FUSE TV - Fuse Q&A: Dispatch on Spearfishing, Jam Band Groupies & Industry D-Bags

As the group itself will readily admit, Boston-based jam band trio Dispatch may be the biggest band you don't know. In the late 1990s, the group released a series of albums blending roots rock, pop and funk, stylistically morphing between genres within songs, before amicably breaking up. Their 2004 farewell show entitled “The Last Dispatch” drew more than 150,000 fans from around the world, while three 2007 benefit shows at Madison Square Garden sold out instantly with virtually no mainstream media or radio support.

Twelve years after their last album, Brad Corrigan, Pete Heimbold and Chad Urmston return with Circles Around the Sun, and as Corrigan tells Fuse from his Denver home, the group had to destroy itself in order to rebuild. In between sessions for his upcoming solo album, Corrigan talked to Fuse about the pleasures of spearfishing, a--hole music industry execs and jam band groupies.

When I told friends I was interviewing you, half said, “I’ve seen Dispatch 15 times” and the other half had never heard of the band. You say in your own bio that, “We’ve been called the biggest band nobody’s ever heard of.” Is that frustrating? Do you feel underappreciated?

Brad: We feel overappreciated. We’re amazed that our family and friends have been as loyal as they have. They’ve embraced us taking 10 years off and they’re still there. So we have no idea how we ended up in this place having such a loyal movement of fans that are along for the ride. The frustrating part is that we’re creating songs that I think would hold up well on the radio or mainstream media, but a lot of the folks that are the gatekeepers to mainstream media don’t look at the quality of the art first. They’re looking to see who’s backing it and how much money’s behind it. It’s just not art-driven; it’s dollar-driven and advertising-driven and relationship-driven. Thankfully, we’ve been able to record independently and we’ve been blessed to not be in that world.

Was not entering that world your own decision or did the opportunity just never present itself?

Brad: Well, the bottom line is that we just didn’t meet the right people back then. We would have built the team with anyone out there inside or outside a label if we felt like the team member really got us and we got them. We found really solid people and started building a team, but we honestly just didn’t find anyone inside the recording industry that wanted to see us for who we were. It was constantly like, “It worked last year with such and such a band, and we’ll make you into the next fill-in-the-blank.” That was just one of the biggest turnoffs. Any time that line got dropped in a meeting, the three of us would just shut down, our eyes would glaze over and we’d whisper, “When’s the end of the meeting?”

Does any particular meeting stick out?

Brad: One of the guys we talked to was really close with a producer who had worked with Dave Matthews. He was going to connect the dots like, “Well, you guys have a similar fan base and a similar enough sound. Let’s just plug you into this producer, get songs that have this kind of tempo and we’ll market you that way.” And we were just disgusted by it. We love Dave Matthews and that’s why I play guitar and drums the way I do, but the idea of us being a mass-produced, homogenized, microwaved thing was just disgusting. Thankfully, Chad and Pete and I were savvy and protective enough that we really wanted to make sure we made our songs the way we wanted to make our songs, to make them as original and unique as they could be, and not try to cop a sound or production style so that we’re reminiscent to any other bands selling lots of albums.