Austin band searching for stolen trailer full of gear worth more than $30K

AUSTIN, Texas - An Austin band is searching for a trailer full of their gear worth more than $30,000. It was stolen in Northeast Austin and the crime was caught on camera.

A member of the band said a red truck pulled up right next to the trailer, unhitched it from their van, and drove off with everything that kept the band going and able to tour.

"We’re just a hard-working rock band," Crobot Guitarist Chris Bishop said.

Crobot is a local band that’s been touring since 2011. That all stopped when their trailer with all their gear was stolen the day after Thanksgiving.

"It was raining really hard, and I had come home from work, and I noticed the trailer was gone," Bishop said. "And that’s when my stomach dropped, and I turned white, and my wife thought I was going to throw up."

Neighbors captured the crime on video.

"He pulled up, looks like he cut it, you can tell by the scrape there, and he pushed it back, probably with a dolly, and attached it to his trailer, he didn’t bother hooking up the chains or anything, you can hear them on all the videos," Bishop said.

Bishop said it’s worth more than $30,000 with some items you can’t even put a price tag on.

"There was everything from all of our merchandise, all of our in-ear monitoring systems and guitars and cabs to our stage set which is basically all made out of foam, we have an 8-foot alien egg that we hatch our singer out of, we had like an 8-foot dragon that breathes smoke, but I built all that stuff myself and that took weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks," Bishop said.

He said it’s a financial burden, but also a lot of equipment they need to replace is hard to get.

"It’s just a logistic nightmare right now," Bishop said.

Bishop said he has some words for the person who took their trailer.

"Without going full Clint Eastwood on them, I think I would say that you know, he’s stopped the livelihood of a hardworking band, and we don’t ask for much, we all have to do other things to play music, because that’s just the way of the world these days, and we do it 7 months out of the year, and now we’ve had to cancel our gigs," Bishop said.

King’s X, another band, reported their merch stolen in Austin the same night as Crobot’s.

"It definitely hurts the image of the music scene in Austin, it hurts the reputation of the city as a fun entertainment city that it’s always had, and financially, you don’t have bands wanting to come here and play because of things like that," Musician Michael L. Smith said.

Bishop said his band may just find inspiration from this incident.

"Sometimes in the crappiest times, you’ll write the coolest songs, so I don’t know, maybe the next Crobot record will be full on metal and hateful towards that guy who stole our trailer," Bishop said.

A fan has started a Gofundme for the band. Bishop said that’s what’s going to help them get back on their feet and hopefully tour again in February.

If you have any information about the incident, call the Austin Police Department.