Chad Urmston
| Chadwick Stokes Urmston | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Charles Stokes Urmston |
| Born | February 26, 1976 |
| Origin | Sherborn, Massachusetts, US |
| Genres | Rock, reggae, funk, acoustic |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Instruments | Electric guitar, acoustic guitar electric bass (with Dispatch), trombone, djembe, harmonica, piano |
| Years active | 1994–present |
| Associated acts | Dispatch, Hermit Thrush, State Radio, Chadwick Stokes |
| Website | chadwickstokes |
Chad (Chadwick) Stokes Urmston (born February 26, 1976) is an American musician. He is the frontman for the Boston, Massachusetts-area bands Dispatch, State Radio, and Chadwick Stokes, as well as a human rights activist.
Charles Stokes Urmston was born February 26, 1976, in Boston, Massachusetts into a large family. He graduated from Dover-Sherborn High School in 1994, and went on to attend both Middlebury College and NYU. During this time, Urmston briefly lived in Zimbabwe, where he befriended a local fieldworker named Elias. Later, Urmston wrote a song titled "Elias" for Dispatch's 1996 album "Silent Steeples", which became one of their most well known songs. Many of his songs also reference where he grew up going in the summer, West Chop, Massachusetts.
In 1995, while attending Middlebury College, Urmston met Pete Heimbold and formed the band Hermit Thrush. He later formed a band called One Fell Swoop with Heimbold and Brad Corrigan; this group would ultimately become known as Dispatch. They quickly gained a huge grassroots college following and achieved unprecedented success in the music industry independent of the standard record label control. The band promoted its own tours and music with the help of early file sharing services like Napster to reach thousands of fans. In this manner, they achieved stardom without the typical assistance of album singles played on major radio stations.
In 2004, Dispatch performed a final show at the Hatch Shell in Boston, before taking a long hiatus. Though the band, and the Boston Police Department, expected a crowd of about 20,000, the show attracted over 110,000 fans from all over the world. The Dispatch hiatus lasted almost a decade. It ended in the beginning of 2011, when the band announced a national tour.
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