Dispatch bringing locally recorded songs, push for civic engagement to Boston shows

While the folk-rock-reggae band Dispatch has traveled widely, its members get nostalgic about the Boston area, which they return to on Oct. 18-19 for two shows at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway (read our concert review). The band formed in the mid-1990s a few hours north of Boston at Middlebury College, and co-founder Chadwick Stokes (aka, Chad Umston) grew up locally.

What’s more, Dispatch just recorded four new songs in Brookline, and plans to return there in January with the full band to work on something of a throwback album next spring that will bring them back to their reggae roots complete with horns and skanking.

“We have so much history [in Boston],” Dispatch co-founder Brad Corrigan says during our Zoom call alongside Stokes about the tour and upcoming local dates. “It’ll just be about as much fun as a band can have.” Dispatch carved out a place in local music lore for its 2004 show at the Hatch Shell that attracted well over 100,000 fans.

(Stokes even had a few things to share when I asked for my obligatory Wellesley angle: His wife used to live in Wellesley, they’re regulars at The Cottage for special occasions, and Stokes fondly recalls shenanigans at the “Dr. Seuss” gardens—aka, Hunnewell topiary—at Lake Waban.)

AMPlifying Democracy

The band’s current string of concerts, which started this week in Wisconsin and will route its way through Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania before getting here, is being promoted as the AMPlifying Democracy tour.

Dispatch is using its platform as a musical act to inspire people to become more informed voters. Attendees will be encouraged to boost their civic engagement at the national and local levels; they will have the opportunity to register to vote and learn more about ballot issues and candidates in their area via the BallotReady tool.

“We’re trying to get people psyched about democracy and kind of own this very crucial time in America,” says Stokes, who like Corrigan is involved in a number of human rights projects. Corrigan adds that “We’re just trying to remind people that our differences are so healthy… democracy is about everyone having [their voice].”

The opportunity to get more engaged will be available at the shows, but the bandmates say they won’t be strong arming anyone. They do have songs, however, that touch on hot button issues that people along the tour will have, Stokes says.

“The more informed you are, the more nuanced you understand things to be,” he says.

About the music

As for what to expect musically at the Boston shows, Dispatch will be working in its new songs, old songs, and most popular ones. As is the band’s style, set lists will change from night to night, and band members will switch around instruments. “How much of the catalog can be played between the two nights?” Corrigan ponders.

Stokes says it must be nice to repeat set lists, as some performers do. It makes things easier on the crew and doesn’t require as much messing with lights. But Dispatch seeks to “offer a really unique experience each night,” he says.

The set lists should accommodate both longtime fans who may not even realize Dispatch is making new music, and those that have discovered the band in more recent years.

I commented that the band sounds almost like a different group from its early days, and the bandmates say that’s actually the goal. They think about the harmonies they display in their songs as being a central element of the band, but acknowledge that when they go back to some of their older albums, they may not sing together until late in the songs. “I was saying to Brad years ago that on Bang, Bang, I don’t think you even sing until the bridge,” Stokes recalls.

As a relative novice writing concert reviews, I asked how they would approach such a task. Corrigan says he’d start with a broad description of the overall vibe in the room (“What does it mean to be in the room right now and then”). Then the “music geek” in him would zoom in on individual band members, and their interplay. Stokes adds: “Yeah, I always look at the band and I wonder about the relationships between the band members, because I get so disappointed sometimes seeing shows where they don’t even look at each other.”

You won’t have to worry about that being an issue with Dispatch at its shows, they assure.

“The thing that really has driven us to continue to play is kind of like the brotherhood in the band and the relationships,” Stokes says.

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