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Dear Monochromatic Black friends, fans, and loyal supporters –
As some of you know, in January of this year, we had a full US tour that ended abruptly after the first week of traveling as our van broke down in New Mexico. Thanks to a local band on the bill called EYE (huge shout out to them!), their van picked us up from the hotel where we were forced to stay, making playing that night possible. However, after the show, we were left wondering how we would play the following three weeks of tour dates. At the time, there was a significant supply shortage which made renting a replacement van impossible & a bunch of mechanics we contacted in the area were backed up and couldn’t help us. On the night of the show, we met someone who recommended that we bring our van to a mechanic he knew who could help us. After towing the van there, we were told it would take a few weeks to receive the parts & repair the vehicle if we left it with him for a deposit on the agreement that we’d have the van fixed and shipped back to us in New York. At this moment, we knew we had to cancel the rest of the tour dates.
We were now left with our rented trailer & all of our gear stuck at the hotel. Our next thought was, how do we get home? We can book flights, but we have all of our gear with us & no one can rent us a vehicle to get it home. We were literally stranded almost entirely across the country with nowhere to turn.
After being stuck at the hotel for an entire week, we were informed a box truck would be available for rent that could be driven and dropped off in New York. John and Eddie agreed to make the 2,000-mile drive through a raging blizzard that was traveling in our exact path while the rest of the band and touring crew took last minute flights home as we could only fit two people in the truck safely.
After arriving in New York, upset, broke, & with no van we all collectively realized we were exhausted beyond measure. We’ve been in contact with the mechanic on the vehicle’s repair progress only to realize something wasn’t right as suspicious excuses and delays started pouring in. We were promised to receive the van by a specific date and then excuses would be given as to why it couldn’t be shipped out. All refund requests were dodged, and eventually we were told the van was shipped out. After asking for a tracking # and other information we were dodged yet again. All of this ended up with having to get the authorities involved and start an investigation. After doing so, they discovered that the van had been parted out in his lot after being told it had been shipped and was on its way back to us. It was all a lie. We got completely blindsided and swindled. We were told that the insurance investigators considered this a vandalism case and that we had to hire an attorney to get the rest of our money back for the repair & other damages because nothing else could be done. The legal fees that were piling up over the last 10 months as we continued to pursue the case became insurmountable and at this point we realized we had no choice but to take the loss & go public with our story.
As you can imagine, there are a ton of moving parts & details that we are leaving out that transpired over the last 10 months while trying to fight a battle across the country but for the sake of trying to outline the situation, we are making this as brief as we can. Needless to say, it’s been an incredibly rough time.
Ultimately, between the loss of the van, repair money, hotel stays, loss in show revenue, time off from work, flights, box truck rental & more, we easily lost roughly $20,000 collectively over all of this. Not to mention our album “Vicissitude” couldn’t receive a proper tour cycle.
We are now looking at our 2023 plans and are trying to figure out how we can afford to move forward with touring and releasing a new album for all of you and with no van or means of transportation, we are officially stuck wondering how we’ll be able to carry out the band’s continued pursuit of being a professional touring act. It’s never easy to do this, but we are asking anyone who would like to contribute towards helping us get a new van if they’d like to do so. No contribution is too small if you believe in what we are doing and want to help us. Our relationship with our fans means the world to us, and anything you can contribute would be greatly appreciated! If you can’t afford to contribute financially, even just sharing this post would greatly help spread the word. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!
From the Monochromatic Black crew,
We love and appreciate all of you; thank you so much!
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