The Cottonwood Debacle

Hello, this is Jake from Moxi & Loon.

On June 26th, Nick and I discovered that our tour vehicle was broken into and robbed. The missing items include a Danelectro 12-String Guitar, a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe IV, a Vox AD50VT, and (most bitter of all) an urn containing Nick's grandpa' ashes.

Some things are simply priceless and irreplaceable. But with your help, we will be able to get back on stage with all the tools we need to play our shows the way we used to. Check out our LinkTree to find our GoFundMe. Today we lick our wounds. Tomorrow we howl at the moon once more.

Thank you to everyone who continues to support our dream. Continue reading below for a full account of our comically misfortunate last day of tour:

It's around 7:30 pm on June 26th. Nick and I are cruising up I-17 N on our way to Cottonwood, AZ for our final show with our friends Flames of Durga. Nick begins telling me a story about the last time he was driving on this stretch of highway and his van broke down. He's two sentences into his tale when our Montero Sport starts acting funny, and the long hammer of ironic fate drives the final nail in our vehicle's coffin. We open the hood and after 45 minutes of trouble shooting determine that our alternator is screwed. There's nothing but saguaro cacti for dozens of miles. Luckily, the Flames of Durga are traveling behind and pull over to rescue us. Their van is packed to the roof with tour gear, but we manage to cram ourselves in with a guitar, pedals and an amp. We need to leave some things behind, but the Cottonwood show is nigh, and the show must go on. We hustle another hour up the interstate and make it just in time.

It's Sunday morning and the Flames of Durga return us to our abandoned vehicle. Nate from Flames has a AAA membership and is going to get us a tow. The Montero will be taken to a mechanic we met at the venue last night and it will be worked on lickety-split. Things are looking up... Until I open the rear passenger door. Both amps and the guitar I left behind are gone. Nick checks out the rest of the vehicle and I can hear his heart drop splat on the ground. Greedy hands snatched the center console tray, filled with spare change and a shiny object that fits in your palm. Gramp's urn is gone. His ashes have been riding along everywhere with Nick since he passed and Nick left Milwaukee.

We say goodbye to our friends as they hit the road for their final tour stop in LA. The tow truck will be awhile, so we decide to call the police and report the incident so we can cover our lost equipment with an insurance claim. The sun is already starting to cook us as we wait on the side of the interstate, and the temperature hits 108 by the time the officer arrives. He quickly writes up a report, but tells us insurance will likely not help our case (turns out he's right). The officer takes our ID's and goes back to his squad car to finalize the report, so we sit and sweat a little longer. I'm feeling pretty defeated by the robbery and the heat when Nick turns to me, and casually mentions the time he got ticketed in Scottsdale a few years back for pissing in an alley. I remember the story, and how Nick had blown off paying for that ticket.

The officer returns to the window and hands me back my ID, and says "Nick, you and I are gonna have to have a little chat." I watch as Nick gets cuffed and taken away. Over the next three hours I remain cooking on the interstate and Nick gets transferred into a tiny box in a paddy wagon before finally making it to his cell. The tow truck is running incredibly late and my phone is dying. I start to wonder if it's coming at all. My brain becomes a fried egg in the Arizona heat. I sit down in the sand and start talking to a saguaro cactus, and it laughs at the way we called for help only to get arrested. The cactus tells me that the thieves who came in the night were actually aliens, and that if I ate a piece of one of his branches, I could summon the UFO to come back and hopefully return our shit.

Just kidding. After four hours the tow truck finally came, and Nick got bailed out by his cousin in Scottsdale. We stayed the night at a Best Western in Cottonwood and the mechanic fixed our car the next morning. Crazy story though, eh?