The Core: Dispatch
photo: Shervin Lainez
Co-founding members Chad Stokes and Brad Corrigan take a deep dive into the first studio album to truly document their group’s current lineup, Yellow Jacket.
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Adding New Songs to the Quiver
CHAD STOKES: We started Yellow Jacket before last summer. We had a bunch of festivals coming up, and I had a few reggae and ska tunes, so I was like, “Let’s just go into the studio and record four songs, do an EP and then play ‘em during the summer.” It’s so fun to do a tour when you have a bunch of new songs in the quiver. That didn’t work out timewise, but we ended up getting into the studio after our summer tour, in September, and recording those tunes. We also had a couple of other tunes that weren’t really reggae or ska, which is a bit of a throwback to our earlier sound. We were like, “We could just make this a record. It might be a little eclectic in terms of where it’s going, but that’s OK.” So we went into the studio in Boston and recorded another five or six songs in January and made a full record.
We ended up working at Rear Window Studios with Craig Welsch, who did the first record for State Radio, my old band—he’s notoriously good at recording, especially reggae. I had been dreaming of getting the five of us in Dispatch in with him, all in the same room.
BRAD CORRIGAN: The most exciting part for us was having our entire band in the studio recording together. For basically the last 10 years, Chad and I have done the majority of the recording and worked with the production teams. I think being in there with our full lineup and playing live is the way it should always be. I’m glad there are a lot of different ways that you can record, but it feels so authentic to be playing with your mates—everybody is bringing their best and putting their fingerprints on the songs. It was also fun going really old school early on, and then, by the end of the record, exploring lots of eclectic influences and some unique twists and turns.
With the records that Chad and I have made as just the two of us, it was early enough with our bandmates that we weren’t sure how much we would want to invite them into that process. Chad and I have a really efficient, complementary flow in the studio. And with both of us being dads with tinies, it’s a matter of saying, “How do you get the most out of your time, and how do you have the least risk going into it?” There were many times when it was like, “Let’s go knock out our parts and then we can work remotely from afar.”
Polaroid Pictures
CS: “Whisk Me Away,” for me, is a real Allman Brothers homage, with the two harmony guitars leading the track. Growing up in Massachusetts, you always went to Great Woods to see the Allman Brothers—all through high school. They’ve always been in the musical vernacular. And we happen to have two great guitarists in the band now, with Mike Sawitzke and Matt Embree. When I was working up that song, it was like, “This is where this song lives.” I’ve always been a real sucker for hippie-rock, for lack of a better way to describe it, whether it be The Black Crowes, Blind Melon or the Allman Brothers. It just has its claws in me.
On a song like “Tulsa Picnic,” I was going for a T. Rex or early Bowie vibe, with a bit of a psychedelic feel or a Ziggy Stardust feel. And there’s sections of “Whisk” and “Tulsa Picnic” that have little blues parts, a la Faces. So there’s a little throwback in there. But, at the same time, “In the Street” is the most straight-up folk song we’ve ever done, and it was fun to lean into that side of things.
Matt sings lead on “Whisk.” He’s one of my favorite artists and his band, Rx Bandits, is one of my favorite bands of all time. We’ve become so close over the years. Back in the day, State Radio and Rx Bandits toured together, and he’s such a good singer. I kind of sprung it on him: “Hey, Matt, will you come sing this?” He’s like, “Sing what?” He had never sung lead on a Dispatch song before. It’s one of my favorite parts of the record and the live show. When he steps up to sing, it’s really fun to have his voice be isolated, where you can really hear it.
Besides me, all the guys in the band live on Pacific Coast time, so I’m the lone East Coaster. That means there’s a lot of sending demos around and seeing what feels like the band, what feels like something everyone can contribute to. That was one thing that was really fun about this record, especially starting off with some more reggae and ska stuff. Matt and J.R. [percussionist and drummer Jon Reilly] spent much of their early careers in that world, and we’d be remiss not to dive back into that. It felt great because they just have so much love for those genres and do them so well. There’s tunes where J.R.’s playing drums and Matt’s on bass, and it’s just so locked in and so tasty. It was fun to go back to that early Dispatch sound with those players.
BC: Chad does the majority of our songwriting, so receiving the first batch of demos is always exciting. He’s such a vast songwriter—and he pulls from so many different places—that I don’t ever really know what I’m gonna get. But I was really stoked on these tracks, in terms of feeling that open reggae/one drop feel and some faster ska tempos, so I was really excited to listen to them.
But the other thing about demos is that, sometimes, it’s like looking at a Polaroid that was shot into the light, where you can’t quite see and make out everything that’s in the photo, but you can feel that there’s something interesting in it. You have to dig a little bit with your ears. Chad and I don’t do high quality demos—we come from the era of putting two cassette decks side by side and then pressing record. With the second half of the record, I remember hearing the demo for “Hush Money.” It’s got this deep Sabbath riff to it and then this kind of haunting whisper-song melody. I was kind of like, “Is that the full demo?” But by the time we got in and started playing against it, I was like, “That is such a unique jam.” It’s got a lot of power and energy in it. So it’s just fun. You look at demos like the earliest iterations of the album, a chapter outline for a book. You’re not totally sure what’s going to be in the chapters, but you get a sense as to what the flow is.
New Directions
CS: When [co-founding member] Pete [Heimbold] was going through some of his mental illness stuff, it was a really difficult time for the band. It was hard for him to stay healthy on the road, and we were trying to figure out what to do. It was the kind of thing where we were either gonna stop playing or morph into this slightly different thing. We were recording America, Location 12, our 2017 record, and Pete was there for a little bit of that. And J.R. and Matt had already gone to Europe with Brad and I as a four-piece, without Pete, that spring. So we were really trying to figure out where the band was going, and then, on the strength of that record and having Pete’s blessing to continue, we made that slight segue in the road.
Mike Sawitzke engineered that record and he’s engineered and produced records with us ever since. Now, he’s our utility player. As I mentioned, Matt is an old friend from RX Bandits who I played with in the State Radio days. And I met J.R., who is from New Hampshire, on Martha’s Vineyard 15-20 years ago, and we’ve been attached at the hip ever since. He plays in the rock opera that I’ve been working on, 1972, and he plays on all the Pinto stuff, which is my solo band.
BC: It’s crazy to think that it will be 10 years [since Heimbold stepped away from Dispatch] soon. As Chad said, Mike came from our production team when Chad and I were doing records, just the two of us. So it was a really natural fit to have him out after we released America, Location 12. We’d already been so deep in the weeds with him and wanted to tour that record and he could already play everything. He’s just become such an awesome friend and bandmate and multi-instrumentalist.
Matt’s such a talented lead singer and lead guitar player. At first, probably 75% of it was just him filling the bass role and then playing some guitar solos. And now, it’s gotten a little bit more f luid—to where there’s more guitar playing and he’s starting to sing a little bit more. We’re always trying to get him to sing louder. I think he kind of feels like, “Hey, this is your thing, not mine.” And we’re like, “Bro, sing. You have killer voice.” I’ve played guitar all my life and I kinda look at him, and I’m like, “Is that the same instrument?” That guy can play.
And J.R. is my twin on the kit. We have so much fun, and we’ve always had a really great connection. But, after playing drums together for 10 years, we find ourselves synced up with similar instincts on lots of f ills and there’s lots of two-part percussion. He sings his ass off, too—he’s got a really high range and that rounds out all of our harmonies.
A Little Rolling Circus
CS: We live in a really fucked up time. We have a president who wants to be king. We have people being taken off the streets for speaking truth to power, and we feel like part of our responsibility is to be part of the resistance and to use our platform. It comes naturally in the music, but it’s an interesting time to be out there. We don’t want to be the frog in the water that’s boiling, where the frog doesn’t know it. It is crazy what is happening in the country right now, and we want to be part of not just the resistance but also how people communicate. One of the beautiful things about concerts is that everyone’s there—they’re talking to each other and they all like music. And, hopefully, if you’re a Dispatch fan or a John Butler fan and you see us this summer, you’re concerned beyond the music. And we can be a space for that.
We have Ani DiFranco on “Everyone’s in the Street.” She’s one of my favorite songwriters of all time and such a badass, so outspoken. I’ve been listening to her since I was in my teens, and I got the chance to open up for her years ago. So she was a no brainer when we were thinking of who we could get to sing with us on this track.
And in terms of John, who plays on “Trinket,” we’ve been talking about getting on the road together forever. It just didn’t line up with album cycles until this summer—he lives on the west coast of Australia. But, again, we’ve been buds since the State Radio days, and this time, it worked out. He’s such a great guitarist and it was so fun to hear him play on our track and to see him on the first night of the tour. The last time we played together was at MSG. It’s also really fun to be on tour with all these Aussies. It’s just a good vibe and I’m excited to spend some real time with this little rolling circus.
BC: The first night of the tour, we had a trombone player—Chad’s Uber driver’s son—literally roll up and play with us and he was incredible. So Ivan jumped up and played horns—we’re looking for horn players in every city and just trying to fill that out. I love the spontaneity of meeting someone in a particular place. Being out there with Donavon Frankenreiter, G. Love and John Butler is such a joy. We have the most history with Garrett [Dutton], but we played with John Butler in 2015, and we’ve been huge fans, and good friends, for a really long time. We’re so grateful that it finally worked out for us to jump on tour together.
When we were in college, Garett played Middlebury in ‘94 or ‘95—he played at our student activities center—and we watched him and we were like, “That guy’s got it.” We loved his cool, slow, white boy hip-hop thing—the melodies, the delivery, the singing, the rapping and just his energy. We still remember it well and that had a huge impact on the song “Bang Bang.” That was us wanting to emulate him.
We played with him and Special Sauce a little later on. I remember we opened for him at [New York’s] Roseland Ballroom and did a big show at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver in 2001. Then a few years went by—Chad played with him with State Radio or the Pintos— and then, about five years ago, I really got to know him well when we started to get him on as many tours as we could. He’s such a great player and a library of songs, experiences and styles. I also love who he is as a dad. When he brings his family out on the road, all of us are like, “Yep, we’re all in the same boat.”
Dispatch 2.0
CS: [Putting the setlist together] is always a little bit of a dance. It’s really fun to play the new tunes, and our sets aren’t that long because there’s four of us on the bill, so it’s really compact. We do 12-14 songs a night—we throw in a cover and play maybe three new songs and then the rest are scattered from throughout our career. We’ll drawn on some old ones and, every night, some things will change—we’ll draw in different tunes from the last few years, like “Only the Wild Ones” or “Midnight Laurie.”
BC: Last year was 20 years since “The Last Dispatch” show we did in Boston. Before that show, we hadn’t played for two years and, honestly, from 1999-early 2000 on, I think the writing was on the wall that we were cooked. Our friendships were ragged. We felt pretty empty, yet we still had another year of touring that we’d committed to. It didn’t feel good the way that we left it. So we took a hiatus in 2002, and then, in 2004, came back together for those shows. All three of us had such a deep love for each other, but we were still so burned out and still pretty bruised from some of the things that we had done to hurt each other—coming to some of the decisions we came to and saying some of the things that you say in the heat of being your worst self. And you can’t really unsay those things.
But playing together again in 2004 felt, to me, pretty cleansing and awe-inspiring. We had no clue who was gonna be there and we had the best weather. It was the best possible experience— more people came than we could have imagined. We met people internationally, instead of just domestically. We kind of learned about the power of the digital era, that your music could go anywhere. That planted a lot of new ideas, and it was sort of a tattoo on our spiritual experience. But we still knew we had to walk away from it—we were not in a healthy space to be like, “Let’s fire the buses back up and go.” It was one of those things where you say, “That felt so good, and we still gotta walk away.” But you knew it was there—you could still see and feel the ink of that day, if you will. Then we played in 2007, and we had that amazing experience with the African children’s choir doing the “Dispatch: Zimbabwe” shows at Madison Square Garden. MSG leaves a similar mark on you.
After those shows—the magnitude of energy we received, knowing that our fans were still there to sing with us—we just felt like, “They were so patient and loyal that, if we could get our shit together and play from a really authentic place, we should see what the road has in store for us.” It’s clearly 2.0.—“The Last Dispatch” ended a season and then started a fresh one.
A lot of [our success and the longevity of the band] is just about making sure that we don’t feel obligated to make a record. If you are like, “I’ve been listening to this and I’ve got this batch of ideas”—anytime that the creative spark is inspiring— then I’m all about it. We’ve been spared from having to record because we’ve never been on a record label before. We haven’t really felt that we’ve ever had to deliver something. But we’ll still look back on our history and say, “I think we might have forced that one a little bit,” or we will go, “It would’ve been better if we’d kind of sat with those songs a little longer.” I’m grateful that we’ve been able to, for the most part, record because we felt inspired.
Outside Projects
CS: It’s been super exciting working on the rock opera, 1972. At first, I was thinking, “Is this a jam opera? Has anyone done a jam opera?” But then we started jamming in our early renditions, and everyone in the audience was like, “I want to know more about the story, enough with this noodling.” Although I was thinking it might go that way, it’s still been really fun. It’s about this young woman who’s fleeing an abusive relationship and she has an unwanted pregnancy—it’s 1972 and abortions are illegal. So she jumps freight trains to try to get to a different state, and she’s heard about this doctor. It’s this journey, and it’s been so fun to play. Like I said before, J.R. is the drummer and he also acts and sings in it. His old friends from high school are in it. The Pintos are all in it—my brother plays banjo and plays Pinto. It’s this whole other world we’re jumping into, and it’s been really exciting.
BC: Ileana’s Smile is the name of the doc that I’ve worked on for almost 12 years, and I’m grateful it recently came out and is available on Apple, Amazon and YouTube. It’s an hour-long film inspired by an experience I had in 2005 when I went to Nicaragua. I was going to visit an orphanage to play guitar and soccer with the kids there. And our taxi driver in Nicaragua was like, “I wanna show you something.” He took me to the city garbage dump and said, “This is where kids need you the most.” I was like, “What do you mean? Aren’t we in the dump?” He was like, “Wait, wait.” We drove around the corner, and there’s a township of all these families that have built their lives into scavenging for recyclables in the trash dump to make a living. It was the weirdest, most heartbreaking thing that I’d ever seen. There were kids running around barefoot. I ended up going back a bunch, and that same taxi driver became one of my best friends. We would go in and hang out with the kids, trip after trip, and I’d bring as many friends of mine as I could— athletes, musicians, painters— and just give the kids in the trash dump everything that I had as a kid. We started a nonprofit, Love Light + Melody, to get more fun into the dump, including an annual concert—we did a concert inside the trash dump called The Dance.
But the tragedy of it is that two of the girls that first inspired all of our relationships both passed away, in 2009 and 2011, from more abuses than we could name. We had all of this film footage and photography of them because we thought they were so brave and intelligent— we imagined them making it, living a long life and telling their own story. So when Ileana and her sister Mercedes passed away, we didn’t really know what to do and, a couple years later, our whole community got together and said, “We have enough of their stories that we could honor them with a doc film and then we can tie the film to a school.” So the Ileana School of Hope now exists, and we are using the film to raise awareness for this population of kiddos. We want to expand the school all the way through high school—right now, it’s kindergarten through sixth grade.
“Darker Light,” from the new album, comes from the film. Stefan Lessard ended up playing bass on the documentary, Tim Snider played strings and Jake Shimabukuro played ukulele. [Antibalas’ Reinaldo DeJesus and Dave Preston also contributed]. I just reached out to a lot of friends and said, “Hey, any chance that any of you guys would weave into the music for this?” And, thankfully, they said yes.
