The Most Grown Man of Them All with Sabrina Kent

Name: Dispatch
Start: 2018-7-21T17-17-30-00
End: 2018-7-21T23-23-55-00
Location: Merriweather Post Pavilion

Brandon WetherbeeJuly 5, 2018BYT Radio

BYT Radio 30 min read

Sabrina Kent is a BYT contributor. The title of this show is vague and confusing. Fun!

We close with this weekend’s Best Weekend Bets.

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21jul5:30 pmDispatchw/ Nahko and Medicine for the People • Raye Zaragoza 5:30 pm Merriweather Post Pavilion

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$1 per ticket to support Artist charity.

Please note there’s an 8 ticket limit for this show. Patrons exceeding the ticket limit will have their order cancelled automatically & without notice. No refunds or exchanges.

ATTN: Parking at MPP has Changed! Everyone MUST pre-select parking (or decline parking) once tickets have been bought. Once you’ve completed your ticket transaction, you’ll receive a link to select your FREE parking. Please do so in advance before arriving at the show.

Note to ridesharers, walkers, bussers & cyclists: If you have made other transportation arrangements, you don’t have to select parking.

Sometimes, we rise to the occasion. Other times, the occasion rises to us. Both could be
said about Dispatch, one of the country’s most successful independent bands, and their
forthcoming album, America, Location 12. Built on tales of struggling immigrants, forgotten
veterans and children cast aside, Dispatch (Brad Corrigan, Chad Stokes and Pete Francis) has
crafted a set of songs that tap into the peace and plight of the human condition, chiseling a spot
in our culture that has perhaps never been quite so vital. Their sixth full-length LP, America,
Location 12, marks a return to form – and a path to the future – for the trio whose music has
always made us take stock of our place in the world, and forced us to remember that the first
pillar of social responsibility is to be kind and decent to one another. And, beneath it all, to find
moments of joy and inspiration that sometimes only music can provide.
It’s impossible to deny that few bands – at any level – have been able to achieve what
Dispatch has: three sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden to raise funds for Zimbabwean
humanitarian efforts, world tours and a 2004 concert in Boston that drew 110,000 fans. But
Dispatch never felt bound by their success, and over the past decade they have focused as
equally on solo projects and non-profit work as what they could create as a trio. America,
Location 12 comprises eleven songs that show a Dispatch here for the long and messy haul,
oozing with their signature energy and a new urgency in a time when a moment wasted is a
moment too long.
“It’s been like a part-time job, moonlighting with each other,” says Stokes about the
band’s status up until a year and a half ago, when they decided to go from occasional tours to a
new kind of commitment. “If we’re going to be in this band together, let’s really do it. We have a
lot more appreciation for each other as a trio now. And we saw an opportunity to sing songs
about issues that were of a real concern to us socially.” Corrigan agrees. “We didn’t want to turn
into a nostalgic band that just plays every now and then,” he says. “We really wanted to
reconnect with our fans.”
To make America, Location 12, the band enlisted John Dragonetti (The Submarines) as
producer and Mike Sawitzke (Eels) as engineer and decamped to a mythical setting in Northern
California: Stinson Beach’s Panoramic House, a studio isolated by miles of winding roads and
packed with found objects and ethereal beauty. “We were recording as the surrealism of the
election hit,” says Corrigan. “Despite the circus of it all, we were still holding on to hope with
candidates who prioritized caring for refugees, the environment, and dealing with social justice
issues head on. But when that hope ended up eclipsed by the divisiveness of the election, we
threw ourselves even more fully into the songs to embed our hope and anguish there. The energy
inside and outside the studio was just so surreal in that window, but I do think ultimately it helped
us create an album rife with urgency, honesty and self-reflection.”
“It’s always been important to us as a band to take a stand on social and political
concerns,” says Francis. “Now, it felt like this sense of activism seeped into the songs in ways
they never had before. We couldn’t ignore everything that was bubbling around us.”
But in true Dispatch fashion, they made sure to release a first single, “Only The Wild
Ones,” that is focused not on fight, but on freedom. Set to a rhythmic, African-inspired groove, it’s
a song with a nod to one of Jack Kerouac’s signature passages from On the Road and praises
those who barrel through each day with an unbounded quest for joy and truth. Stokes was singing
about two men from his college days who could hop a freight train one moment and cavort
around New York City the next, but it’s really a reminder that the best life is lived off in the world,
not online.
Like “Only The Wild Ones,” much of America, Location 12’s inspiration came from
Stokes’ vast internal catalogue of literature and art, and his uncanny ability to meld details from
the past and present of his own life – and the world at large – to make unforgettable stories that
hit at the heart. Knowing that the time had come for a new Dispatch album, their first since 2012’s
Circle Around the Sun and perhaps their most “deliberate” in over a decade, Stokes decamped to
a small cottage in the middle of winter with not much more than a wood stove and endless
inspiration, from 14th century poetry, to a magazine donning Bob Dylan on the cover to
newspapers reflecting the rise of a terrifying new populist sense of power. It was there he wrote,
as material poured into the songs – songs that were then shaped into the final product with the
help of his bandmates. As a result, America, Location 12 is both imaginative, tearful and topical,
and almost startlingly cogent at times. “The songs are more focused,” says Francis. “They’re
laser-beamed.”
Adds Stokes, “There are all sorts of parallels, and it makes sense it is happening now.
For whatever reason, it felt like some of those issues that I wrote about are now really intense
issues. Everything feels like it’s coming to a head. If we can be a band in today’s climate that
brings these issues up in a non-traditional way, then that’s really fulfilling for us.”
The results range from gorgeous, heartbreaking odes to children in Central America who
must flee from gang violence in search of a better life (the Beatles-tinged “Rice Water”); to the fire
and fury of the album’s opener “Be Gone,” written about the plight of Native Americans who are
often forced to the fringes; to the tender “Curse and Crush,” about a family member who passed
away and how we must center on the most basic palate of life that we all share. “We fight and we
fuck and we make up,” they sing in soft harmony to a locomotive beat. And then there are tracks
like the thunderous “Skin The Rabbit,” full of ponderings about a world in disarray that builds to
deep, rallying cry.
“For us, it’s always been best to be for something rather than against something else,”
says Corrigan. “When you make statements that are for things, then people can really rally
around it. Strength in numbers still wins.”
Dispatch has been known, since the band’s inception in 1996 in Boston, as being more
than just about the music – they’ve constantly directed their energy to causes and campaigns
along the way. Apart from their work as a trio, Stokes also created a non-profit, Calling All Crows,
that joins bands and fans together in collective activism that’s raised more than a half a million
dollars, and Corrigan has been at work on Love Light Melody to amplify the stories of children
who live in extreme poverty. As they tour to support America, Location 12, beginning in June at
Red Rocks in Colorado, Dispatch is sure to find new ways to engage their fan base in the issues
that matter most.
Dispatch heads into the era of America, Location 12 with both the passion and vigor of a
band in their infancy and the knowledge and power of one together for twenty years and counting.
In a world where hope is in short supply, fear runs rampant and alternative facts blare louder than
the truth, we need, more than ever, music that is honest. And Dispatch is rising to the occasion.
“I think what we are most excited about for our band is the commitment we made.
Because the best art is still yet to come,” says Corrigan. “It’s fun to get back on the ship together.
Hopefully we are a stronger band than ever before.”

Time

(Saturday) 5:30 pm

Location

Merriweather Post Pavilion

10475 Little Patuxent Parkway Columbia, Maryland, 21044

Cost

$46

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21jul6:30 pmAnimal Collective (Performing Sung Tongs)Laraaji 6:30 pm Lincoln Theatre

21jul8:00 pmDeafheavenDrab Majesty • Uniform 8:00 pm 9:30 Club

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Deafheaven is a California-based act that has garnered acclaim for their signature hybrid sound of black metal, shoegaze, and post-rock. On October 2 the band will release their next album New Bermuda on ANTI-.

George Clarke (vocals), Kerry McCoy (guitar), Dan Tracy (drums), Stephen Lee Clark (bass), and Shiv Mehra (guitar) recorded New Bermuda live to tape at 25th Street Recording in Oakland, CA and Atomic Garden Recording in East Palo Alto, CA in April 2015. It was produced, engineered, mixed, and mastered by Jack Shirley who has worked with the band on their previous releases. Clarke says that he came up with the idea of “New Bermuda” to describe a new destination in life, a nebulous point of arrival, and an unknown future where things get swallowed up and dragged into darkness. The album artwork for New Bermuda is an oil painting, dense in brush strokes of darker tones and deep blues, by Allison Schulnik. The layout was designed by art director Nick Steinhardt.

Formed in 2010 in San Francisco, California, the band has released two studio albums on Deathwish; Roads to Judah in 2011 and their lauded Sunbather in 2013. Sunbather received accolades from NPR on their Favorite Albums of 2013 list, a coveted Best New Music at Pitchfork, the Best Metal Album of 2013 per Rolling Stone, a 9/10 star review from Decibel Magazine, and it was the highest rated album of 2013 according to Metacritic. Deafheaven have spent the last two years touring extensively nationally and around the world with shows in Australia, Japan, Asia, Europe, Russia, the UK, and Canada with festival appearances at Pitchfork, Bonnaroo, Primavera, Roskilde, Fun Fun Fun, FYF Fest, SXSW, Basilica Sound Scape 14, Corona Capital, ATP Iceland, amongst others. Deafheaven will perform August 8 at Heavy Montreal in Canada. Details on a forthcoming North American tour are soon to be announced.

Time

(Saturday) 8:00 pm

Location

9:30 Club

815 V ST NW, Washington, DC 20001

Cost

$20

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21jul8:30 pm9:40 pmThe Bentzen Ball Podcast Studio: Employee of the Month with Catie LazarusDistrict of Comedy Festival8:30 pm - 9:40 pm The Kennedy Center

21jul8:30 pmJaws in ConcertNational Symphony Orchestra8:30 pm Wolf Trap

22jul12:30 pmDC101 Kerfufflew/ Fall Out Boy, Rise Against, Awolnation, AJR, Robert DeLong, Mt. Joy, L.I.F.T.12:30 pm Merriweather Post Pavilion

22jul6:00 pm8:00 pmFree Weekly Bar Bingo w/ O’Sullivan’s Irish PubEVERY SUNDAY AT O"SULLIVAN"S6:00 pm - 8:00 pm O'Sullivan's Irish Pub

22jul7:00 pmSleepDylan Carlson7:00 pm 9:30 Club

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The words have failed them all. Since by the time you’ve read this far you’ve already read words that are intended to be touchstones but which do nothing but make it easier to not hear what should be all about hearing: their music.

So let’s dispense with “stoner” and “doom” and while “metal” is a good catch-all even that does what SLEEP does an injustice. What SLEEP does and has been doing since 1990. Since San Jose. Since vocalist and bassist Al Cisneros hinted darkly at his next act after Asbestosdeath. Make something that was like something you had never heard/felt before even if you had heard/felt it before. Like wind or the yawning subsonic expanse of an earthquake: something undeniably large.

And like ragas, the songs were not just songs but movements and the movements trended toward the eternal. Almost time-wise too with songs that lasted as long as some entire records, which is as long as it needs to be to get short-sighted labels to drop you. And beyond time, the weight was equally significant. Heavy, sublime and not even a little bit ridiculous and whether or not these were influenced by the sacramental consumption of weed really misses the point.

While there may have been a few like them before them, there were none like them really and certainly none of after them. And so in 2009 when they were reborn with Cisneros who’d been reframing the world with the band OM, Matt Pike doing double duty with this and his HIGH ON FIRE, and the estimable Jason Roeder doing the same with NEUROSIS, SLEEP did what it had done and what it had left to do. Largely and without pause, make music in tune with The Ages.

Best to be enjoyed? Live and living. See, hear, feel, do it. Well, beyond just music and well into the experiential joy of pure being. SLEEP. Undoubtedly.

Time

(Sunday) 7:00 pm

Location

9:30 Club

815 V ST NW, Washington, DC 20001

Cost

$35

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22jul8:30 pmCasino Royale in ConcertNational Symphony Orchestra8:30 pm Wolf Trap

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The Most Grown Man of Them All with Sabrina Kent

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