iwrestledabearonce have shared that they were the victims of theft while in Denton, TX this September. The band’s trailer was stolen along with $20,000 worth of gear and merchandise. In order to help recoup their losses, the band have started a Gofundme campaign. The band issued the following statement and video:
“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.)
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.”