Dark Sermon’s 2000 Dodge Ram 3500
Johnny Crowder‘s Dark Sermon have had their van stolen. The theft comes just just days before the Florida metal band was set to embark on a 2.5 months on the road. Dark Sermon were set to tour first with Sworn Enemy, Wretched, and Hammer Fight, and subsequently with Aborted, Fit For An Autopsy, and Archspire.
From the band:
In the spirit of no good news going unpunished, we are troubled to inform you that we just found out that our van has been stolen. Thankfully, our equipment was not inside and we were not on tour at the time.
The missing vehicle is a white 2000 Dodge Ram 3500. The license tag is 839 TEF. It was last seen at US19 and Sunset in Clearwater, FL.
We leave for a 2.5 month tour a week from today, as some of you know, so this is a very dire situation. We have filed a police report, and we believe we have security camera footage of the man who took it. If you could please SHARE this post on your Facebook and spread awareness about this incident, we might be able to catch the thief and maybe even get our van back.
Any and all posts and help are appreciated more than you know. Thank you to everyone in advance for your support.
For now, the band has not requested any assistance in replacing the van. More updates as they become available.
Update:
The band has gone ahead and purchased a new van, and is seeking assistance with the purchase. As part of the fundraising effort, we will be buying Dark Sermon merch to give away to six (6) lucky winners chosen through our Facebook and Instagram. Here’s a quick reminder why Johnny Crowder is deserving of your support. The band has also set up a fundraising page. In the meantime, the band has released a new statement about their current predicament and their fundraising efforts:
Hey guys, Johnny here. I thought I would take a moment to update everyone on our van situation. Just in case you haven’t heard, our van was stolen from an auto shop a mere week before our tour was set to begin. We have been scrambling ever since, searching high and low for a comparable van that would suffice to replace our lost vehicle. However, in such a time crunch, our options are severely limited.
We have kept everyone in the dark because no progress has been made, in the sense that we have heard nothing from the police department or any friends about the whereabouts of our vehicle or the man who stole it.
First and foremost, I would like to thank everyone for the shares and help spreading awareness about the incident. We need every ounce of cooperation and support we can get, and you all have been immensely helpful.
We have made every effort within our power to avoid asking for donations, because we are not a band that has ever had anything handed to us. We have worked impossibly hard for everything we have. No magical hand swept in to save us, and we don’t have any connections that have made this any easier on us. We thought that insurance would cover all of the damages incurred, but we have recently learned that the legal system doesn’t exactly protect victims of property theft.
This week, I emptied out my personal checking and savings accounts to make a down payment on a used van. Since we don’t have enough to purchase a vehicle outright, we are forced to finance and pay monthly, suffering a borderline absurd interest rate. This whole ordeal is costing us an incredible amount of money, especially considering that we still owed money on our old van. Now, we have to pay all sorts of additional fees that go along with financing a vehicle, warranties, insurance, etc.
We signed the paperwork about an hour ago, and we are leaving tonight for South Carolina to begin our tour. We had no choice but to pull the trigger on a van from a local dealership, and now we are asking for your help to pay it off.
So some of you might be asking, “If I don’t want to donate, what else can I do to help?” Well, you can do one of two things. Initially, you can SHARE this post on your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media site to help spread the word. And if you’re seeing us this spring, you can buy some merch from us. We will have merch set up at every show on this tour, and every purchase you make will help us, little by little, climb our way out of debt. We are facing a seemingly insurmountable financial setback, and merch is our only eligible saving grace aside from this donation page.
If you truly desire to donate directly to the band without the system taking a percentage, you can send PayPal donations to darksermon@yahoo.com.
All we ask is that you SHARE this post and link on your personal and band pages, even if you cannot afford to donate any money. We have made a tremendous amount of friends over the last six years, and now, more than ever, we need your help. The more people who know about this situation, the greater possibility we have of somehow making back some of the money we’ve undoubtedly lost. If each of you donated even a single dollar, we would be able to pay our new vehicle off before the end of the year.
We owe you all infinite thanks for supporting us through this.
We’ll see you all on the road.
– J
