When you’re in your early ’20s and spending 90% of your life in a van with two other guys, time can get a little funky.

“We disagreed on tons and that’s why ’96 to ’04 felt like 40 years,” Brad Corrigan told the Herald of Dispatch’s early days. “All we had was each other and we were trying to figure out life individually but living collectively so much that everything was a bit of a disagreement.”

Dispatch’s first few years burned hot. Corrigan, Chadwick Stokes, and Pete Francis formed Dispatch while at Middlebury College in Vermont and exploded out of Boston without the help of radio or record labels. The trio’s mix of rock, reggae, and folk galvanized a fanbase online in the days of filesharing. A free farewell-for-now show in 2004 at the Hatch Shell drew 110,000 fans.

For a while, the band was off again, on again, fans going wild for each reunion — in 2011, Dispatch sold out a three-night TD Garden stand. But over the past six or seven years, the band has felt solid. Francis called it quits and gave Corrigan and Stokes his blessing to carry on, which they will do at two MGM Music Hall gigs Oct. 18 and 19.

“It was important for us to be something else after Pete left,” Stokes told the Herald. “Adding three friends and morphing into a bigger band… we changed our sound palette. It felt like a refresh.”

The guys have been through a bit of rock band drama, yet are the least rock star guys out there. The current tour is called AMPlifying Democracy and is a partnership with BallotReady, a non-profit dedicated to voter information. Away from Dispatch, Corrigan is set to debut in December his documentary “Illena’s Smile,” about families that live in a makeshift town inside a Nicaraguan landfill. Stokes has been workshopping “1972,” a rock opera about reproductive rights.

All these projects and initiatives feel in line with the band’s big catalog of protest anthems and introspective ballads. They feel in line with the personalities of a pair who never wanted to be rock stars, despite the increasingly large stages.

“From the very, very beginning, the only reason the stage existed was to be visible to people in the back,” Corrigan said. “The division between the stage and the audience is unnecessary… I don’t know what rock stardom is. Our definition of success is that you hope more and more people are coming along, looking at the questions you are asking and singing the words that are important to you a little bit louder.”

Those questions posed in early Dispatch songs — big questions such as “How do we find peace?” and “How do we foster justice?” — are still being asked on the 2021 album “Break Our Fall.” The words the band wants you to sing on the LP a little bit louder are about believing women, responsible policing, and escaping addiction. They are songs about life on the ground that reflect the guys’ values.

“We do have a sense of pride in that Dispatch grassroots feeling,” Stokes said. “And that makes the band still feel alive to us.”

For tickets and details, visit dispatchmusic.com