"It has been a very difficult past couple of days for us. But, as Clarence told George Bailey in ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE, "No Man Is A Failure who has friends." In the past hours, we have received an overwhelming amount of support from you, our fans and friends and family. We cannot thank you enough for your kind words.....It really has been a nightmare for us.

We woke up in Chicago on the morning of Thursday, September 20th, 2007 to find our trailer GONE. STOLEN. It was nowhere to be found. ALL of our equipment....years and years of instrument and gear collecting and purchases taken from us. Not just our positions, but our jobs were stolen from us. Materialistically, we have NOTHING right now. We have no instruments, PA equipment or transportation for it. We had over $65,000 worth of equipment stolen from us.

We do not know what we are going to do....we had to cancel our two gigs in Nebraska as well as our showcase in Iowa for this weekend (which we had to pay a non-refundable $1200 to showcase at).

WHY ON EARTH DO PEOPLE DO THIS? We don't know how to explain to you all how hard we work at what we do and we do not have the money to purchase the equipment that we need to bring our shows up to the status we were at just yesterday....

The theft happened in Chicago in a very open, safe and well known public parking lot near the lake. We had Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off on the tour between our date in Chicago and our next dates in Kearney, Nebraska. We parked the van and trailer there because it was supposed to be the safest, most legal place and it was very public. We immediately looked into a towing possibility but unfortunately this was not the case. We reported the theft to the Chicago Police and they assigned us a Detective and a case.

The terrible, terrible, terrible news is that the instruments were not insured. Our van is insured and our trailer is insured when attached to the van but the instruments inside were not. Musical Equipment Insurance is way too expensive to maintain and we have never been able to afford it.

We are asking all of you to please help in any way you can. Please contact local news and media about this. Please help us by checking EBAY and CRAIGSLIST and by spreading the words to your friends about this tragedy. Most of all, you can help by coming out and supporting us at shows in the future.

A donation fund has been set up by one of our good friends. It would mean a lot to us if you are able to donate to the fund that will help us get back to where we were. Please click on the button below.

Again, we cannot thank you enough for your support and sympathy during this rough time. We are working hard to ensure that we do not have to cancel any more performances. Please continue to check our website for updates.

Stick with us, and remember, they may have taken ALL of our instruments, but they'll never be able to take away our music.

Chris, Phil, Donnie, Rusty, and Patrick"

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