Though Dispatch played its last gig two years ago, the ethos and spirit behind the band and its members—Chad Stokes ‘98, Brad Corrigan ‘96, and Pete Heimbold ‘99—have never been stronger.
By Bob Gulla ’83
Photographs by Pamela Littky
The estimate of attendance varies, depending on the source. But in the end, the general consensus is that upwards of 100,000 people turned out to see Dispatch play its farewell gig on July 31, 2004, at the Hatch Shell in Boston. One hundred thousand. That’s a heckuva crowd. And considering the band—Chad (Urmston) Stokes ’98, Brad Corrigan ’96, and Pete Heimbold ’99—set its career in motion in Middlebury’s dorm scene, well, that number defies the imagination. “For me,” says Pete, “the day we played our last gig was life-changing. The excitement ... there was an absolute beauty to it. It was a perfect day.”
That, and the stuff of rock-star fantasy. Bands form every minute on the rock scene (by unofficial count), but only a scant few manage to escape their garage, no less play to tens of thousands. So how did Dispatch do it? How did three unassuming Middlebury kids take their sound from the basement of Battell to legions of The Great Unwashed? With apologies to the D8 and the Mischords, Middlebury is hardly a musical hotbed. To my admittedly hazy recollection, the campus soundtrack for most Green Mountain scholars consisted of bootlegged Dead shows, “Sympathy for the Devil” (“Owwww!”), and Bob Marley’s Babylon By Bus—tie-dye encouraged, ultimate Frisbee optional. Somehow Dispatch broke free of Middlebury’s limited musical microcosm and in doing so became the school’s very first rock stars.
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Chad, Pete, and Brad met at Middlebury in the early part of 1995. Pete and Brad had been messing around as a duo with some acoustic songs, while at the same time Pete and Chad had formed a rock band called Hermit Thrush. That summer, Pete recorded two separate projects, one with each of his friends. But he didn’t feel comfortable splitting his musical loyalties, and, despite Brad and Chad’s obvious personality differences—Brad was a wholesome, spiritual, surfer kid, and Chad was an edgy, dreadlocked, reggae fan—Pete brought his two friends together to form a trio.
As upstarts, the boys gigged wherever they could, mostly in the common rooms and stairwells of Middlebury’s dormitories, where they could sing and strum and nurture their newly developed songs. Equipped with acoustic guitars and quaint vocal harmonies, they played their first official gig in the McCullough Social Space in October 1995. Shows at the Mill and Sig Ep—“the Middlebury circuit”—followed. “We played to anybody we could, anyone who would listen,” Chad recalls.
“The school was small enough that our success happened fast,” says Brad. “If we had met at a bigger school, it would have taken longer to realize that our music was enjoyable.”
The Dispatch tunes were simple, rhythmic, jaunty, and believable; perfect for the small, enthusiastic crowds they entertained. Still, they were teased a lot, mostly at the hands of their jealous friends. One, struck by their sincerity, nicknamed them “The Indigo Boys.”
This did not sit well.
Sooner than you could say “Galileo,” Dispatch conjured up a new noise, spiked it with a funkier vibe, and splashed it with hip-hop and Jamaican rhythms. “We didn’t care for the ribbing,” Pete admits. “So we dusted off our Chili Peppers and Beastie Boys records and got our hands on a friend’s drum set.”
Bigger gigs at prep schools and colleges followed. To accommodate all the traveling, they borrowed Chad’s parents’ Suburban; the odometer began spinning like Vegas slots. Their network spread from east to west, from Duke University, where Chad’s sister attended, to Pepperdine University, in Malibu. New York City became a home away from home; in the decade they were together, Dispatch played the city’s popular Wetlands club close to 20 times.
There were recordings, too. Silent Steeples debuted in 1996, Bang Bang in 1997, Four-Day Trials and Who Are We Living For? in 2000, and, finally, Gut the Van in 2001. In all, Dispatch cut four studio discs and two live albums, and sold more than 500,000 records. Today, despite the band’s absence from the scene, their discs are still selling, thanks to a new distribution deal they set up through Universal Music.
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Dispatch’s success can be attributed to a few critical elements. Remember Napster? In the late 1990s, Shawn Fanning’s file-sharing company thumbed its nose at the publishing rights of artists and the Recording Industry Association of America. Yet while it may have taken the money out of the already well-lined pockets of acts like Metallica and Dave Matthews (both spoke out against Napster), Dispatch saw file sharing as an advantage, a way to expose their music to potential fans they couldn’t reach on the road. They loaded their material onto the info superhighway, encouraged sharing, and watched gleefully as their career took off.
But their marketing efforts didn’t stop there. When they arrived at a gig, they’d solidify their relationships by speaking with their fans, shaking hands, building a mailing list, which the band used like a bullhorn to announce their activities. In a precursor to the current Myspace phenomenon, where a band accumulates “friends” like baseball cards, Dispatch’s fans became, quite literally, their friends. And every night, their audience became an epicenter for social activity. In effect, they transferred the MO they employed in the dorms of Middlebury, playing to their friends, to a nationwide stage. This organic marketing effort—state-of-the-art grassroots with a personal touch—would become the second key to their success.
“We never really had a plan, but we all had common sense, which we followed to the end,” says Brad. “It was an absolute adventure, all three of us were pursuing our passion. But it didn’t make any sense to anyone but us.”
“Sometimes I think it was all just luck,” says Pete. “It’s not the way it’s supposed to work, being a college student and spreading your music through Napster. Dispatch was its own entity that operated pretty well outside the box.”
Chad’s mystification makes it three of a kind: “Some of those big shows were like being on a ride we had no control over.”
But seven years after it left the gate, that ride began to slow. Bogged down by differing philosophies and diverging goals, their friendships, the one thing that held them so close for so long, were showing signs of wear. “We were like three threads coming undone,” says Brad. “In the beginning our differences were subtle, but they intensified over time.”
The fact that all three were talented songwriters contributed to the conflicts. In the beginning, it provided a balance to their effort and made for a colorful presentation. But soon, as cash began flowing, it became a problem of too many cooks. “When we started making money,” says Chad, “the ramifications of our decisions began to affect more people than just the three of us. Because of that, our creative process grew more self-conscious. That took its toll.”
During the last two years of the band’s life, each member had decided at one time or another to throw in the towel. Spending months at a time on the road in cramped, less than aromatic conditions, sharing a single hotel room, contributed not surprisingly to burnout. The band’s steady progress prompted constant second thoughts and reconsiderations. Finally Dispatch scheduled its last show. “Ultimately, we felt that if we stayed together we’d be cheapening our legacy,” says Chad, “and that was the last thing we wanted to do.”
Throughout its career, Dispatch took pride in its humility and integrity. So when they began losing their grip on those ideals, they recalled the promise they had made early on. “We told each other in the beginning,” says Chad, “that if the band started getting in the way of our friendship, we’d put a stop to it. We could feel that happening.”
So the band members honored that promise and broke up. At first, the breakup was quiet, creating small ripples rather than a big splash. They separated and began working on their own projects. But after a year of band inactivity, they felt the need for a proper good-bye, a real send-off, a show that only a grassroots juggernaut like Dispatch could pull off.
It took place on a sunny summer Wednesday. Folks flooded the strip of land alongside the Charles River in Boston. As the sun was setting, the band members looked out over an incredible sea of faces. “It was a surreal moment,” says Pete. “Really sweet, but kinda bittersweet too.”
After the Hatch Shell show, band members were left to pick up their own pieces of Dispatch and reassemble them in a different image. For each, the breakup brought challenges. “It was a difficult transition,” Corrigan admits. “It was a life-learning lesson, dealing with money and how to work with your friends. Some people say we shouldn’t have taken the risk. But we had talent and heart, and we gave it everything we had.”
The break was equally difficult for Stokes and Heimbold. “I spent 10 years of my life with those guys,” says Pete, “and the thought of moving on wasn’t all that appealing. Deep down I guess I thought I was watching our best chance drift away.”
Soon after leaving, Heimbold, now in New York City, has become a solo recording artist under the name Pete Francis. He signed briefly with the Disney-owned Hollywood label, and is now releasing music on his own Scrapper label. He just released his fourth set, tours area colleges, and is also releasing the music of other NYC artists. “I feel lucky now,” he says. “I get to play with great musicians. . . . There isn’t the same chemistry we had with Dispatch, of course, but it’s still special.”
Chad Stokes started his second career as the bandleader and guitar player of State Radio, a heavier groove-rock band. They’re currently signed to Canadian giant Nettwerk through their own Rough Shod imprint.
Chad is also heavily involved in a project called How’s Your News?—an offshoot of Camp Jabberwocky, a Massachusetts summer camp for adults with mental and physical disabilities. Funded by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park), the organization just released a full-length documentary and has had its work run on HBO. MTV has shown interest in financing a pilot for an HYN series. “Disabilities as they’re presented in the media are either funny and crass or sappy,” says Chad, whose good friend worked at the camp and introduced him to the idea. “We’re trying to change that with How’s Your News?”
Brad Corrigan is equally busy as an artist and activist. He recently released a solo album, Watchfires, as “Braddigan,” which he performs with percussionist, Reinaldo DeJesus. In addition to continuing his music, Corrigan is intensely involved in Youth with a Mission, a Christian-based social justice outreach organization. “For the last four years or so I’ve gone from a conventional, build-a-career approach to music to discovering the real power of musical language,” says Brad. “I feel like I can speak a deeper language with my guitar and voice to heal and bless people who come to hear me.” Disillusioned by the inward nature of the Christian churches in the States, Corrigan is now focused on using his music “to bring hope and light and love where people need it.”
To accomplish that mission, he’s traveled the world—from Central and South America to China and Africa. He’s also an artist-advocate for Compassion International and Healing Waters International, and for the last two years he’s been raising money for the Orphan Network. He’s working closely with Walking on Water, a nonprofit ministry that operates surf camps for youth and produces inspirational surf films. Brad scored the organization’s last film, Noah’s Arc, and is at work on scoring their new film, Surf Grom Dream Trip, featuring the top surfers in the world.
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Two years have passed since the members of Dispatch broke up, but they haven’t entirely gone their separate ways. All three musicians have pooled their talents—along with nearly two-dozen other artists—in a nonprofit partnership called the Relief Project.
Formed in the wake of the 2004 tsunami, the Relief Project seeks to provide financial support to communities around the globe in immediate need. Corrigan’s Braddigan, Stokes’s State Radio, and Heimbold all contributed tracks to the project’s first CD, The Relief Project Volume 1. Last December, the three were among a gaggle of artists who played a sold-out New York City fund-raiser. It wasn’t exactly a Dispatch reunion, but the trio did gallop through their chestnut “Flying Horses”; it was the first time they’d been together on the same stage since the fall of 2004.
Corrigan, Stokes, and Heimbold have also created a Zimbabwean-based charity—named the Elias Fund, after a Stokes-penned Dispatch tune—that strives to empower Zimbabwean youth to bring about change in Africa. They’ve opened avenues by raising funds for young Africans to attend college and for American students to travel to Africa and engage in humanitarian efforts.
With issues like poverty, world hunger, cultural change, and social justice to address, it might be a while before Dispatch can find the time to pull its act together for an official reunion. But for now, Dispatch has uncovered other ways to be productive. “We need to create footprints so people can follow us,” says Brad. “The Dispatch mission is not yet complete.”
Bob Gulla ’83 writes about the music biz from his home in Rhode Island.