AUBURN — Calls started coming in Monday morning 30 minutes before the first day of Camp of Rock at Great Falls  Performing Arts Academy and they did not stop.

When the “tent guy” called, camp founder Brian Gagnon knew something was up.

Actually, down.

The 20- by 40-foot tent where 34 student musicians would kick off the 17th annual Camp of Rock was gone, taken down by thieves sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning.

“I was crushed,” Gagnon said Tuesday of arriving Monday to find the tent missing outside the academy on Academy Street. “Yesterday was brutal but the kids handled it like champs.”

“I addressed the parents quickly and that changed my focus back to Camp of Rock,” he said.

Gagnon was not the only one who was astonished by the theft.

“That was a surprise,” Kai Thistle, an Auburn teen who plays the keyboards and is involved in his third two-week summer Camp of Rock, said. “The tent was there at 9:30 the night before.”

Gagnon said it would cost $6,000 to replace the tent, and he spent a good part of Tuesday’s morning break answering texts from insurance agents and his lawyer.

“Someone was there for a while,” said Jason LeBourdais, general manager of Lewiston-Auburn Tent & Awning that rented the tent to Gagnon. “It would take two guys that know what they are doing an hour to take that tent down. ”

Sixteen stakes that are 42 inches long were driven 3 feet into the ground to secure the tent, LeBourdais said.

Gagnon said the thieves took everything, stakes, straps and all.

Gagnon is the music teacher at Fairview Elementary School in Auburn. His deep passion for rock and roll drives him to teach over the summer. He is also founder and owner of the Great Falls Academy of Modern Music on Academy Street.

Gagnon started Camp of Rock in 2007 as part of the Central Maine Community College summer camps. He moved to the Great Falls Performing Arts Center, the home of Community Little Theatre, and held sessions in the third-floor library until COVID-19 forced campers outside — under a tent.

People passing by would often stop to listen for a bit as kids learned new classic rock tunes under the tent Gagnon rented for two weeks each August.

Camp play lists hint at Gagnon’s age but kids playing air guitars and foot taps during designated no-play times say something about the kids’ approval.

Songs by Aerosmith, AC/DC, Rush, Kansas, Led Zeppelin and the Scorpions are picked up by kids with much less experience, but no other band makes Gagnon smile more than Phish.

Gagnon stopped Tuesday’s practice to recognize the T-shirt of Clover Pross. The 14-year-old keyboard player from Auburn wore the Phish logo proudly.

“Anybody wearing a Phish shirt deserves a round of applause,” Gagnon said.

He is known to reminisce out loud about his passion for head-banging tunes and motioned to students that deceased AC/DC lead vocalist Bon Scott might be looking down on them as the they jammed to AC/DC’s “Let There Be Rock.”

Playing under a tent taught kids important lessons about life on the road.

“Most of our gigs are outside so it is much easier to match the sound,” Gagnon said.

Tent life forces the kids, ages 7 to 17, to set up drum sets, keyboards, soundboards, amps and more at the beginning of each day and take it all down at the end — just like a band playing on the road.

“They got really good at it. They had it down to minutes,” Gagnon said.

But not everyone was happy about breaking down equipment at the end of each day.

“I do not miss the tent,” Annabeth Treadwell said Tuesday morning. “I am not a tent fan and I was very vocal about it,” the veteran vocalist said. This is her eighth year at Camp of Rock.

“We can solve this,” Dominick Toscano remembers thinking when he arrived Monday. “We just need to roll with the punches. We can play music … That’s all I care about,” the guitarist and Leavitt Area High School student said.

For now, Camp of Rock is back in the third-floor library of the former academy. Following the phone call from the “tent guy,” Gagnon quickly called the building manager of the Great Falls Performing Arts Center and was given the green light to move back inside.

“CLT is doing us a huge favor,” he said. “I can’t thank them enough for that.”

“Camp of Rock in this room historically has been brutal,” Gagnon warned the teens as they started to learn the notes to “Hard to Handle” by The Black Crowes.

“It’s the drummer’s fault,” Gagnon said while pointing to three drum sets packed into the former school library.

Gagnon gave the drummers a little love at the same time.

“The drums are the foundation of the band,” he said. “If we were building a big beautiful house, the drums would be the foundation. Without them we are nothing.”

“I just want to teach kids rock and roll,” Gagnon said.

Camp of Rock students will perform at 6:30 p.m. Aug. 11 at Lost Valley in Auburn during their “End of Camp Show.”

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