Burglary is probably nearly as old as the other “World’s Oldest Profession,” but that doesn’t make it any easier when it happens to you. And for musicians, walking out to their car or opening up the garage to find their amps and instruments have vanished is a devastating moment, because even though those items are just things, they are things that a musician has an intimate connection with, expresses himself with, connects with on a nearly spiritual level. So when someone steals a guitar, he or she is kind of stealing a part of someone’s soul. I can play any old bass, but I will always have one that fits my hands, my playing style, and a host of other sonic and self-imaginary niches that you can’t probably understand unless you play an instrument yourself. Fortunately, when these things get stolen, there’s always a little bit of hope, though you have to look for it outside the ones who are supposed to right these kinds of wrongs. If you want your gear back, you have to do your own digging.
Joe Carpenter is a lifelong drummer who’s played in a storied list of local jazz, rock, and country bands, most recently with Jetta in the Ghost Tree, Mills and Co., and Holy Moly. After performing with those bands at the 2014 Fort Worth Weekly Music Awards showcase, he went home and parked his truck in his apartment complex’s ostensibly secure gated parking garage, leaving his drums, cymbals, hardware, and accessories inside the pickup’s locked camper shell.
“I made the mistake of leaving my gear in my truck,” Carpenter said via e-mail. “It was stolen on a Sunday, and I called the police and filed the report the next morning. They casually looked the truck over and asked me some generic questions and offered some generic advice: ‘You should probably check the pawn shops.’ ”
Carpenter said that after learning the valuables were musical instruments, the cops practically lost interest.
“They told me, ‘Oh, yeah. We see that a lot. There’s not much you can do about it.’ ”
Carpenter worked hard the following Monday to get the word out. While the thieves were unable to get the drums themselves out of the truck, they took everything else: his cymbals, his bag of drum hardware, and his stick bag, as well as an old iPod with busted input jack and a lighter and pack of cigarettes.
On Tuesday, the perps were caught trying to sell the gear at Arlington’s Guitar Center.
“The guys in the GC drum shop handled it perfectly,” Carpenter said. “They had the list I had e-mailed them taped behind the counter and mentally checked off each item as the perps displayed my gear. One GC employee stalled them while the other one called 911. Then they called me. I left work and got there in time to see the perps handcuffed and escorted out by police.”
Guitar Center doesn’t buy used equipment like sticks, brushes, and hi-hat clutches, so those items were not recovered, but everything else on Carpenter’s list was returned, at least after the Arlington Police Department got the go-ahead from Fort Worth police, a process that Carpenter said took two weeks. In the meantime, fans and friends helped him out by loaning him gear, raising money to replace all of the sticks, brushes, and other live-show knickknacks that seem insignificant until you don’t have them. The price of all those little pieces and accessories adds up, and never mind that a full set of cymbals is basically like carrying around several thousand dollars in a duffle bag.
Carpenter is deeply grateful for the help and especially for the Guitar Center staff who wasted no time in spreading the word.
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Scott White’s post about his stolen axes was shared more than 250 times, so anyone around here who cares about musical instruments or simply music was well aware to keep an eye out for an all-silver guitar.
A couple of days after the theft, White went to Zoo Music to get some work done on another guitar. Tyrel Choat, who works at Zoo and also fronts The Cosmic Trigger, got a call on his cell phone.
“He handed it to me,” White remembered.
It was a friend of Choat’s who thought he saw White’s guitars at another store. (White won’t identify it for fear of ruining his pending case.)
The friend said, “ESPs don’t come stock with that pickup configuration,” White recalled.
The friend also saw the Iceman. Though the thieves had removed the stickers, they didn’t bother to remove the sticky backing. The sticky, telltale ovals and squares left behind were unmistakable.
Same for The Silver Surfer, which the friend witnessed being sold to a customer over the counter for a fraction of its retail value.
“They bought both of my guitars from these [thieves] for $250,” White said. “That EGC took me six months to pay off.”
By pure coincidence, the detectives assigned to his case actually showed up at the store at the same time.
“It was crazy because [Choat’s] friend just happened to be up there and called to say, ‘The guitars are here,’ ” and then he called again and said, ‘I think your detectives just showed up.’ So that was weird as shit.”
The detectives asked the employee for the phone number of the customer who bought The Silver Surfer. They called him and explained the situation.
“Luckily, the guy was really cool,” White said. “He said, ‘I’m a musician, too. I’ll be right back with it.’ ”
White will get his guitar back after a property hearing on December 14, only because the store had exchanged money for the instruments, a frustrating wrinkle given that White said there was barely a three-day turnaround between getting robbed and finding the guitars.
“Basically, if you get robbed, call the cops, file a report with them, and give them every detail,” White said. “After that, just post on social media because local musicians, you know they give a shit.”
White said he appreciates the cops’ work, but “if it wasn’t for Guitar Center and Zoo Music and the musicians in the area, I’d have never seen my guitars again. The cops were able to get an arrest warrant, and from what I understand, they arrested one of [the thieves]. But shit. Thank God for local musicians.
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