Iwrestledabearonce Got Robbed, Need Your Help
Even if they annoy the shit out of you, Iwrestledabearonce are the kind of hard-touring modern band that it’s hard to wish ill upon. Unfortunately, ill has befallen them, as the band had all their shit stolen in Texas the other night.
IWABO released the following statement:
“On the night of Sept 20th, 2015 our trailer was stolen in Denton, TX. Inside that trailer, we had a lot of our touring gear (Mikey‘s drum set, speaker cabinets, road cases) and all of our merchandise.. The total amount of everything stolen is over $20,000 not including the trailer itself. Our bass player Ricky was moving the van and trailer from one safe storage space, to another and parked the van overnight across the street from his house in a church parking lot. The same place we’re used to parking every time we have a stop in his town. This was discovered the next day on the 21st, and police reports were filed. The police have informed us that recovering any of this is extremely unlikely, even though we have no idea what use someone would have with a whacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man with our band’s name on it, plus all of our merchandise that we were going to sell on this next tour.
Any touring musician can tell you that a band’s entire LIVELIHOOD is in their trailer… And when you walk outside your home to see everything you’ve worked so hard to accomplish, GONE… There is no feeling like it. The merchandise is also a major set back, as we now have a merch bill, but no merch to sell in order to pay the bill. We are now going to have to do a new order of merch, and we’ll have to sell every single piece of it just to break even. This means we will be making very little money off the merch we sell on this upcoming tour (which we usually rely on for gas money on tour.)
Here is a list of everything that was stolen (minus the trailer):
Two PPC Orange 4×12 cabinets
Two white road cases containing the orange cabs
One Hartke 8×10 hydrive bass cabGretsch renown maple 5 piece drum kit w/mounting hardware
Gretsch renown maple natural finish custom snare drum
Iron Cobra HH905N Kick pedals
Accompanying Gibraltar hardware
Complete set of SKB drum cases/cymbal cases14″ Zildjian new beat hats
2 x 18″ A Zildjian custom medium crash
2 x 18″ A Zildjian custom crash
19″ K Zildjian China
19″ hybrid K Zildjian custom crash
2 x 8″ K Zildijian splash
8″ A Zildjian custom splash
2 x 19″ hybrid K Zildjian custom China
2 x 18″ Oriental Zildjian China
22″ Zildjian K Custom Dark Ride
16″ Zildjian A Custom Reso Crash-Wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man (production piece)
-Our band tent
Unfortunately, the time has come to call on you for your support in Iwrestledabearonce‘s time of need. We’ve been a band for a very long time, and have toured the world. We have been very lucky to not have encountered this before.. If you are a supporter of music then surely you have already given so much because you know how hard it is for a band to stay on the road, but your family here needs you now more than ever.
We’ve set a goal of $7,500 to enable us to be able to go out, and do our next scheduled tour which starts in 4 weeks across America. We will be using any donations made from this page to rent a U-Haul for the tour, buy two new speaker cabinets, and most importantly get a replacement drum set. It’s going to take a long time to recoup from this major loss… But all we care about right now is being able to go back out and play music for our fans. If we meet this goal, it will allow us to do so.
A donation and a “share” would be amazing, but we don’t wish to stretch anyone beyond their means.
Thank you for taking the time to read all of this.
We are trying to make the best of this unfortunate situation, and stay focused on giving you our best performance possible on our upcoming tour.”
All of which sucks a ton. The sheer amount of shit these guys lost is sort of unfathomable, especially when they lost the trailer with it.
The band has set up a Gofundme page so that fans can help donate to their cause. You can watch a video of Courtney below, asking for help. In the meantime, metalheads around Denton, TX, should keep an eye out for the gear mentioned above being sold or used. If you find the guys who did this, give him a boot to the fucking mouth.
[via The PRP]
