Music

A modest crowd was expected for the fiercely independent local band’s final show. It didn’t work out that way.

The year 2004 was quite the cultural moment in Boston’s history. The Red Sox were on their historic curse-breaking run that would culminate in a World Series win that fall, the Democratic National Convention brought droves of politicians and supporters to the FleetCenter, and Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth joined the Boston Pops for its annual 4th of July celebration at the Hatch Shell. But the latter wouldn’t be the most notable event to light up the Esplanade that summer. 

Dispatch, a completely independent three-piece band that often referred to Boston as home, came out of an early retirement to play what they billed as their final show at the Hatch Shell. Embracing elements of folk, rock, reggae, and funk, the band amassed a loyal following from their formation in 1996 until they stopped playing in 2002, yet because of their genre-dodging sound and DIY operation, they largely cruised under the radar of the press, the average listener, and the music industry at large. 

That’s why what happened on the sunny afternoon of July 31, 2004 was an event of a magnitude that nobody saw coming. Twenty years later, we caught up with several people involved in the event to piece together a day that would become cemented in Boston music history. 

Dispatch got its start in the early ’90s when the band’s three founding members, Chad Stokes Urmston, Pete Francis Heimbold, and Brad Corrigan met while attending Middlebury College in Vermont. 

Chad Stokes Urmston (founding member, guitarist, and vocalist): Pete was in a band that I saw play and I asked if they needed a trombone player because I grew up playing trombone. He said yes, and that band kind of morphed into a new band that he and I were leading called Hermit Thrush. And then Brad and Pete were playing as an acoustic duo and I had seen them perform a couple times. I think Pete was like, ‘Hey, it would be great to get Chad and Brad together,’ but Brad didn’t want to mess up what he had going with Pete so he was a little reticent.

Pete Francis Heimbold (founding member, bassist, and vocalist): It took eight months to convince Brad to want to be in it. But then when we finally were the band, I love using the words symmetry and harmony [to describe it]. Brad has an extraordinary ability to harmonize and he harmonized between my vocal and Chad’s vocal brilliantly. And then I think the three of us, the voices were like some kind of sonic velcro. 

Urmston: Pete had a different kind of voice, more of a full and powerful voice. If you take the grain and gravel of Brad and me, and add in Pete, the choruses would have a nice full blend. So I think when the three of us first sang together it was like, “This sounds good, let’s keep doing this.”

Heimbold: One thing the three of us would like to do when we were practicing was either to go to an empty classroom or a stairwell and play and sing. What I noticed in those early shows that we played is that I feel like there was a lot of strength in the song, the quality of the song, the harmonies, and then maybe the arrangements of the songs.

Urmston: We did a lot of the same things that a lot of bands do: We bought a van and we just toured around, and we’d play anywhere where we could get enough money to buy gas and make it to the next gig. 

Heimbold: We were the type of guys that always wanted to talk to people afterwards. And I do believe that that was a big reason that helped to build the band, was building that sense of community. 

Urmston: We didn’t know any better. And there was no one really telling us how to do it. And I think in some ways that was helpful. 

Heimbold: We played a lot of schools — Princeton University, Dartmouth, Deerfield Academy, all over the Northeast. And then Chad’s sister went to Duke. So we went down to Duke and we slept on her couches, and we played at their Cosmic Cantina and got paid with burritos.

Urmston: We also played a lot of prep schools because there was good money there. And Brad had a pretty good business sense, whereas Pete and I were more of the flaky musician type. 

Heimbold: I remember this one middle school. We arrived at seven in the morning and there were these sleepy middle schoolers coming in. Then we delivered this fire-hot rock show and at the end, all these sleepy kids were up and grooving with us. So there were a lot of those kinds of moments. 

Steve Bursky [band manager of Dispatch]: I was in high school in ’96 through 2000, and Pete [had gone] to my high school. They were all up at Middlebury at the time, and I recall throughout high school as they were getting going, they would come back and play assemblies at our school in Connecticut and I just fell in love with the band.

Heimbold: [Steve is] seven years younger and I came back and visited him, and he wanted to help us with a food bank benefit concert. And that was really how Steve began working with Dispatch. 

Bursky: It was my first time ever kind of putting an event together like that, and I think [then-manager] Greg Brown and the guys were impressed with my tenacity and passion and Greg asked if I would go work with him going into my freshman year of college. 

Russell Brisby [tour manager of Dispatch]: In ’99 I started spending more time out on the road; I started out selling T-shirts and setting up Brad’s drum kit. And then I transitioned into tour manager. And in hindsight, I wasn’t really great as a tour manager. I think they liked having me out there because I just helped make sure things went smoothly and could look out for problems and deal with problems as they came up. 

Bursky: They kept me on through my freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and they were pretty actively touring in 2000, 2001, and then at some point my sophomore/junior year, Greg decided to step away from management and I took over full-time from my dorm room.

As an independent band, Dispatch began leaning into progressive methods of marketing, publicity, and music sharing that the late ’90s and early ’00s presented. Without much press help or support from a major label, the band quickly amassed a loyal following while remaining one of music’s best kept secrets. 

Heimbold: To further this story, you get into Napster and then the music sort of spread in a way that we could have never imagined. 

Bursky: Napster was going crazy, and these kids that had gotten exposed to [the band] through their New England prep school days were then spreading the word across the country via Napster. It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment that they certainly were on the front end of. 

Urmson: Napster came along and was really helpful in taking a song like “The General” and out it went into this new file-sharing technology that we never saw coming. But we were definitely thankful for it because up to that point, we were really in favor of people burning our CDs. That was our whole thing, and that was our precursor mentality to Napster. We were like, “Buy our CD and burn it for friends. Like, just burn away. We don’t care.” Every time we hit a show, a city, the second time around, there were more people there.

Heimbold: The grassroots thing, 100%.

Bursky: They were very much the outsiders to so many artists that saw the mainstream and going the major label route as the path to success. These guys really wanted to carve a different path for themselves and were fiercely independent — they never really fit into a box from a sound perspective. And frankly, early on when so many artists were up in arms, and certainly record companies were up in arms, about the free nature of Napster and the inability to monetize the IP, these guys saw it as an opportunity [to utilize] their IP as a loss leader to go sell tickets and t-shirts. 

Heimbold: We went down to that DC [Napster] hearing and we met Chuck D, and Chuck D fist-bumped us and told us we were cool. And then I think that was it. We had made it at that point [laughs]. And it was interesting to see Alanis Morrisette and Don Henley, and it was a very fascinating time in the music business because the way we saw it is that people were getting our music and coming to our shows and we were actually profiting. And then of course, Metallica or other big bands, they look at it as, people are stealing their music. So there were really two sides to it. 

Urmston: Our kind of “Eureka!” moment was when Napster was new, and we went out to play Pomona College out in California. We thought we were like back in Vermont. Like all the kids knew every word, not just to “The General,” but all these other tunes. And we were playing them and looking at each other in the moment and just being like, “What the f—? How did these people know these songs?” That was when we started to understand what Napster was doing for us.

Bursky: They’d show up in cities in the western part of America where they’d never played and there’d be a couple thousand kids there the first time and there was no radio, there was no press. It was truly a grassroots word-of-mouth [operation] that was built off of Napster. And we were one of the first acts to really value and build our own street team, which at the time utilized no online technology and was via snail mail and shipping out demo CDs, giveaways, samplers, and flyers. 

Urmston: Because there was no radio or record label, it was really the people, the fans kind of spreading it, and it was this kind of natural swell. I’ve been part of bands since then and I realize now that that doesn’t always happen. I think Dispatch, in a way, the timing of it was unique. It’s not often that word-of-mouth can sustain a band and sell tickets, but somehow it did for us.

Just as Dispatch began seeing the rewards of its tireless touring and recording, the band’s three members experienced increasing tension. On Nov. 30, 2002, the band played The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, after which, without any formal breakup, the band wouldn’t gig again for almost two years. 

Urmston: We were having internal troubles — relationship troubles with each other. I think we felt like we were like the people’s band and we just wanted to be real. There was very little distance between the stage and the people in the audience when we played — it felt very communal. I think I felt it was dishonest of us to keep playing if our relationships weren’t intact, and I think we all felt like we weren’t gonna kind of fake it. I think I probably told the guys first, or I kind of opened that door to closing the door. 

Heimbold: The story of bands getting together, breaking up, having trouble — I mean, it was part of our band too. I don’t really remember why, but everybody had their eyes on some of their solo work. Maybe being in the band could get a bit exhausting. And then other times I simply didn’t understand why we would stop playing. 

Bursky: It was definitely a challenging time. I mean the guys had what felt like tons of opportunity right ahead of them. There was certainly a ton of demand coming off of 2001 and a handful of shows we did in 2002. But I think this is the challenge with having three singers, three songwriters, three leaders. It was just a beautiful dynamic that made them incredibly unique and does to this day, but also created a really challenging dynamic in terms of what songs we were playing in a set, what songs are going on an album, what we want to prioritize in terms of how hard we want to hit the road. And those two years were pretty emotionally taxing. 

Urmston: My heart wasn’t in it. So it didn’t feel kind of congruent with the nature of us as a band and the people we had who had come along for the ride. 

In 2004, after more than a year and half away, the band concocted the idea for one final free show to take place at Boston’s Hatch Memorial Shell. 

Adam Klein [former marketing director at WBOS]: I used to manage a band [from Martha’s Vineyard] called Entrain. I was fortunate enough to get Entrain to open for a couple shows with Dispatch: one at the Orpheum Theater and one in Pittsburgh at, I think it was called The Rosebud. We had built a following with WYEP in Pittsburgh and WXPN in Philly and a whole bunch of other radio stations across the country. So [Entrain] played a free show for WYEP in Pittsburgh, and then were invited to open up for Dispatch in Pittsburgh. Needless to say, [band leader] Tom Major took the last possible ferry off the island. They hit a lot of traffic going over the bridges in New York, and they arrived in time to close the show out for Dispatch, of which nobody stayed. But Steve Bursky was the manager of Dispatch, and he and I became friendly. 

Bursky: There was a station up in Boston, WBOS — we had a friend who was very involved at the station, and I remember speaking to him about wanting to do this final show and seeing if we could get BOS involved and make it a big thing in Boston. 

Klein: [In 2004] I was the marketing director at WBOS. It’s interesting, that was the summer I left the radio station, and that was my last big event. What a way to go out. 

Bursky: Probably eight months before my college graduation, we kind of put together this zany idea to play a final free show, which kind of consumed the majority of my senior year. Fortunately, I still graduated, but I graduated spring of 2004 and then the show was a couple months later.

Klein: [Bursky] came to me in the springtime or early summer and said, “The band hasn’t played in a couple years. They’ve basically broken up, but they’ve never told anybody they’ve broken up. We want to do a concert for the fans. One last Dispatch concert.”

Urmston: I think we felt like we wanted some closure on our relationships with the people who had followed us and listened to our music, and kind of to honor the fans in a way and say goodbye. I don’t like goodbyes, but I like them better than non-goodbyes.

Klein: The station had a sponsor looking to do a major event: Nantucket Nectars. So Nantucket Nectars ended up underwriting part of this concert and it was discreetly called Nectar Fest. They had done other events called Nectar Fest on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. 

Brisby: [Bursky] contacted me and told me about the show. And we flew up and saw the [Hatch Shell], and then came back a few weeks later to facilitate the rehearsals and get that started and the different things that we need to do to get ready for that show. 

Urmston: Just a good outdoor spot to play. The Charles River right there, and could fit a few thousand people. And I’d grown up going to the Pops there and stuff. So I was psyched to play there.

Klein: We met with the Metropolitan District Commission, which is now known as the Department of Conservation Recreation, the DCR. We got the permits to do the event, and we scheduled it for the last Saturday in July 20 years ago.

Bursky: [WBOS] was very involved; they were helpful to bring in Nantucket Nectar’s as I recall, as a partial underwriter.

Klein: [Bursky] was still at UPenn and he was awesome. It was fun to have that youthful vision and energy. 

Burksy: I feel like we put the whole thing on for under $30,000. I mean, in 2004, just being able to go play a free show and having modest underwriting to make it possible was exciting. Looking back at it now, it’s kind of laughable how we kind of bootstrapped that whole thing together. 

The underwriting wasn’t the only modest part of the event — the band’s predictions for its audience were too. Before parting ways in 2002, Dispatch’s crowds, though loyal, didn’t set the bar very high from a numbers standpoint.

Bursky: The biggest show they’d ever played that I recall prior to that was two nights at the Fleet Boston Pavilion, so 10,000 people over two nights. But for a single show we probably capped out at 5,000 people.

Urmston: At that point in New York and Boston and DC, maybe 5,000 people were coming to see us play. So I thought, “Oh, a year or two has gone by. It’s a free show. It’s kind of the last show. So maybe like 10,000 people will show up for this.”

Bursky: I thought the number in my mind was always, if we could get 10,000 people, that would be absolutely insane. Frankly, production wise, we were skinny for even 10,000 people. If 10,000 people showed up, there would barely be enough audio to cover it. The lighting rig was laughable. It was all just kind of, like I said, bootstrapped. And frankly, I think that was part of the charm of it. The band was never this big, high-production band. It was about the music and their connection with their audience.

Klein: I knew that this had the potential to be more than a local concert. That Dispatch had a very loyal and cult following. They may not have been known in most households, but their fans were willing to go find them and go see them and travel a great distance. And I believe that that’s what they did, that people came in from all over the country.

Bursky: We had our burgeoning email list at the time, and we had our website. So much of this was shipping out thousands of postcard-sized flyers to kids that would put ’em up all over their schools. I mean, if we had access to an audience the way we have today with social media, who knows what that event would’ve looked like at that time?

Brisby: In the days leading up to the show [they went] back to that barn where they used to rehearse years and years and years ago back in Sherborn. It was just the three guys and then they needed me to help get food out there, simple things like that. 

Urmston: We were just practicing in the barn in the Sherborn barn and going over tunes from our solo projects that we had started because we hadn’t played in a couple of years. We were using some of that for the material and bringing those solo songs into the fold. And there was a documentary being made about it from our friend Helmut [Schleppi]. So we were doing interviews and all our families were coming together for it. There was a lot going on. And we had a practice show at Somerville Theater [two days before]. I was living in Brighton with my girlfriend, now wife, at the time. 

Brisby: Everybody had hopes that it would be a huge thing, but nobody really knew. There was no way to judge how many people were going to show up, how many people they’d reached with the little marketing campaign. I remember the night before the show, when we were at Chad’s house having a get-together; we all kind of guessed at how many people would be there the next day. 

Klein: I think we always thought it was going to be bigger than the DCR and MDC anticipated, but you just never know. It’s hard to judge exactly how many people were coming, but everything worked in favor of a lot of people showing up. It was beautiful weather, a Saturday afternoon in the summer, and fans traveling from a distance. So I had the sense that it was going to be bigger than 30 or 40,000 people, but no way to prove one way or another in advance whether my hunch was right. 

It was clear before the show even started that predictions — and planning — for this show were sorely underestimating what was about to come. 

Bursky: I remember driving back to my hotel [the night before] and someone calling me saying that they had driven past the Hatch Shell and there were already thousands of kids there camping. 

Brisby: We didn’t have a whole lot of budget, so I was staying at a hotel way up north off of 95 — me and some of the crew. And I’d walked across the street to a Dunkin’ Donuts. And it was early. I got down [to the Hatch Shell] at 8 — this was much earlier than that, and there were a bunch of kids in the Dunkin’ Donuts. They were in there and they had Red Sox jerseys and stuff like that. I was like, “That’s weird that they’re up this early. I wonder if there’s a Red Sox game or something like that?” And then I was overhearing their conversation. I realized that they were coming to the show. I was like, “Oh wow, we’ve way underestimated.”

Urmston: I think we woke up the morning of the show and got a call at like 8 in the morning to someone telling us, “There’s 30,000 people here, and like 10,000 spent the night.” And I was just waking up in Brighton, and I’m just like, what? 

Bursky: I remember looking at the forecast and seeing it was going to be a beautiful day. And yeah, sure enough, getting there the next morning with production and there’s thousands and thousands of people there already, which is just pretty wild. 

Urmston: We roll up in the old Chevy Suburban, check some of our gear, go out on stage and do soundcheck to a crowd that’s ten times bigger than the biggest crowd we’ve ever played in front of. It’s all very strange. And then we go downstairs to do some press, and — this is perfect Dispatch, because we never had any press — it’s like two high school papers: like Concord-Carlisle High School and Weymouth High School newspapers. 

Busrky: It was really emotional. I mean, I knew that the band had something special in the four years that I was working with them. I saw the power of their music and the power of their word-of-mouth marketing and the power of their activism and the power of their voices together. But there’s a difference between looking at consumption on Napster at the time, or going and seeing them play to a few thousand people everywhere in the country, and showing up the morning of a final show, and there already being probably tens of thousands of people there.

The show drew 110,000 fans to the Hatch Shell. An impressive number, but one that nobody was truly prepared for. Needless to say, the day included a few notable obstacles. Some recalled that just 10 years prior, a free Green Day show at the Hatch Shell that drew an estimated 50,000 people was shut down by police after just five songs. 

Heimbold: The first song, I felt like my hands were two blocks of ice and it probably sounded like an absolute car crash. So yeah, I was nervous, but I think after a few songs we settled in. 

Urmston: My pedal board went out — that was high stress. My pedal board often went out during shows, so it was kind of classic. We were never a very polished band. I remember feeling like I wanted to get through the gig without messing up. I know I stumbled over the lyrics a few times.

Brisby: I think the guys were nervous because they hadn’t played in so long. I think they were nervous about the music — the band being tight and things going well on stage. And those things went really, really well.

Klein: The DCR was very careful about screening bands that played at EarthFest and other places so that they were family-friendly bands and bands that didn’t have offensive language and things like that. The filter on who performed rose after Green Day. 

Urmston: I think there was a real scramble on the cop side. We had like three cops on duty for that. There was a lot of like, “How are these people going to disperse?” The Green Day thing was, you know, 10 years prior. 

Klein: They were concerned that we had a really large crowd and that we needed more resources on site for public safety. This woman walked by me who has now become a friend of mine, but I didn’t know who she was that day and she worked for the Department of Public Safety or whatever the state agency is, and said, “There’s no police here. We need to call in some police on site to help manage the crowd.” And I’m thinking, “This is going to be Green Day all over again.” Crowds get excited. But the State Police teams arrived and they were really great. At the end of the concert, they helped disperse the crowd.

Bursky: I hired two security people, like band security people. They had some local security as part of the Hatch Shell offering. And then obviously the police presence ended up being substantial later that day. But just even being there at 22 with my couple security folks, conferring with the police about getting the guys right off stage and their families underground in case there was a riot …

Klein: Remember, this was a Saturday after the Democratic National Convention. The State Police, they’d all worked overtime all week and so we didn’t have a State Police presence. We had a ranger presence, we had a DCR presence, but not a huge State Police presence.

Urmston: There was a lot of concern about the Arthur Fiedler Bridge — they were worried that that was going to break. And they were worried about all the people near Storrow Drive, so they had to shut down Storrow Drive and people spilled out into the river and spilled out to Storrow Drive.

Brisby: I had some friends that had come up from Nashville and they had a car and they had given me a call asking where to park. And I said, “They’re going to close, you can just park on Storrow Drive.” So they had parked there and they were like a few hundred feet away from the stage and their car was just surrounded by people enjoying the show. That’s how I remember that Storrow Drive was closed.

Klein: People were orderly, but it was a big crowd. And at a certain point it was agreed on that they would shut down Storrow Drive, and that was not in the plan.

Urmston: There used to be “Yankees Suck” chants at our shows. It’s funny how that seems a bit antiquated now — maybe I’m out of the loop. But I think someone threw a plastic bottle at a kid wearing a Yankees cap and then that person threw a bottle back and then that hit someone else who then threw a plastic bottle in the air. So during one of the tunes everyone starts throwing their plastic bottles in the air, and it’s like this huge, hundred-thousand-bottle juggling act that everyone’s doing. It looked crazy from the stage.

Heimbold: It was just such an incredible sight to see people in trees, climbing statues, in the Charles River. When they threw the bottles up in the air, it was as if a big whale had come up and the bottles were the spray. 

Bursky: I recall maybe three quarters of the way through the show, which may have been after that water bottle incident, they had said, “We might have to shut this down.” And I remember personally going up on stage and whispering into Brad’s ear that he had to say something about keeping the peace. And I’m trying to remember exactly what, but it calmed down after that.

Klein: Pulling the plug was never a question. With State Police, they asked us to play longer to make sure that they had the proper resources. I think they felt that everything was running smoothly. There was no reason to do anything other than make sure that it was a wonderful concert and a great experience. MDC does a great job running events and hosting events.

Brisby: We had a hard curfew because they didn’t want people there after dark, and we had to finish at a certain time. And then the State Police showed up and they wanted them to play longer so that they had time to get a larger police presence there for when they stopped playing, thinking that it would be a problem when they stopped, that they would have trouble. But they’d only planned and rehearsed so many songs, so it was a bit of trying to think of something else they could do to buy time for the State Police.

Bursky: [Dispatch] always stood for peace and love and harmony. And while at times they’ve chosen to be outspoken and political about certain issues, it’s always been grounded by love and peace. So I think that that has also been the fan base that they built over the years. People like to have fun, but people appreciate the community and really respect each other. So I mean, thank God, it could have been a total disaster. And like I said, looking back 20-plus years later, if I had known what I know today, we would’ve had five times the personnel there and that still would’ve been understaffed. So it’s pretty incredible looking back and seeing what was pulled off with such little infrastructure.

Heimbold: If these people were magnetized by our vibe, then I think our vibe is really loving and welcoming. All the gigs we played, we would talk and listen and make friends. And I can’t say 100% that’s the reason why there wasn’t any violence or anything. But if I were to put a hopeful thought out to you, I would say it’s because that’s the vibe we emanate. I think we were inclusive, loving, positive — that’s who the three of us were at that time. 

Klein: My general sense is that their audience was super, super loyal and that their fan base was connected and that was part of the mantra in how they were managed and how they ran their band community. And they still run it that way. Connectivity of fans is what keeps them successful today.

Urmston: I remember we ran out of t-shirts real quick. We signed a bunch and we were just kind of in shock.

Bursky: We had a merch company that was New Hampshire based called MAAX, which had done the band’s merch, and I became super close with the principal there

Jeb Gutelius [head of merchandise and executive director of The Dispatch Foundation]: I got to know them because at the time I was running a company that designed and manufactured clothing, and we provided all of the different merchandise for Dispatch. We had a large factory in New Hampshire, and we started with some internet fulfillment. It was kind of the early days of internet fulfillment. 

Bursky: We printed a shitload of merch, but not even a fragment of what we probably needed.

Gutelius: Their manager was a close friend by that point and we still are. And he many months out said, hey, we need to figure out the merchandising side of this and this is what we’re doing. We filled a pretty large truck full of merchandise. One of the band members insisted we go big. And I think it was hard to guess how many people were going to show up.

Klein: Jeb was their merchandise guy and a good friend. The band didn’t get paid [for the show]. They were doing this so that they could have a last concert with their fans. But they filmed it and they did make t-shirts to sell. [By my memory] they sold 12,000 t-shirts … Good for them. They sold every piece of merchandise they had.

Gutelius: We set up three different merchandising tents — big, big tents at the Hatch Shell — and I think business started as soon as we opened that morning well in advance, and didn’t stop until we drove off the site later that night. It was just a totally constant flow.

Urmston: Signing t-shirts was just kind of a moment where we actually got to talk to people for a second. And that was really fun to see where people were coming from — people traveling in from South Africa and Brazil and it’s crazy.

Gutelius: I think we had credit card sales, but this was well before Square or any really easy methods of taking credit cards. We had some wireless credit card readers, I think. So there was a lot of cash, and that quickly became an issue in terms of making sure that the cash was not kept in one place. And so there was lots of moving around cash to a safe spot off site — that had to happen the entire day. 

Despite a few major logistical challenges along the way, the overwhelming response among those interviewed emphasized the enormous success of the event.

Urmston: Seeing people in the trees, seeing people jump off the docks into the river as the sun was setting. Just this beautiful, beautiful scene. 

Heimbold: It was so profound, the joy that I felt. I remember hugging Chad on stage.

Urmston: I often equate it to playing to a brontosaurus or something. There’s no way to process what we were doing, because it was too hard to believe. It was very, very surreal. 

Heimbold: I know this sounds a little weird sometimes, but I mean, money wasn’t as much a part of it and I felt it was like our own Woodstock. It was our own thing, and I couldn’t believe my eyes looking out there. I just couldn’t believe my eyes. I mean, playing Madison Square Garden was thrilling, playing Red Rocks was thrilling, but there was just this sort of magic. It was sort of a magical day, is how I remember it. 

Brisby: I think it was such a beautiful, beautiful thing to do for their fans. And [their fans] responded beautifully and they seemed to understand what they were trying to do. They weren’t angry that the band had decided to go separate ways and they seemed to be appreciative of them showing up. They seemed to appreciate what the band was trying to do for them to say goodbye.

Bursky: I think I remember crying at the end of it.

Heimbold: I remember Steve Bursky coming into the dressing room overwhelmed and maybe even a couple tears coming down his face, and what we had all experienced.

Bursky: It was just so many firsts and so many lasts. That was one moment in history and a one-of-one event; I get choked up thinking about it now. It was wild. And giving the guys hugs as they came off stage was very emotional and it was magic. It was total magic.

Urmston: We heard stories afterwards of 100,000-plus people spilling out into Boston in the bars and singing our song “Elias” in the nearby Burger King because everyone knew each other from the concert. So everyone’s just singing Dispatch songs everywhere all over the city all night long. That’s kind of cool. 

Heimbold: The day itself I know was a blue moon. So I love that expression: once in a blue moon. It was also the day before my birthday.

Urmston: It was a blue moon, I remember that. I remember leaving and all the cop cars’ lights and seeing people starting to pick up trash. We just like drove up Storrow Drive, took a right over the river and there was a little bit of an afterparty. [There was] a little bit of that feeling like “That was insane, you guys can’t break up now” kind of thing. And us still being like, “Yeah, we’re breaking up.”

Heimbold: There are different reasons for Dispatch not playing and playing and not playing and playing. But at that particular instance, I think I felt like I wanted to keep playing beyond that show.

Bursky: Throughout his career, Chad has always been unwavering with what he feels. So for him it was the right time for Dispatch to hang it up, and no amount of success of a final show would ever change that. And I think everyone respected that enough to not utilize the success of the day and weekend to try to convince him otherwise. 

Heimbold: I guess maybe I felt at the time that we should, I mean if you bring 110,000 people into a city, it might be a good time to keep playing. 

Urmston: I think, for my part, it was like a chapter was closing and what a way to end it. 

Heimbold: I love collaborating and I think Dispatch was a wonderful collaboration, which in a way was really the culmination of that final show. But it’s tough to create with other people. It’s tough to agree, it’s tough to fight for something. But I was really proud that we did and we did get through a lot of conflict. 

Brisby: With every band I worked with after that, there were some wonderful, wonderful bands. But there’s nothing like the magic of Dispatch and the heart and the caring those guys had. And at that time they didn’t get along, but they did it beautifully. They loved each other. They were just wonderful, wonderful people all the way around. It’s certainly changed my life and sent me in a much, much better direction. I’m very happy because of those guys.

As years passed, the attention of Dispatch’s final show only continued to grow their fanbase. So much so that in 2007, the band announced a reunion concert at Madison Square Garden to benefit Zimbabwe. The show sold out within the first half hour of going on sale, prompting the band to add two more shows, which also sold out. 

Urmston: I remember touring [my other band] State Radio in Europe and being surprised that people knew Dispatch over there. It was like Dispatch was spreading and then Napster kicked it up a level, and then I think that final show kicked it up another level.

Gutelius: In 2007 the guys had an offer to play a night at Madison Square Garden, and this was after they had broken up and they were all doing different things. And so there were different reasons why they would want to come together and play another show. The way I understood it is, one of the guys said, “I’m interested to do it if we donate the proceeds for this one show.”

Bursky: In 2007 for the MSG shows, there wasn’t a single commercial reason that was a part of that discussion for Chad. It was, “There was an atrocity going on in a place that is important to us as a band. We need to do something.” And the band gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to charities in Zimbabwe and didn’t make a penny. 

Urmston: When we came back together to play those three shows at Madison Square Garden [to benefit] Zimbabwe, we certainly didn’t think those were going to sell out in like a minute and a half. So even after three or four years went by, it still had that momentum.

Gutelius: That one night quickly turned into two nights because they sold out and then turned into three nights. And so suddenly they had three nights of proceeds to donate to Zimbabwe. Sudan was all over the news and no one was talking about Zimbabwe. And the lead-up to the election in Zimbabwe in 2008 was extraordinarily violent and the guys wanted to amplify or shed some light on what was going on. And so their intent was to use that show to not only start their foundation, but also to shine a light on the election violence that was happening.

While the Hatch Shell continues to host a yearly summer series with Landmarks Orchestra and its Boston Pops 4th of July celebration, concerts featuring pop, rock, or hip-hop acts have become fewer and farther between at the venue. WBOS’s annual EarthFest, many of which Klein used to produce, was discontinued in 2016.

Klein: I think what you’ve seen is that radio stations and other organizations don’t want to spend the money anymore putting on an EarthFest concert with several hundred thousand dollars. And even though they monetized it with advertisers, sort of the funny math would say that those were revenues that would have come in a different channel at the station, so to speak. People used to tell me, “You spend so much time for four months getting into EarthFest-Adam-mode,” and other things don’t get done because there’s so much planning involved. So I think that’s part of it, is money and resources. 

Urmston: Something about the energy of Boston and then geographically, everything just worked in that moment. So I would hope that [the city would] do more shows at the Hatch Shell. Boston was a great place and fostered us as a young band. Places like The Middle East, Great Scott, these smaller restaurants and bars that we used to play. I would hope that Boston keeps fostering young bands.

Klein: The marathon bombing, that’s sort of a turning point where the cost of security and security measures rose really significantly. The marathon bombing was in April. We had EarthFest in May [of that year] at the Hatch Shell. We had to, in short order, triple our state police — we went from under 20 to over 60 state troopers for that year. It might’ve been 80. We had to fence in the venue and put up security gates and everybody had to be wanded or screened or whatever to get into the concert area. It just became a different animal logistically.

As of 2011, Dispatch continues to tour and record, having released their latest studio album, the band’s eighth, Break Our Fall, in May 2021. The band is currently amidst its Amplifying Democracy Tour. 

Urmston: The band since 2016 is a five piece, and without Pete, one of our founding members, so it feels like a bit of a different animal. I love Pete and Brad and JR [Jon Reilly] and Saws [Mike Sawitzke] and [Matthew] Embree, who we play with now. But the Dispatch collective and the family that is Dispatch is one where we really try to listen to each other and what’s healthy for each other. So it always feels kind of like the future is unknown. It’s been great being able to play — these last few years have been really, really fun. 

Corrigan continues to release solo music under the name Braddigan. Urmston has remained active with multiple projects, including State Radio and most recently his solo band Chadwick Stokes and the Pintos, who have various gigs around New England and beyond scheduled for the summer. In addition to playing two nights this October at Boston’s MGM Fenway Music Hall, Dispatch is coincidentally playing at Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass. on Aug. 31 as part of a special collaboration with a group that’s no stranger to the Hatch Shell: The Boston Pops. 

Urmston: I think it’s just synchronicity or serendipitous. I think it worked out that way, and it’s beautiful that it does sync up in that way. It feels a great way to mark the day or that time and to kind of give a little nod to Boston 20 years later. 

While Heimbold has since parted ways with Dispatch, he remains a prolific songwriter, performing under the name Pete Francis. He continues to tour, and will make an upcoming stop at Boston’s City Winery on Sept. 14 in support of his most recent release: May’s Neon Light Blind EP. 

Heimbold: It’s kind of like a full circle moment for me because I feel like a lot of the early Dispatch stuff struck a chord of positivity. And so I’m excited to bring that energy. I did most of the studio work in my home studio called Dragoncrest, but I also had a dream come true situation where I got to work in Muscle Shoals. And I got to work with a producer named Craig Alvin. He mixed Kasey Musgraves’ record Golden Hour. 

The show remains a part of history — for the band and its fans, for music, and for the city of Boston. All involved look back fondly on how the event seemed to perfectly encompass the ethos and energy that Dispatch has always embraced. 

Klein: It’s an iconic event. The same way that Green Day’s [Hatch Shell concert is] an iconic event. There aren’t that many free concerts in the city like that anymore. It’s unique because it was a one-off. Certainly the 4th of July at The Esplanade is just a fantastic tradition. The concerts we used to do in Copley Square were fantastic tradition, too. But Dispatch was one of a kind. 

Bursky: No one can ever take that day away from these guys. I think that there are all sorts of records different artists set at multiple nights: the residency at Madison Square Garden for Billy Joel or [consecutive] nights in a row for Harry Styles. Those are all wild statistical figures that contribute to the legacy of those artists. It is hard to imagine anyone replicating what happened on July 31st, 2004. And frankly for the guys, it’s never been about the numbers or statistics — the emotion and magnitude of the feeling of that day is something that no one will be able to take away from all those involved. The Boston music scene has always been so vibrant and I think Dispatch will always hold a place in history.

Brad Corrigan [founding member, percussionist, and vocalist]: I always thought of our shows as waves that we surfed together. And that July 31 was the biggest, scariest, and most beautiful swell that I thought ever came for our band. And somehow we made the drop on that one. The joy and energy and everyone’s singing made us feel like we were at a World Cup game. 

Heimbold: To me, it marks just a really great historic moment for an independent band. And really it’s the power of what the three of us did with all our efforts of playing and then all the people that were involved in making our records. It wasn’t just high school gigs or colleges, but it was private parties, barbecues, you name it. I think it was the culmination of all of that hard work. Historically, the music business doesn’t really know or care that much about Dispatch. I mean, we didn’t follow any of that track. So I don’t know what the exact word is, but we were sort of these pioneers looking at playing shows in a different way. And I think it’s sort of a testament to the three of us, our love for music, for playing our songs and really trying to do the absolute best we could. 

Urmston: What is really cool now is meeting people who were there 20 years later. They were these teenagers and now they’re this or that, or they met their wife there, or they were there with their best friends, or they were there with their cousins, or they drove up from Maryland … Right away it feels like an instant connection, because obviously I was there too and they were there and we were together for those four, five hours, and then off we went into the nebulae and then somehow we crossed paths again. It’s so fun to make that connection years later. 

Editor’s note: Dispatch founding member, percussionist, and vocalist Brad Corrigan was unavailable for the interview; his comments were submitted later via a statement.

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