Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Droo Journal 8/23/06 - DETROIT STORY!
Current mood: angry

Thursday, August 17th: We played a show that went off much better than I thought. A great crowd of modest size easily made up for in enthusiasm. A solid night on tour for us, and we met a lot of interesting people (thanks to the folks who made us the bracelets). As the show comes to an end, were packed a little early, and we get in the van after one last picture so we can get rolling. Once were all inside, we discuss our plans for the night and what our alternatives might be. In the end, we decide that we hate to pass up the opportunity to stay with friends and set our GPS for Detroit. We get in late and hang out, catching up on episodes of the HBO show Entourage. I fall asleep on the living room couch, but I never fell asleep too deeply.

Friday, August 18th, 2006: At aprox. 12:45pm, our merchandise handler, Sexual J, walks through the apartment parking lot, right by the security guard, past our van and trailer, and into Wendys for lunch. He orders, sits, and eats. When he leaves Wendys, he immediately notices that our van and trailer are no longer across the street. J rushes inside to see if someone in the band had taken the van for any reason. When he found out everyone was still at the apartment, he panicked and started waking people up.

I woke up after all of the above happened to Kirby screaming at me that our van and trailer were gone and he needed my phone right that instant. Groggy, confused, I woke up and went outside and started trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

First, we thought the van might have been towed, so we called every single towing service in Detroit, and no one knew anything about our van. We had to assume the worst. We had to assume that our van and trailer with all of our gear, personal belongings, and everything we tour with had been stolen.

Justin, Kirby, and Brandon left with our friend who was playing chauffer, to go to the police station to file a police report. Meanwhile, our friend made some phone calls to family members who happened to have a connection with the FBI and the Michigan State Police. The State cops put helicopters up in the air and began the hunt for our van and trailer.

While Justin, Kirby, and Brandon were out hunting down our gear, looking at all of the area pawn shops, Kevin, J, and myself were hanging around at our friends apartment, waiting to hear anything, and getting very little information. We had no idea what to do with ourselves besides sit and wait to hear something. That something came a couple of hours later when Justin called us telling us to grab everyones luggage, and leave immediately because the people who stole our van knew that we were there and might come after us. So the five of us at the apartment grabbed 8 peoples luggage, and stuffed what remained of our belongings and packed them into our friends Saturn, and went to a friend of a friends house to get away from the apartment.

In the next few hours we found out that the police had found some of our gear. Evidently a group of Detroits friendliest criminals had unloaded our trailer and started putting our gear in vans and selling thousands of dollars worth of our stuff for hundreds. Unfortunately for them, the police showed up in the middle of this and broke up the party.

On our end of things, we were still waiting. We were handling phone call after phone call, trying to tell as much of the story as we could. The next news item came down the line letting us know that the police had an entire street blockaded off, had gotten search warrants, and were trying to get into a house in Detroit where more of our stuff might be being held hostage.

During all of this, our entire team, managers, lawyers, etc. were getting phone calls from a guy who said he knew where our van was, and how much money was it worth to us to get it back. He was also claiming that the people he was working with would kill him if they found out he was giving us information.

By the end of the night, one man was in custody, and possible three. The police had a list of 9 names of people who had been involved Justin and Kirby, who had spent the day on the phone and running around Detroit, were at the police station when the Detroit cops offered to let Kirby interrogate the man that he had arrested. Kirby, under police suggestion, went into a room with one of the guys who had just stolen almost everything we have to our names, and lied straight to his face saying that we would give him $20,000 if he could get our van back.

The rest of us at this point, had driven 40 miles outside of Detroit to spend the night with Justines family. We needed to get out of Detroit. We had a show the next day, and we had no idea what we were going to do. Kirby and Justin were spending the night at the police station watching our equipment which the police had recovered, about 65f our gear. Everyone in the band had lost personal belongings. Kirby lost his golf clubs, I lost half of my clothes, and we all lost a lot.

As of right now there is still no sign of our van or trailer…

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Touching on the Motor City tragedy, our van has been found now according to the Detroit police. The driver-side door is trashed, the steering column and center console is gone, and the tires are no longer on the van. Were going to see whats left this week and cross our fingers that we might get a few things back.

Thank you everyone who has shown support for us during this trying time. We are doing really well, all things considered, and really feel loved by each person who has let us borrow a guitar, left a comment, given us a pair of sox, etc. We truly have the greatest fans and friends any band could ever ask for, and I really mean that we take that straight to the heart.