At the height of the modern jamband boom in the late ‘00s, Dispatch seemingly came out of nowhere to emerge as one of the biggest independent bands of the decade. The band’s signature style – a mix of pop, folk, rock, jam, ska, funk and hip-hop – helped introduce a generation of young music fans to the world of underground rock and the network of grassroots clubs and communities that exist beyond pop radio. Dispatch was one of the first bands to truly benefit from Napster and file various file sharing networks that helped spread the band’s music across the country. After frequenting clubs like Wetlands and The Middle East for years, in 2001 the group started to sell out theaters and ballrooms across the country.

But in 2002, just as Dispatch was about to break into the mainstream, the band’s three members – Chad Urmston (guitar/bass/percussion), Pete Heimbold (bass/guitar) and Brad Corrigan (drums/guitar) – decided to go their separate way. The musicians’ friendships had strained during the band’s later years and all three members of the group felt the need to forge their own musical identity. After making their late night debut on Late Late Show, the musicians shifted their focus elsewhere. Urmston formed the politically-charged rock group State Radio while Herimbold and Corrigan forged folk-influenced solo careers. They also all donated their time to a variety of charitable endeavors. The band reconvened for an official free farewell show at Boston’s Hatch Shell in 2004 that reportedly drew up over 100,000 fans before officially disbanding.

Though the members of the group collaborated periodically over the years, Dispatch surprised most of its community in early 2007 by announcing a reunion show at New York’s Madison Square Garden with all proceeds benefiting the people of Zimbabwe. The show swiftly sold out and the band added another two shows at the Garden which also sold out within hours. After the show, the members of Dispatch once again went their separate ways.

Dispatch’s MSG shows opened up the door for a more formal reunion and in 2008 the musicians came together for an acoustic benefit show at Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center. The musicians’ friendship continued to evolve and earlier this year the band started considering a proper reunion tour: Dispatch will play six cities in 2011 and fifty cents from each ticket sold go to benefit education in each local market.

On the eve of Dispatch’s reunion announcement, Urmston discussed the band’s reunion plans with Relix.

Let’s start with Dispatch’s upcoming reunion shows. It’s been just over three years since the band played a proper show together. When did you initially start tossing around the idea of a full reunion tour?

I was hanging out with Pete in New York this past March or April, and we both kind of felt like enough time had gone by where Brad, Pete and I were all in a good place – both individually and together. When we take our hiatuses it is never, “I never want to see you again.” We just had other things going on. For me, I felt good about where State Radio had gotten to as a band, and it seemed fun to get together with Brad and Pete for a few weeks in the summertime. So it was a fairly fluid thing – I just felt right. I also think the education bit was a really important cause. Even the little bit of money donated with each ticket can have a nice ripple effect in terms of other socioeconomic factors that can be uplifted because of children getting a good education.

In terms of State Radio’s development, did you feel like the band had fully emerged from Dispatch’s shadow?

I really felt like it had become its own entity, and that Chuck Fay (bass) and Mike Najarian (drums) and I had started our own band. In the past few years I’ve felt a lot more secure with the identity of State Radio and what we were doing. It feels quite separate from Dispatch and that was one of the reasons I felt quite good about broaching the subject of returning to do a mini-tour with Brad and Pete. To oversimplify, things felt pretty good all around. The field feels pretty open as far as what we can do – everyone is a good place.

With Dispatch touring this summer, do you plan to tour with State Radio as well in 2011?

I think we are going to go out in March and possibly go over to Europe. And something will happen in the fall. I recently did a series of solo shows that benefited Calling All Crows [Urmston’s social action organization]. We had a great tour and, in October and November, I was working on a solo record for the first time. That was interesting and fun. I recorded with John Dragonetti. He used to live in Boston but now he is in LA. He flew out and we did the record in Martha’s Vineyard. It is more acoustic – songs that didn’t quite sound right for State Radio or Dispatch for that matter. It just felt like there were these songs that I didn’t know what to do with. People have been trying to get me to do a solo record for a while so eventually I caved in [laughter]. It was fun though – I had some of my family members come in and sing with us on some big group moments. We would press record slap tambourines against the wall in this big living room in Martha’s Vineyard. It was fun.

Though Dispatch’s final studio album [2000’s Who Are We Living For? ] felt like a natural evolution of the group’s sound at the time, listening back you can hear the seeds of each of your solo projects. Some songs on the album even feel like early State Radio songs. If Dispatch stayed together, do you think the band would have continued in that direction?

If Dispatch had stayed together I feel as if we would have kept going in that direction a little bit more. Probably not quite as much as State Radio goes there but that is definitely where I was leaning. With State Radio’s inception, I had just a little more freedom to be more political and ramp things up a little but. That is how I was feeling at the time. The one Dispatch song we play with State Radio is “Time Served” [from Who Are We Living For? ] and Mike and Chuck do such a great job with the tune. So there is a little bit of that overlapping.

Was there a specific point where you felt comfortable enough with Dispatch’s legacy and State Radio’s future where you felt like you could start playing that song again?

We actually play that song more than you think. We play “Time Served” every five or six shows. It hasn’t been a mainstay – there are two of three songs we play every show – but it has definitely been in the mix for a while. But for the first two or three years we didn’t play it all. But it really lent itself to the way Chuck and Mike play so it just works quite well. But there are no real plans to incorporate more Dispatch songs in the State Radio set.
Looking ahead to this summer, do you plan to write some new songs with Pete and Brad for Dispatch?

We are trying to figure that out at the moment. I’d like to work on some new material – it is one thing to come back for a show or two and play older songs. But since we are going to do six different cities I think it is important to play new stuff. We are going to work on something this winter and see what we can get together – as well as dip into our solo songs. For instance, if there is a song of Pete’s from the last ten years that Brad and I really like we’ll throw that into the mix as well.

You also recently played with Brad in Boston at a Calling All Crows benefit. Can you tell us a bit about that experience?

Everyone did a few songs and Brad and I come together halfway through my set and did a few songs together. We did two Dispatch songs [ “Elias” and “The General” ]. It was great – really fun to play with him again.

Since this will be Dispatch’s first full tour in eight years, are you looking at each of these shows as individual events or part of a continuous tour with its own arc? If you see it as a tour, do you plan to mix-up your setlist each night?

Good question. It depends on how the practicing goes – and the new songs. I’d love for each set to be as different as possible – I’ve always been a big fan of that. If we feel like we are tight enough that we can draw on 40 or so songs than the more the merrier. It just depends on how many new songs we work on and how many solo songs we work on and how the band feels as far a grasping the older songs. If that comes back quickly, we can expand the setlist. It is funny to sit down and say, “How does this song go again?” For years we’d play some of these songs every night and then they become strangers at some point.

Though it has been three years since Dispatch played MSG, you reunited in 2009 to play a few songs at the Kennedy Center of all places. How did that gig materialize?

That came out of the blue. Morgan Tsvangirai, the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, asked if we could play for him at this celebration. We were really happy to do that – we are big fans of his and felt like his country really depended on him. He is the Prime Minister under [opposition leader] Robert Mugabe so he is not as powerful as we’d like. We felt like the future of Zimbabwe really rested on his shoulders and were happy to play for him. We did a few acoustic songs – it was pretty mellow considering what we had done at MSG. So it was pretty casual overall except for the formality of the event itself [laughter]. It was a mixed bag of people there but the crowd was awesome. It was relatively small but it was a great energy. It is nice to play acoustic every one and a while because you can hear so well.

You have always cited Napster as a major reason Dispatch was able to spread its music across the country – and even the world. In certain ways, Dispatch was the first grassroots band to really benefit from file sharing and online social networking in general. Dispatch has also been slowly revealing the cities on its summer tour via a series of encoded barcodes on Facebook. How tapped into the world of social networking as you at this point?

It seems we keep getting closer to one another in cyber space. Brad, Pete and I haven’t really embraced the Twitter world but it is amazing that there is this accessibility to people who listen to our music. We try to embrace the technology as soon as it arrives because we owe a lot of our success to Napster. I feel it is really great that people can make their own choices in terms of the music they listen to. We would never want to bite the hand that feeds us so we fully embrace it.

[In terms of this summer’s tour announcement], we are tried to figure out a “mysterious” way for people who were really into the music to crack it – to figure out what was going on. But for someone just taking a quick glace it seemed fairly esoteric.

Looking ahead, do you see Dispatch playing more regularly in the future?

We will have to see how it goes. But if I could predict the future, I’d say that doing something like this every two or three years isn’t out of the question. If something comes up that the three of us feel really psyched about we can get our act together and do it. So I think we are going to be a little bit closer to being able to be spontaneous with the band. But that being said, I don’t see Dispatch as a regular thing.

Has the break helped restore your friends with Pete and Brad?

Everyone is so far away from each other, in some ways, that when we do get together for these pointed events it is kind of a big love fest. Pete just had a baby. There is all of this time away from each other so when we are together we are always just catching up. This might be a little bit more than that where we get beyond catching up and create new music together again. That idea feels really good. But everyone has grown up to live their own life over the years. I think that is why you probably won’t see us jumping in a van and leaving our homes that frequently. But certainly so far so good.

It also helps that when you reunite you have the opportunity to play arenas and amphitheaters, not just the clubs the band used to frequent.

That is unbelievable. I am so grateful that people still listen to the music and so surprised that we can still do this. Maybe it won’t last very long – I guess this summer will be a little bit of an indication as far if we can maintain that size – but it is going to be fun to play these songs again and interact with the fan base again.

Finally, would you say that at this point, eight years removed from the band, would you say that most State Radio fans are Dispatch fans as well?

I think in the beginning people who were coming to State Radio shows were coming because they knew Dispatch. But then as State Radio got its own momentum it grew from the Dispatch fan base. It grew outside of it with people who were joining the State Radio world as we progressed not from the Dispatch world. But overall there is quite a bit of an overlap. As much as we run into people who big Dispatch fans, but with the nature of how much we tour there are definitely kids out there who don’t really know what Dispatch is. Some people have come up to be and say I sound like the guy from Dispatch. Sometime I say he is my cousin or my brother [laughter].

Here’s a look at Dispatch’s Reunion Tour
June 4 Morrison, CO Red Rocks Amphitheatre
June 8 Chicago, IL Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park
June 11 Berkeley, CA Greek Theatre
June 18 Harrison, NJ Red Bull Arena
June 21 Atlanta, GA Chastain Park Amphitheatre
June 25 Boston, MA TD Garden