Case of the missing axes: Chicago musician’s guitars likely stolen

Mike Kinsella is bummed.

This past weekend, the Roscoe Village resident and indie rocker noticed that two of his electric guitars were missing.

At first the Owen and American Football musician — who played packed shows at Bottom Lounge and Lincoln Hall in late December and early this month — thought little of their absence since he hadn’t used them in a while. They were probably stashed at his nearby rehearsal space, he figured.

No such luck. They’re nowhere else he’s looked, either.

A likely scenario, he thinks, is this: The same person or persons who stole the garage door opener from his street-parked car early last week walked down the alley behind his home, clicked said opener until it worked and made off with the axes: a Fender American Telecaster 72′ Custom Classic Player series and Fender American Tele-Sonic.

One of them, roughly 15 years old and valued at around $1,200, was the first guitar he bought in college at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). The other is newer and probably worth $1,500-$1,700.

“They’re not super expensive, but they’re nice guitars,” says Kinsella, who alerted a couple of area guitar shops to be on the lookout in case someone tries to hawk his goods. Friends are putting out the word on social media as well.

“In perspective, I’m not super crushed about it,” he admits. “It’s more irritating than anything else that somebody would take my stuff.”

Kinsella says he knows of other bands that “dread coming” to Chicago because they’ve also had equipment ripped off — from cars and elsewhere.

While he filed a police report by phone via the city’s 3-1-1 service Monday, Kinsella says, he hasn’t filed a claim with his insurance company because his deductible is high and doing so would eventually increase his rates.

So all he can do is wait and hope.

“I have no shows that I need them for for a couple of months,” he says, “and I have some faith that one of them will get floated back to me somehow.”