Dear DISPATCH Readers~

I was in a bar after a show and was literally nearly grabbed by the collar and someone yelled in my face: “I fucking love DISPATCH! I can’t get enough! How can I support you?”

Talk about a good job review!

We have been getting the question “How do we support you?!” a lot. Which feels really great, honestly. Our small-but-mighty team loves DISPATCH, too. And now we have a way for you to become a “subscriber” that will financially support us, too.

Here’s why: We have a ton of big ideas for 2023.

We’re dreaming of a bigger reach. We’re dreaming of more programming. We’re dreaming about a multimedia world, one with live events and video and podcasts and exclusive subscriber content. We’ve already started to take a step toward that, with our upcoming DISPATCH Amplified: Six-String Showcase at the Turf this month, which you can read in this very issue about some of the very best guitarists in town and then go see some of them live with us.

But we also want to respond to those of you who keep asking us for more criticism and deeper writing—things we have wanted to do since our first issue. But those things need people and all the tools.

We’re a tight team on a scrappy budget, maxing out our resources all the time. We do that because we love it. But we can’t build on what we’ve started without more support. We know you wanna help, and who are we to stand in the way of that?

For the last few years, I thought my heart was jaded to a pulpy black. When I think back to the actual lockdown phase of the pandemic, one of the things I missed most were live rock shows. I missed the communal feeling that happens when a crowd experiences art at the same time. Kinda like how it feels to hold a physical publication in your hands and know you’re reading something written by a real person, who is passionate about what you’re passionate about, who knows there is a community to support, and a community waiting to support them.

But I learned that when Taylor Carik hired me in DISPATCH’s first year of publication, I still had it in me to feel idealistic. We can still believe in something and do it because we love it. And people respond. You’re those people. You’re OUR people.

In the end, we make DISPATCH because we’re built for it. We believe in art. We believe talking about, writing about, photographing, boosting, critiquing, and seeing art is important. We believe that we have a lot of people who make great art here, and great people support it.

So won’t you support us?

Katie Dohman, DISPATCH Managing Editor

Taylor Carik, DISPATCH Publisher