Opinion June 12, 2018

Why every musician needs insurance [OP-ED]

Alex Wilson

Last week, after my band Shag Rock and I supported The Rubens at a gig in Ipswich, we loaded our van – that we’ve been playing gigs with for four years. After, we went home and locked the van, heading to bed before another Rubens show the next night.

That night our van was broken into and every single bit of gear was stolen.

We’ve seen countless posts over the years about bands getting their stuff taken and I never thought it would happen to us. Naturally, we shared the news on our Facebook and Instagram. We rang a bunch of Cash Converters stores and scoured Facebook marketplace for our gear.

Not even a van full of stolen shit can ruin the stoke of this tour. Many thanks to @therubens and @clovesdot for having us, absolute legends. Tix to Blackbear Lodge show in bio, selling quick.

A post shared by Shag Rock (@shagrockmusic) on Jun 6, 2018 at 12:18am PDT

We were overwhelmed with support offers of free amps and instruments. The post got something crazy like 400 shares in 24 hours – the kind of viral post we could only dream about when launching a new single.

The Rubens were such great sports and let us play with their gear the next night. The music industry really pulls together in a time of crisis. But then it got even better.

Two months ago, I laughed when our manager told us that we needed Gear Insurance and Public Liability insurance. At around $500 per year for the four of us to insure our gear, the idea seemed like a waste of money.

Me and the boys used to joke, ‘Think about how many beers we could get for that much.’ Our manager also made us take out a Public Liability policy for a million dollars’ worth of cover. That was another four hundred bucks and I couldn’t help but think that we didn’t really need it.

Deciding to spend that money on insurance meant that two days after our gear was stolen, Action Entertainment Insurance let us know that our claim had been approved and the funds would be in our bank account by the end of the week.

We head out on a headline tour next week with a whole bunch of new equipment and a bit of a bruised ego but definitely with high hopes, some money in our pockets for beer (and a new appreciation for our manager’s advice.)