Music community rallies around Twin Cities band after equipment stolen

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (FOX 9) - Allen Maier and Sebastian Davin are going on 15 years of bringing the funk to company events, bars, and weddings around Minnesota and beyond. With close to 80 shows on the calendar each year, life has been moving fast for their cover band "The White Keys," at least until early August.

"He said the trailer is gone, somebody took it, and I could immediately feel my hands got sweaty, and my head got hot, it felt unreal," bandmate Davin said. "My initial thought when all of the stuff was gone was, well now we have nothing, so how can we continue?"

Davin was preparing to leave Inver Grove Heights with bandmate Maier to play a wedding in Fargo on the morning of August 6. But that morning, they discovered their trailer, with $35,000 worth of equipment, had been stolen: drums, piano, microphones and lights were all gone despite heavy-duty locks and a tracking device. The gear was uninsured.

The White Keys cover band had their trailer stolen in Inver Grove Heights with $35,000 worth of equipment inside.

"It was the stuff we had poured a lot of love into," Davin said. "It’s the keyboard I’ve been playing with for a long time, the drum set that Al toured with and played thousands of shows… everything in that trailer is everything we’ve required to do our job over the last 15 years."

Surprisingly, despite the huge loss, the show in Fargo still went on. Since then, they’ve made three more happen too.

"We don’t want our tragic day to turn into their tragic day, so we’ve stretched to make every single show happen, we’ve had to piece together gear. The music community really responded immediately… people started offering, ‘hey, I’ve got a snare drum, I’ve got some speakers, what do you guys need?’"

Now, as they start over again, they’re asking for the community’s help to get off the ground. A GoFundMe has already brought in around $13,000 here. "The support has been overwhelming from friends, family, strangers," Maier said.

Their goal is to reach $20,000 by Labor Day, because they have many weddings scheduled in the month of September.

Meanwhile, police in Inver Grove Heights are investigating, and pawn shops are on the lookout, but The White Keys say they likely won’t recover any of the gear.