Meet St. Pete songwriter and activist Dames

Musician Dylan Dames plays an acoustic guitar and sings outdoors, seated in front of a white building and dense bamboo plants. A laptop sits on a small table in front of him. Dylan Dames Credit: Screengrab via Dylan Dames / YouTube

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — As local organizing grows in importance and arts programming faces rising political attacks, musician and community organizer Dylan Dames (performer name “DAMES”) combines both spaces through his own work.

On Nov. 8th, the San Pedro Gazette attended DAMES at Woodlawn in Greater Woodlawn, St. Petersburg. Through interviews on Aug. 27 and Oct. 10, Dames shared his work and story.

As the sun sets through the live oak trees of a local backyard, Dames takes the stage for soundcheck with his band. The scene comes to life as a couple, Trista and Justin Miller, with their young son, Harris, place hand-carved wooden lanterns throughout the backyard between rows of chairs awaiting the audience soon to arrive. Music swells over the fence into the Greater Woodlawn neighborhood, a melodic mixture of covers and original songs as the performers rehearse their setlist.

Starting in a college dorm room

Dylan Dames, 26, performs under the moniker DAMES, a project he began in a college dorm room. Dames classifies his unique blend of sounds as “Pop Soul,” drawing from a broad array of time frames and generic techniques. His musical talents include both singing and acoustic guitar.

Growing up with both music and writing, the evolution seemed inevitable. “I would win national awards for storytelling, and eventually started singing. I’ve been singing in church my whole life – the first time I sang in church, I was four years old. That developed and grew, and eventually I started putting together an imagination of what kind of performer I’d want to be.”

As Dames directed the rehearsal, he led with collaboration, inviting his bandmates to participate alongside him in building the setlist and its structure. His approach treated the performance as collaborative joy. He ensured the comfort and wellbeing for his full team, heavily emphasizing preshow rest and dinner as they practice in front of a screened-in porch set aside for “Band Only.” He expressed his love and admiration for his wife, Gina Lever, as she prepared the DAMES merchandise table and checks in the concert’s ticketed guests.

Dames recalls his first show fondly during the August interview with the San Pedro Gazette.

While brainstorming ideas to earn money for a Tori Kelly concert in 2018, Lever suggested hosting an acoustic show to her husband. “I reached out to a couple friends of mine and was like, let’s put on a funk show,” Dames said. DAMES performed to a crowd at Concord Coffee, a coffee shop in Lakeland, Fla.

“It was packed wall to wall, body to body: over 100 people were there. I made nine bucks. I definitely did not fundraise for my trip, but something else was born that day,” Dames explained. “I’m grateful that that was the path we took – that springboarded me into finding my individual voice.”

YouTube video

Faith, social justice and community

The sun now disappearing, the crowd filed in to take their seats. Several sport progressive Christian slogans on T-shirts with phrases like “All Are Welcome” on full display. Families arrive with their children, groups of friends swap stories, and a buzz builds among the crowd as they await DAMES and his band’s presence.

Many attendees proudly align with Allendale Methodist Church, known both locally and beyond for its social justice ethos.

For Dames, performance and local justice work both provide space for action, currently working as a paid community organizer for Faith in Florida, a faith-based nonprofit.

“We’re like a multicultural solidarity network across the state of Florida[…] Here in Pinellas, we work on housing and criminal justice,” Dames said.

Growing up in the church with a pastor mother, faith and music have been constants in Dames’ life, alongside lifelong involvement in activist spaces. His recent reengagement in community organizing began in the late 2010s and continues to this day.

“I was disappointed in the church’s inaction during COVID, and then also in the church’s response to the uprisings in Minneapolis, and then eventually across the whole country after the lynching of George Floyd,” Dames said. “In that space, I was like, well, I need to ask some hard questions. I need to reevaluate some relationships and figure some things out.”

Dames began seeking spaces for meaningful action, which brought him to the same Allendale community, showing up in support of his Nov. 8th concert.

“In 2021, I found an internship at Allendale, which connected me with the organization that I work for[…] 2020 to 2022 was a revolution of sorts, where I went from being an activist to an organizer, and realized that people closest to the problem needed to be at the center of the solution: it wasn’t me, with my advanced degree and my middle class upbringing that needed to be talking about gentrification and food deserts in South St. Petersburg – it was people from South St. Petersburg,” Dames asserted.

Dames cemented himself as a cornerstone of community activism and connection.

DAMES, Live at Woodlawn

DAMES at Woodlawn attendees rose with reverence as the show began, a wave of support responding to his intentional work.

These spheres are inseparable to Dames, neither existing as a full picture of his work without the other – a sentiment clearly shared as the band takes the stage to enthusiastic applause. He recently performed for the City of St. Petersburg’s Pride Festival and People’s Pride at Allendale.

“Wherever music takes me, I’m still going to be doing it. I can’t think of a single version of myself where I’m not organizing. Even if I’m selling out stadiums, I’m probably still going to be doing community organizing.”

Dames, alongside his band, begin their two-part set with a medley composed of covers and his original songs. His soulful vocals are supported by Carol Larrinaga and Astrid McIntyre, with James Brimson on guitar and sound mixing, Joshua Rodriguez on bass, and Jovanni Salas on drums.

As the show winds down, Dames and his band expressed their gratitude to the crowd. According to Lever, about 70 people came to the show. The merging and separation of DAMES, the musician and the activist, appears in his greetings to the audience as various groups approach him with their congratulations.

“I want to make music that connects with people, and I want to make music that feels honest from me, and music that I think actually contributes something to the cultural zeitgeist,” Dames said.

He recalls his St. Pete Pride performance while reflecting on these converging spaces.

“With the People’s Pride Coalition, a lot of those people are my friends, and a lot of those people understand me as an organizer, a community organizer that can sing,” Dames says. “At the Pride Parade, those people understand me as a musician and a singer that does community organizing on the side. I’m neither of those things.”

“I feel like I’m just Dylan in some ways, but it [did] help me think critically about how I wanted to be sure that I was showing up as myself in both spaces,” Dames said.

Whether Dames is showing up to an organizing shift with Faith in Florida or DAMES is performing his original songs onstage, his investment in his communities remains at the forefront.

Meet St. Pete songwriter and activist Dames

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