh, we have to figure out how to do a show." And so we used some songs from previous projects and put together this little, I think three or four song set that - we were in between, on the floor of Your Mom's House, in between other sets. This was in 2021. We did that instantly got another show offer, but they were like, "you need a drummer and a bassist." We found our bassist. It was not Aaron, it was Heather who is now our current guitarist. But we saw her and we were like, "you're so cool. We need you in the band." We found this really cool drummer, but he was kind of like a metal drummer. His name's E and that was our first little group. We played maybe two gigs with him, and then all of a sudden it just snowballed. We brought more folks into it and Gavin and Michael and I, we were all living together at the time, and I remember it was like, okay, there was a six piece established. People were coming regularly and one day one of us was like, "Gavin, just come down here, bring the trumpet."

Gavin: I think I was practicing the trumpet angstily upstairs, all like "I think they have a band without the trumpet", and then they're like, "just come down and play with us."

Regi: And then that's kind of our first big group, seven, and we played around. Originally, we were sort of like LEGOs. Sometimes it was the two of us, sometimes it was the four of us. Sometimes it was a different group of people and we kind of sold ourselves on being able to break down and build up and sort of be a special experience each time that you saw us. But it was actually in the process of working on this album that I think - mostly me, Michael, I think really liked the kind of chaos of putting together special sets,

Michael: And I still do.

Regi: I was like, "no, we need to find the people who want to ride with us, who want to do this project, not just for the music, but for the community of it." And also so that we don't have to keep rewriting everything every time we get together. Which was, I think, a really central sort of influence in why it took us so long to make this record is because we are always changing the arrangements based off of who's there. And I think that was a big challenge that we had to overcome.

Abi: But gave you so many tools, I feel like because you were able to arrange for all these different situations and really, I'm sure you took away things from every musician that you played to make the DOGTAGS sound.

Regi: Exactly. Exactly.

Abi: Wow. And now I hear your live shows are a magical potluck of just community, and that's really central to what you are not only as a band as a nine piece, there's obviously community in that, but your outreach with the community and connection with the community, especially having them know you in so many different ways throughout your existence now. And it [DOGTAGS website] says "music for besties, for baes, for kindred spirits". I really feel like your sound is so inviting and fresh and maybe the reason why you wanted to dial in on everybody finalizing the lineup is because your music is so introspective and personal. You put so much of your heart and soul into it. There were multiple points when I had tears kind of welling in my eyes from hearing some of the confessional lyricism and the blooming swells of the orchestration of having so many different sounds in your band. Not only were you a nine piece, but you had a lot of outreach in the community. Can you shout your other bandmates that aren't here?

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. So along with the four of us, we also have Ben Kane on keys, Tyler Hamlin on drums.

Regi: We've got Heather Hunt on the guitar, previously mentioned.

Michael: We have Kelsey Hodge who does vocals with us.

Aaron: We got Micah Cheng on the cello. Did we mention Ben already? Alright. Yeah. Did we forget anyone? There's so many of us.

Gavin: Shout out to Gabi Zelek. Over in Paris, France right now.

Abi: Yes.

Michael: We also have other members that have been filling in with us as well. We have Andrés Cuéllar who does congas and percussion with us, as well as RJ Cox, who was our drummer last year and still fills in with drums with us in the studio as well.

Abi: Yeah, I saw 11 different other featured musicians that added to this amazing album.

Regi: Yeah, it's honestly super cool. I think as you're in the scene and you're making friends and you're needing people to fill in, you find not every musician's the same. And so the way, for example, one of our songs "SUMMERSICK!", we've played it for years and there's a whole rich story behind it. But one of the things that really stuck out to me is I didn't really like the song. I was like, "oh my gosh, we have to do this every time. Oh my gosh." And it's not because I'm not the main one singing, though. some might assume. There was something about it, it was like, is it disco? Is it this? Is it that? It's sort of such a blend of genre. It wasn't until we started playing with Killian Bertsch from iies., he was playing around boop-boop-boop-boop. And I was like, "oh, I hear it now." And I think sometimes working with the different musicians who've had their hands on this album sort of helped you find the sweetness of each song because it's not just because someone's just the most, one of the greatest players you've met. They're going to play the song the way that your ear needs to hear it to make it you feel something. And so that was really a benefit of that ever changing lineup that we had before, is that you got to really relearn and recommit and refall in love with different versions of the song that different people played. And so yeah, that's the story of how I started to like "SUMMERSICK!" if you didn't know.

Michael: And that was one of the first songs that I wrote in DOGTAGS for the purpose of me singing lead. I mean, when we were first starting out back in 2021, I called DOGTAGS conversational music because I wanted it to be not only a conversation between the guitar I was playing, the chords I was writing, and Regi's voice, but also for us to be able to sing about our relationship together. And I felt that we had a very unique connection and the conversations that we would have about philosophy and society through the lens of music was something that I wanted to share with people. I was very shy about singing early on in the DOGTAGS days. I think being a queer project definitely makes it a little difficult sometimes to feel safe enough to come forward and speak or sing about your truth. At the time DOGTAGS was formed, I wasn't actually out to my family, and part of that was why we didn't record for a long time. There was a lot of hesitation from me there. And so "SUMMERSICK!" I think was a way for me to really step into writing lyrics with the band, stepping into being a lead singer in the band also, and write something about our experience that summer of 2021 when me, Gavin and Regi first moved in with each other and we're enjoying a summer where it was "end of the Pandemic", not really.

Abi: Little did they know.

Michael: Little did we know we would all get sick.

Regi: Every time.

Michael: Doing shows, working all the time.

Abi: That was a thing.

Regi: Yeah, it was like, oh my gosh, it would be "somebody amazing is coming to town. We need to see them." You go out. It's so fun. Three days later, (coughing). and then I remember-

Michael: "Oh wait, we have a show at Larimer next week."

Regi: Yeah. So it'd be like, I remember very vividly we were really, really sick. Well, I was and I was in bed and I was just like sweating and having fever dreams. We had just watched a show that was really scary. And so the thing, the villain in that show was in my dream taking me away. And I just wake up to Michael strumming the chords to "SUMMERSICK!". And I'm like, "what is he doing?" And it was just super interesting the way that song even came together.

Abi: Wow. These stories, these journeys. And I just want to go back to what you said because I felt that just openness to relating with the listener, and that goes back to what this music is about. It's authentic. It feels unfiltered, it feels introspective, just that space between the petals of your mind where you're figuring things out and it starts with a bang with "Sumn Bout Roses". First of all, "ROSEWORLD" is the title of this collection of work, and we've been kind of digging into the story so far around them. So let's start with "Sumn Bout Roses" because even though the title is floral, it does feel like blooming open. You're opening up this album. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Gavin: Well, I mean definitely. It's awesome. It's a great way to start the record. I mean, that is the first song that we ever wrote together as a whole group. It's also one of those songs that's gone through so many changes over the last four years. It was the first song. I mean, we've been working on Tiny Desk Contest submissions for the last four years, and it was the first song that we ever focused to do on that. I remember for probably two or three months, it was the only song we practiced and it is a hilarious, scrappy video on YouTube or did we take it down?

Regi: No, it's still there.

Gavin: It's still there. You should go check it out. You can see the origins of everything. The old living room where we used to live, the tiny dogs running around, the whole thing.

Michael: Our friends hanging out on the couch watching us perform the song.

Regi: The one thing that's pretty curious about that song in particular is that it's also the beginning of our relationship. We were sitting on the curb. We were supposed to be at a party where people were making beats and stuff, and that I was like, "oh, I'm overwhelmed." And so we left. He's playing some chords and I'm singing and I'm thinking, I'm being so sly. I'm like, "oh, do you like me? Oh, I've been giving out way too many roses to guys who don't deserve it. Do you? Would you happen to deserve these roses?" But then the way that it sort of opens up the whole album, it's sort of like that same sort of invitation and you get a little bit from so many of the different artists that touch the rest of the album. You hear a little saxophone, you hear a little keys from several, I think of the different keys players that we've worked with. You hear Gavin in one setting, but you also hear him from a live show. It's sort of one of the only songs that has blend two of some live elements that we collected throughout the years too.

Michael: Yeah, actually, the recording of that song was very curious because we worked with a friend to get into the CU Denver studio. Aaron had a connection there, and we recorded actually a version of "SUMMERSICK!" as well as "Sumn Bout Roses" at that studio. Not even to a click. We didn't really know what we were doing back then, and it was just kind of an amateur recording that years later when we actually had more recordings and were trying to release music, I started producing it mixed in with live recordings that I had gathered throughout our time of playing music together. And of course, I would always bring my MacBook to shows that we would play, and I would bug the sound guy to let me plug into the board and record all the multitracks. And sometimes they'd turn me down. Sometimes they'd charge me 150, but I had those live recordings that I would edit down and I would take certain pieces from it and sort of collage together this sound that really was from members who had passed through the band or who were still with us. And maybe at the time we didn't have a chance to actually go back in the studio and record it. And I knew we had to start releasing music. So "[Sumn Bout] Roses" really is a collage of a lot of different eras of the band that we edited together.

Abi: It's so cool. It's cool to know the backstory and how that has progressed over time, and it's a wonderful way to start. It really sets the tone. "keepsake" always just makes me crazy. I love that song because it has such a realization energy, the part in the middle where you're like, "am I your keepsake? / I live in your back pocket if you let me / got your picture on my wall, but I can't keep recycling these memories". That part hooks me. But let's talk about a song that maybe people haven't heard. "Rhyming Reason" made me kind of stop in my tracks. You had said it is the longest song and it totally unfolds., it feels like. Then you're into this world, this lush world, and then it's like a glimpse into the mind and then it almost folds back up. Talk to me about that one. I know it was cross miles too, not only.

Regi: Yeah, I'll say something and then I'll make some space. The one thing that I would say is Michael has such a great memory and he becomes obsessed with melody. So we were at this thrift store opening, jamming for our sound check, and I think Michael and our keys player at the time, Ethan Eckhard, were just playing around. Everyone hears those chords. No, we've never touched them before. Everyone just makes their way and starts jamming. And that's the birth of that song. And I remember really vividly, it was more than a couple months later that Michael's like, "we need to make this into a song."

Michael: And I think my phone had died actually that day, and I was like, "babe, get out your phone. Put it on your recorder right now. Record this jam idea" so I could go back to it and I could remember those chords and bring it to rehearsal.

Aaron: Yeah. Michael's usually the documentarian. So it's sad that your phone died that day, but you remembered and yeah, I think that, shout out Aidan Roberts. We recorded at Colorado Sound Studios.

Gavin: Okay. We're jumping forward a little bit, but we will touch on that real quick. I mean, that was our first attempt in a real studio setting. I mean, that's the studio where D'Angelo recorded "Voodoo". And as a trumpet player, I was like, holy cow. This is where Roy Hargrove recorded those parts and we were all in that studio and it was like, there's an energy. And that was one of those all day nine hour session type recording days.

Aaron: We recorded "Sasori" at the same session.

Regi: What's curious about that too is Aaron is forgetting that one of the central elements of that song, in addition to the trumpet, is the sax. And we would not have ever even met Gabi Zelek, our sax player, if Aaron hadn't been bugging us truly for months. He was like, "I know this amazing saxophone player." I am a Leo, something you should know about me. So I'm very, very, this is my family. I don't need new people around. I like to make new friends, but that doesn't mean they need to be in my business. And so I'm very hesitant with bringing people in the band. She came to one rehearsal at the end of the rehearsal, played some licks. She left. I instantly was like, "she must be in the band. Invite her back immediately." And so I think we knew for a long time, once we had a horn section, that we wanted to have a song that really highlighted them and gave them space to really do some weird stuff. AI don't remember how it all came about, but I remember Gabi's playing some licks. Now Michael has these chords, and I'm working at this place and I'm having these really hard experiences at work. It was one of the first songs I wrote that it was not necessarily about our relationship, but more about harmful relationships. So I'm writing these lyrics and I'm like, "whoa, there's something heartbreaking about this." And what's really funny is it's not about friends. It's about coworkers. Sometimes that gets to me, it speaks to so many different types of relationships that I've experienced in life. But the thing that really made me sit down and write this, it's like I'm at work crying in the nap room that we had, and I'm just scribbling away these lyrics and I bring them to Michael and he's like, "we need to finish this song now."

Michael: And that's one of the interesting things about our songwriting is sometimes I completely misinterpret what Regi's singing about. And that's one of the great things about relationships too.

Aaron: I didn't know about the coworkers thing until just now. But I feel that.

Regi: They can break. your heart. They can break your heart.

Michael: And I knew what Regi was going through at the time, but when I heard his lyrics in the song, when it gets to my verse at that point, part of the conversational, this was like I wanted my own verse and I wanted to be able to respond to what he was saying because I think the things that he was going through at work also made me feel like maybe I wasn't being a good enough partner to him. And it made me think about things in our relationship that maybe I hadn't done as well as I could have. And maybe love that I hadn't expressed as much as I wanted to. And so in a way, I was sort of responding to him like, "no, I don't want you to wither. I'm sorry that I've baited you for so long. Not anymore. Just hold my hand. I won't do you wrong." And when it gets to what I like to think of as my chorus on the song, how does it go? "If I could run all the reasons why I love you / and try to write down my thoughts before I cry." I was thinking a lot in that moment of sometimes I get to the point when I'm writing music where the lyrics and the feelings are in my head, but then my mind really does just go blank. And I'm not exactly sure what I want to say, but as a musician, I know the feeling I want to convey. And so that's what I was trying to get across and the fact that I would love him, even if it's not safe to talk about it, even if I don't know what I'm thinking about. And then of course I go into a ripping guitar solo right after that.

Regi: I think something that's really interesting about it though is if we think about tradition and the traditions of music and poetry and artistry that exist, I see now looking back on it, I can just see all these things colliding. I used to say when I was younger in high school, in college, I love music that makes you feel like you're swimming through water. And this song really does. It's so thick. I think at one point there's 12 of me singing on top of all of the different instruments. And so it's just super thick and dense, but it creates this feeling. You can feel how emotional it is. And I think about even Audre Lorde who says that "poetry is the words that you don't know until they come off your tongue." And so I feel like a little bit of this is us creating who we are as a band and going right into those places that hurt the most. I say it's about work, but really it's about, my heart is open, I go into spaces with my heart open. So even a job, I'm bringing my full self, my full capacity to love. And so it's easy to get heartbroken. And I think that mixed with that sensation of the water mixed with the sort of blues love that Michael has mixed with, years later stumbling across Jonah (Yano), who Gavin has been telling me for years to listen to. I put his song on and I hear this really amazing saxophone at the end that just, it's chaotic and beautiful.

Michael: It's blooming, it's layers, tons of saxophone takes over it. And the intro to "Rhyming Reason" is interesting. We do it differently nearly every time live. But on the record, it starts with Aaron's very sweet harmonics bass that's so intimate. And then Gabi coming in on the saxophone. And I really intentionally put in the sound of Gavin blowing through his mouthpiece and clicking his mouthpiece into his thing. Everyone's preparing to go on this journey together, this eight minute saga of music. And I felt like to really convey the feelings of that producing Gabi's saxophone takes just one over the other over the other. And I think we did about six different takes of that song in the studio that day.

Gavin: It's a long section to run.

Michael: It's a long song, and everyone was tired that day, but really the sound that we got from the Colorado Sound music session was amazing. And it really did take a lot of inspiration from Jonah Yano to layer all of those pieces over each other. And sometimes I'd spend hours just digging through takes of saxophone and trumpet and just really precisely layering them over each other and getting the right harmonies and making sure everything was blending correctly.

Abi: Another song that is so intimate but in the opposite way is "undone". "I want to grow in the cracks and the pores". I love that song as well, but it gives that range. There's the lush arrangement of your "Rhyming Reason" and then stripped it all down to that one song "undone". There's a lot of range on the album. Another song that stuck out to me, because you bring your Latin heritage into the music is "HOJITA SECA", which is a song you grew up with, I'm assuming. I want to know where that song was placed. It brought me to my kitchen with my tías.

Michael: I'm glad to hear that. It was actually my kitchen in college with my friend Adrian Rincon. And I would just cook together sometimes, drink together a lot of times. And we were always listening to cumbias together, and it was sort of like our friendship of just one-upping each other with different cool cumbias to show each other. And he came to me with "Hojita Seco" one time like, "you got to check this one out." And I was immediately enamored by the guitar on that song. What an amazing performance. Years later, when we were preparing for our headline at Dazzle at Baur's in June 2023, right before they closed that location and opened the new one, I knew that I really wanted to bring a cumbia into DOGTAGS. And so I spent a lot of time listening through my playlist and trying to decide on which one we would play. And I landed on "HOJITA SECA" because of the instrumentation in particular, especially with the guitar, but also because of the lyrics. I mean, seca meaning "little dry leaf". He talks a lot on the song about essentially being like a ship without a sail at sea, without your love, you're lost at sea, essentially. And I thought it could be a really great duet almost between Regi and I when we're both singing that back and forth. And the chords were interesting to me, and it just really stood apart from a lot of cumbias as one that we could take and do our own thing with. And one thing I really love about Latin music culture, especially cumbia culture, is that it does have to do a lot with covers. People take old songs and they do it their own version. And whoever has the best version of that song is what's getting played. I love how much people care about radio in Mexican music and Latin music. And cumbia nowadays has gone so many different directions, especially with Grupo Frontera doing something that's so different than Los Ángeles Azules. And Los Ángeles Azules especially has inspired me a lot because of the way that they layer their trombone sounds, their horn sounds with different keyboard sounds, everything feels so lush and beautiful and intimate, but at the same time, it makes you want to dance. And so I really wanted to bring all of that love into "HOJITA SECA" when we were recording it.

Regi: I think when you think about tradition, I am obsessed with tradition right now. I got back from this narrative power summit, and so I just think about where does this come from and how do we live into it? Michael was not playing around when it came to "HOJITA SECA". He was giving really concise and intentional notes to everyone. I've never played the güira before, but somehow I ended up playing it. And so there's a sense that I think we all had that we had a duty and a responsibility to really pay respect to this genre. And so I think that was drilled into us every time we worked on it. And I think even as we've found new people to work with now, there's an intention to sort of like, how are your Latin chops? Can you do this? Or are you willing to learn it? Are you willing to grind to get there? And I think that that level of respect was really important.

Aaron: Or willing to teach others, Ben Kane.

Regi: Yeah, willing to teach others. And so it's just cool. It was just a really cool way, I think, for us to push ourselves. I think that song is one of the songs that made us a tighter band in general because you can't just do whatever you want to do. There are specific rhythms and specific melodies and counter melodies that we are doing. And there was not any option, especially for Michael about when those would happen. And so it was a really cool and interesting way for us to work together.

Michael: I mean, at the time, DOGTAGS was really a go on stage and improvise everything you do and just give everything you have to the audience. So for us to reel it back and be like, no, this is how you play cumbia. We're going to start there and once you get it down, then bring some of your self-expression in. But I think that really helped us learn how to compose better, how to arrange better, and also be introducing this genre not only to ourselves, but also bringing it to different audiences around Denver. And with Ben Kane and also Andréas and the studio, all of us were nerding out about different rhythms that we could bring to the song. On the second chorus, we were exploring sort of like a "fusion y salsa" sort of rhythm.

Abi: Yes. The horns were great too.

Gavin: Some of my favorite horn parts, and recording that with Michael was some of the most fun we had on the record.

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. Gavin and I were really working together on that. As you noticed in the "undone" track, there's clarinet in there.

Abi: Yes. Okay, that's what I thought, but I didn't see the clarinet in the lineup.

Michael: That's me. That's me playing clarinet.

Abi: Oh, secret clarinet!

Michael: I grew up playing clarinet in school bands, wind symphony, and eventually making it to first chair when I was senior year. And I've kept the instrument alongside me, of course. And I think it plays a prominent role in Mexican music and banda, and I love playing classical music on the clarinet as well. And so when we were recording "HOJITA SECA" too, I had my clarinet out and I was helping Gavin write lines, and we were kind of cooking together on those horn lines and maybe went a little overboard. It's almost like a different lick.

Gavin: When we were relearning it for more live settings, it's like, "oh my gosh, there's no pattern to what we wrote." We just have to memorize it all the way through. And also horns in cumbia is just some of the most bravado, the most fortissimo, the most powerful in it. So it just brings out a completely different style of playing, and it's really awesome and amazing to get to be able to.

Michael: I said, "here, stand 10 feet away from the mic and play as loud as you possibly can." The last thing I'll say about "HOJITA SECA" is that it is a cover. It's by a band called La Nueva Luna, which is an Argentinan band, and the song originally reached in 1996, so still love listening to their band and hopefully some of the original members who are still around will get to hear it, and I would love to know what they think about it.

Abi: Well, you definitely honor the track fully with that.

Michael: Thank you.

Abi: And honor the Latin vibes within the album. I mean, there was a little bossa in "Belong to", a little Latin flair in "Sumn Bout Roses". So that thread is there. And I just love that growth is so central, I feel like to what you do when it came to inviting everybody in and figuring out what your sound is when it comes to learning different styles of music to bring them in. There's so much intentionality and so much invitation to growth and the good parts and the messy parts of working through things.

Regi: And the messy part is I think something that we haven't talked about, but it's sort of some of the most beautiful, all of us being friends. It's not like we're like, "yay, we love you hug, kiss." Sometimes it is like, "will you please be quiet?" And I think the messier parts of the past four years have brought us to this moment. I think musically, something that I really loved about us, as Michael said, was sort of the improvisational nature of what we were doing at first. But when we started working with Mark Anderson, who we haven't shouted out yet, but we just did, our producer, he sort of came to one of our rehearsals and was like, "hmm, there's a lot going on here. I'm not sure how we should do this." And we would get into these deep philosophical sort of conversations around how to even make the music.

Abi: I think I hear one at the end of the tracks, you included the conversational points in.

Regi: Yeah. So it's cool. It's cool that we sort of get to have all of these different experiences. And I think one of the things that really pushed us was sort of Mark entering the chat, so to speak, and being like, "hey, have you tried cutting this part?" And us being like, "oh my gosh, that's not how we do it." Then now listening back, it's like, how did we perform that song any other way? And so it's been helpful to have another sort of person coming to tend to the garden of this music because now they're looking at our beautiful rose bush and being like, "you could prune a couple roses and it'll grow better."

Abi: Yes. That perspective.

Regi: And I think that that was invaluable. I don't know if we would've been able to do this first album the same way if we had not found Mark and really trusted him with our hearts. I don't know how people do recording sessions. We've been told that we are every person who joins us, especially now, is like, "I've never sat down and talked so much at a rehearsal, at a recording session." And I think that that is because we don't just want to get the music right, we want it to feel right. We want us to feel right with each other when we're doing it. And so sometimes we have to argue, sometimes we have to cry. Sometimes we have to get really deep and then be like, "how did we even get here?" to produce the amount of emotional sort of responsibility to these songs and to honor them and where we were when we wrote them, which is really important to me. You grabbed the mic.

Aaron: Oh, I feel like the thoughts passed, but I was just going to say, I feel like Mark took us from a live band to an actual good recording band. He made the vision realized, I don't know if we could say he's the fifth Beatle. He's probably like the 20th Beatle. But yeah. How many shows did we play in 2022, '23?

Michael: Between starting in 2021, and by the time it got to Dazzle, I think we'd played over 60 shows.

Regi: That's just in Denver.

Michael: So it was a lot of, we were out in the streets. We were at Lost Lake, we were at Larimer Lounge, we were at Hi-Dive.

Regi: We were not even at venues, and we were at somebody's thrift store opening, somebody's this, somebody's backyard, playing this, somebody's neighborhood community event.

Gavin: We didn't get into UMS, and so Regi and Mike were busking on the outside, banging on the window.

Michael: And taking any chance we could to have our voices heard and have our music be played.

Regi: Think it was a very grassroots sort of approach to developing

Aaron: Community.

Regi: Yeah, exactly.

Aaron Dooley: Of fans and people

Michael: And musicians.

Aaron: We've got a thousand followers before we even had

Gavin: One song, before we had one song.

Aaron: If you care about that Instagram.

Abi: Well, that's you're touching people's lives in the community.

Regi: I remember one time vividly, this might've been our third show, our first show as a full band, all seven of us. And I remember someone's in the front row bawling with their phone out recording us. And I remember seeing that, and I was like, what we're doing must be important. And I don't even know if I told anyone about this initially, and now it's something I go back to because I'm like, that is what we mean to people. I don't know what that person was going through. We never even spoke. But the fact that since then I've had people come up to me and be like, "this cover that you did was my grandma's favorite song and I just lost her. Thank you so much." So many people have these really deep experiences with us, and I think it's because we are willing to have them with each other. And so as much as it is about the music and the chords and the rhythms, and it's also just about loving each other, and I think especially in the climate that we're in right now, there's something so special about saying, "hey, we love each other and we're going to love each other when we're annoyed. We're going to love each other when we're angry, when we're heartbroken, we're going to fight for other people to be able to love each other, we're going to show up for one another." I don't love hard rock music. This man has a harder rock band. I'm there every time. I'm at every show. And so that is the sort of community that I think we're trying to build. It's like we are trying to support each other and we're trying to help each other navigate these complex systems of life. As a black queer person, I walked through the world, heartbroken, consistently. I felt so alone. And this year for the first time, I feel like I have a solid group of friends. I have family, I have chosen family. I know that if something goes down with my other family, my family of origin, they have me. And that's so special. It's so freeing. And I know that there's so many people around the world that don't have that. And this is our gift to them. This is our space for them to really, I dunno, to give them some hope, to give them some joy, to give them the space to feel what they feel. Because I mean, we know what that feels like. Yeah. Anyways, off the soapbox. I didn't know I was going to say all that.

Abi: No, it's real. It goes back to your mission. Change the world one friend at a time.

Regi: Yes, yes, yes.

Abi: Oh my god. Okay. Recollect. There's going to be opportunities to be a part of your community in Colorado and for the first time out of Colorado. Okay. One of the shows, because the first one's literally the day after this is airing, by the way, it's Monday. Thanks for the Garfield. We're airing this on a Tuesday. And so you're playing on a Wednesday the 18th at Mission. Let's start there.

Regi: Yes.

Michael: Mission Ballroom with Lake Street Dive.

Regi: It's really shocking, I remember stumbling upon the song, "Good Kisser" by Lake Street, in a breakup I was having, I don't even know if you could call that a breakup, but it was something, and I was sad, and my friend sent me this song and it spoke to me just on such a deep level. So to be able to open for them and play to the biggest crowd that we will have ever played to, it's equal parts terrifying and so affirming. And I think we are just going to beam. We're going to go on that stage, and we're going to beam and we're going to be these beacons of light in our colors and just really try to connect with people to get them to love one extra person that day that we will have won. And so that is very exciting. We've been cooking up a special set. We've been like, "what cover are we going to do? What cover are we going to do? We got to do a good cover." We've had much discussion about it, and now we have some pretty good ideas for what we could do in the future. So it's just going to be, I dunno. Every day I go to sleep, I'm like, "everybody take your vitamins. We can't get sick. We can't get sick. Yeah. We have to be healthy. This is going to be such a hard month, but we have to just make it through."

Abi: The rewards are going to be the endless.

Michael: And it's going to be an even crazier week. The day after, on Thursday, we're headed up to Fort Collins to play their Bohemian Nights series on Thursday. It'll be our second time this year at Old Town Square. Back in April, we were there for FoCo MX during a snowstorm. Played an awesome show there. We love the FoCo community. They always come out to cheer for us. And even though it was snowing, we had a great crowd singing along with us. And we should have a live video actually coming from that set later this month. And then that weekend we'll be traveling to Michigan for the Electric Forest Festival, which will be the very first time that DOGTAGS as a band is played outside of Colorado.

Regi: And most of us are going, so we've never had to figure out what flights and Airbnb for the whole band and this and that, and driving from Chicago to Michigan and,

Gavin: Playing a festival?

Regi: Playing a festival with Khruangbin on the lineup. You're like, what? Who? And so they're telling us like, "oh, the artist lounge is so cute." And we're like, "so we're going to be on a pool floating, and Khruangbin is going to float by." I know. It's so exciting.

Gavin: I hope they let me wear one of their wigs.

Regi: You just bring one of yours too. Maybe y'all can do a trade.

Abi: I hope there's video of that. That's going to be amazing. Then you'll be back here end of June at UMS, which you went last year you played. So you'll be returning to that festival, which is a staple here.

Regi: Yeah, that'll be July, actually.

Abi: Oh, July! I'm sorry, I got my date wrong.

Regi: Yeah, and we're so excited. We're really going to, the whole idea is to bring "ROSEWORLD" to life with these shows and so that it's going to be colorful, it's going to be loud, it's going to be proud. We don't know. We're still cooking, but it's going to be special. We were just in New Orleans this past weekend, and those folks don't play around. Everything is a spectacle, but worthy of it. And so to me, I'm so excited to honor the different traditions of black folks making a ruckus, doing something big and being like, I have something to say. And so I'm so excited to bring that energy to UMS into every show that we have this year, because I told one of our team, somebody on our team, any opportunity that we have to give our message out, I want it. You don't have to ask. We're going to say yes, we're going to figure it out. We're going to make it work because people need to hear it. Especially now.

Abi: "ROSEWORLD" out in the World 6/17 for all the listening pleasures, your website, dogtagsmusic.com, and that's where they can stay connected. And then your socials, @DDOGTAGSS with two D's and two S's.

Regi: The original one was taken by somebody. Maybe one day we'll get to have it. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Abi: Oh my god, thank you. This was such a wonderful conversation. I appreciate everything that you're doing musically for community, and yeah, I'm excited about this, and thanks for having a little unofficial release party on Influenced.

Michael: Thanks so much, Abi.

Gavin: Yeah. Shout out to KUVO. We're all huge KUVO fans.

Michael: Huge.

Gavin: I mean, not all of us are originally from Colorado, but ever since we moved here, it's been such a staple and an important part of our lives, our journey, the music community, what KUVO does is really special.

Michael: I am from Colorado and I've been listening to KUVO since I was a freshman in high school, playing in the jazz band, and so it's an absolute honor to be able to be here, especially after listening to Canción Mexicana every single Sunday and the morning set on my way to work nowadays. It's an absolute honor. So thank you for having us.

Gavin: Happy 40th anniversary.

Regi: I just know there's a sentiment I have of when you're, what is it? Seeking through the radio, trying to find something. I know when we hit the KUVO button, it's going to deliver. If no other station got me, KUVO got me. I really do feel like late night we're driving home,

Michael: Jazz Odyssey

Regi: And there's always something that can get us home safely, so that is very helpful.

Michael: Yeah. Should we do the thing?

Regi: Oh yeah.

DOGTAGS: We're DOGTAGS!

Abi: Oh my god, I love that! That was awesome, you guys.