Montana Musicians Need Your Help After Gear Stolen While on Tour

One of the things that we tend to take for granted in Montana, is our lack of crime. Now, before you explode the comments section of this post with examples of Montana crime, let's look at the big picture. There is clearly more crime in larger cities and more populated areas surrounding our state. With Montana just recently reaching over 1 million residents, our BIG state is much smaller in population than some metropolitan cities. This is why some of us may not lock our cars or even our houses at times. Which would be considered taboo in places like Seattle or Chicago. But for Montanans, we trust that not everyone is a potential criminal.

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In larger cities with denser populations, crime statistics skyrocket. The culture we have become accustomed to in Montana makes us less cautious when traveling as someone raised in a high-crime area would be. This is why we tend to hear stories of vacations to Seattle or Denver going wrong when a person wakes up to their car stolen.

Our friends and local metal musicians in "I Imagine Murder" recently learned a hard lesson when they woke to find their touring van and all their gear was stolen after a show in Washington state.

Jamal Greely, frontman of the band wrote us to share the whole story. He hopes that their story will serve as a warning for any Montana musicians touring out of state. Hoping that this never happens again to any of our up-and-coming artists.

Jamal writes:

What started off as an awesome experience for us, was to hit the road and get the chance to play music for a new group of people in a different town. Turned quickly into every band's worst nightmare.

I Imagine Murder was set to play with Vacant Skies (a band from Arizona), on April 4th, at The Plaid Pig in Tacoma Washington. After shredding through our set and watching the boys in Vacant Skies play, we loaded up our gear into the Van and made it back to the Marriot we were staying at in Tukwila WA. After checking in with the front desk, we were directed to park the van in their Side/Back parking lot.

Sadly the next morning we walked out to the parking lot to find our van, gear, merchandise, and personal items completely missing. We were all in shock, and kept hoping one of us would crack a smile and say “jokes!”. After the initial shock wore off we immediately stormed the front desk (still in high hopes) demanding to know if we had been towed, or if they could offer any valuable information.

Unfortunately, we were met with a slap in the face by reality when we found out they had not gotten any vehicles towed, and there were no cameras in the back - where we were told to park. We called the police to have a sheriff come down to make a report immediately afterward and began investigating the area ourselves to see what may have happened.

Someone had definitely smashed the driver's side window, hot-wired the van, and taken off with everything. Heartbroken doesn’t even begin to describe our overall reaction.

After filing the report with the sheriff, we caught a shuttle from the Marriot to the airport and rented a car. The drive back sucked. BIG TIME.

Even though we’re incredibly set back, and most likely we’ll never see that gear again. We’re sure everything will still work out just fine. We’ve already had immense amounts of outreach and support that we didn’t expect and we’re so grateful.

We’ve set up a Go Fund Me to help us recoup some of the gear and personal items we lost. Please check it out and donate if you can.

From the boys in IIM - We’ll see you soon

I encourage all fans of Montana music to help this talented band get back on stage again. They launched a Go Fund Me page. Any help is appreciated, as this is a devastating blow for these rad people.

https://gofund.me/fe4517e4?fbclid=IwAR2Lco3T92yKmR0qTHwEpssSAcuYMHN7BJFlerIASoyjhU4wGIUpsZdB0SU&mibextid=ykz3hl