For a while, it looked like Dispatch was going to be the next
Dave Matthews Band.

Combining sharp pop hooks with organic jams, the Middlebury,
Conn.-bred trio spent five years packing college bars and sweaty
clubs, selling out lauded venues like the Roseland Ballroom in New
York, the Fleet pavilion in Boston and the Vic in Chicago.

Then, at the tail end of 2000, things started to change. Brad
Corrigan, Pete Heimbold and Chad Urmston found themselves playing
to capacity crowds, growing from 500-person clubs to 3,000-person
ballrooms in just over a year.

Closely identified with Napster and the collegiate file-sharing
culture, Dispatch found themselves at the brink of stardom before
surprising their fans with a formal hiatus halfway through 2002 and
an official end as a touring band after their last epic show in
Boston this July. The band said they needed to move on to pursue
personal musical endeavors.

Three months later, Dispatch guitarist Urmston is back in the
studio with a new batch of politically driven rock numbers.

With a ripe band known as State Radio at his side, Urmston has
trimmed his jams, turning his attention to a series of a quick,
punkish-rock cuts. He has spent much of the last year recording a
State Radio LP as well as touring extensively along the east coast.
He also has focused his attention to politics in support of the
Kerry campaign for this year’s election.

Urmston is currently touring with the John Butler Trio and
recently performed a solo show at the Vinyl in downtown
Atlanta.

Though Urmston is busy building his new fan base, he took some
time to dispatch information on the end of his last band and the
latest on his musical developments in the WMRE studio.

And with the end of the presidential campaigns approaching,
Urmston just couldn’t avoid getting a little political.

 

Nikhil Narang: The last Dispatch concert was in Boston this past
summer — 100,000 people showed up. What were the emotions
like for you guys?

Chad Urmston: It was pretty wild. We just didn’t have any
idea that many people would come. It was fairly emotional being the
“last show,” and for it to be such a large turnout was
beyond our wildest dreams.

 

NN: I guess Dispatch could be described as acoustic/electric
rock with some funk and reggae, and now on your debut EP, the
Flag of the Shiners EP, you begin with this song called
“Mountain” which has heavy guitars and base. Was this
kind of like your symbolic departure from Dispatch?

CU: Yeah, pretty much. The vocals were pretty low in the mix,
and I was reeling a little bit because [Dispatch] started off
acoustic and then were primarily electric. And then six to seven
years into our career together, we still got this label as this
acoustic band, and I think always we wanted to and thought that we
rocked harder than that. So then when I had a chance to do my own
thing, I definitely wanted more riffs, more guitars. When people
ask me what the difference is, I usually say it is a little heavier
and a little more reggae.

 

NN: Now that a lot of your writing is political, what is your
stance on this upcoming election?.

CU: Well, I think I am pretty fed up with the Bush
administration in a bunch of different ways. So I’m going to
be voting for John Kerry for just a bit of a change. More
importantly, I just want young people to vote. It’s a real
service to your country to take part in. It’s one of the
great things about being brought up in this country and living here
— the idea of democracy and taking part in it and voting
— having these kind of elections, albeit the last one was a
little shady. I think the Bush administration just sort of expects
that they can pull off all this deceit and corruption, and the
motives are so shady, and I don’t think we can stand for it.
I do think that if we don’t make a stand and send a message
to the international community, then he’s not our man. You
know, it’s really important as far as the United States fits
in, as the world becomes more global — we need to respect
that we are just part of this Earth machine, and not necessarily
expect that what we say goes.

 

NN: Do you think that is something that just George Bush does,
and if Kerry gets elected, do you think Kerry is going to be that
same guy who is going to be taking over the world? Because we kind
of fell into this role as the “police of the world,”
and it’s a difficult thing to change or get out of.

CU: Yeah, I think the huge problem is the campaign reform, and
if that kind of reform doesn’t happen between the Democrats
and Republicans, we’re just going to keep getting the same
sort of leaders. I don’t think that Kerry and Bush are all
that different, but I respect [Kerry’s] decisions, and I like
his policies because I’m coming from the Green Party, and I
am definitely not on the Nader train this time around. So I do
think that in this case it’s a little bit like lesser of two
evils, and as far as the international community goes, I just
don’t think that Kerry is going to have this blind ignorance
to throw his weight around. I think he is smarter than that.

 

NN: That’s interesting. So were you around for the DNC
[Democratic National Convention] since it was in Boston, where
you’re living?

CU: Yes, I was actually at both, Boston and New York for the RNC
[Republican National Convention]. I do this other project called
“How’s Your News,” and it involves a news crew of
people with disabilities, and we get some pretty interesting
interviews, being that people aren’t used to getting
questions from someone in a wheelchair or someone who is obviously
disabled. It’s sort of our “anti-Fox” because
it’s very real, it’s not the plastic mannequins who sit
behind desks in major media today. We were covering both the DNC
and the RNC. For example, we were on the floor of the RNC right in
front of Cheney and everyone — and I’m from Boston, and
you and I were talking baseball before, I felt like I was in Yankee
Stadium, and it’s such a hoopla thing — it felt like
the Red Sox were down like 12 to nothing. It was awful in that
sense.

 

NN: Are you going to do like a “Rock the Vote” tour?
Of course the election is coming up soon, but I know you talk about
voting at your shows and bring the voter registration forms for
everyone, so...

CU: I tried to get some gigs. There was one with three other
bands where we would have played first. It was the “Pearl Jam
and Death Cab for Cutie” tour, and they were looking for a
third, and State Radio right now is just not big enough to fill
those shoes. We tried for that, but it didn’t work out.

 

NN: What artists have been your influences, and what are you
listening to these days?

CU: I loved Zeppelin, The Who, Jethro Tull and Cat Stevens
growing up. In high school, it was Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden
and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Later it was Radiohead and Rage
against the Machine. Recently, I’ve been listening to this
band from Florida called Shine Down, who are now all over the
place, and Boston took a liking to them a couple years ago. I also
like this band from Norway called El Cocko.

 

NN: Would you say that your music is not very self-serving but
more about your surroundings?

CU: Yeah. I think it’s sort of peppered with more
personal, introspective stuff. But a lot of it is the environment
around.

 

NN: Now that we are in this post-Dispatch era, you began with
your new band, Flag of the Shiners, which evolved into State Radio.
How did this all come about?

CU: What happened with Flag of The Shiners is that we did
an EP in the fall of 2002, and quickly we’re about to jump on
tour with this Sublime-type band called Slightly Stoopid, but then
I had a polyp in one of my vocal chords, and I had about a year
almost before I was up and running again. Just this January, we
started up in full swing again, and the name had changed with still
the same basis, but with a different drummer, so it was sort of a
fresh start. Since January, though, things have been going well,
and it’s been really fun.

 

—Contributing Writer Rebecca Hopkins contributed to
this article.