Allen Ralph

Dispatch has the paddles, now all they need is the creek to go up

Dispatch, founded in the ‘90s, disbanded in the early aughts, and back for more in 2011, takes pride in self-sufficiency as they travel the world without major label money. They bring it to the Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre on August 18. Drummer Brad Corrigan took some email questions.

What’s your favorite San Diego story?

“We’ve been wanting to play San Diego for about 15 years and have been asking our booking agent and management to make it happen and it just took a little while.”

What are your best, worst, and most unusual stories of playing all around the world?

“Best, I would say, playing shows in faraway places in Europe and meeting fans that have taken trains and planes and boats, 10-15 hours of travel, to come. They just sing at the top of their lungs and hang out afterwards and tell us their stories.”

“I’d say a worst experience would be trying to play a festival last year in Nashville and the rain deciding all of a sudden to come horizontally onto the stage. All of our gear getting covered and us nearly getting electrocuted, and then getting called into a garage ‘cause a tornado was spotted, and we ended up getting stuck in the bottom floor of this parking garage for two hours with a ton of fans.”

“But we ended up turning that into a little underground cement acoustic jam, so it went from worse to pretty fun in a pretty short bit of time.

“Unusual: We did the first ever rock show at Red Bull Arena and started joking with them about wanting to be shot out of cannons or skydiving in. Then we realized they thought we were serious.

“They offered us up their aerobatic helicopter, and we immediately thought barf bags before singing might not be smartest plan. So instead we came up with a ziplining plan, over the stadium for the encore. We’d disappear from the stage, take an elevator to the top level and then let it zip. It was a Red Bull rush for sure.”

What’s in the future for the band, after this tour?

“Just keep touring as much as we can, and to record more and more new music, and just keep building the band. And returning to San Diego over and over and over again, to make some noise and catch some waves. Can’t wait!”