Just hours after learning that most of the music he’s created during the past decade had been stolen, along with $20,000 worth of electronics and video footage of his two young daughters, Maine rapper Spose stepped onto the stage at the Granada Theater in Lawrence, Kansas, and performed.

Accompanied by his iPhone.

Additional Images Maine rapper Ryan Peters, known as Spose, left, and tour manager Chadd Wilner were in Denver on Tuesday after the theft of equipment from their van at lunchtime Monday. Photo courtesy Spose

With his keyboards, turntables and laptop computers all taken from a rented van in St. Louis during a midday break-in, he had no choice Monday night but to rap to music stored on his phone, amplified by the theater’s sound system.

The break-in occurred on day 17 of a 40-day tour, the biggest and potentially most lucrative that the 29-year-old rapper has ever been on.

Now it looks like the phone will be his primary instrument for the foreseeable future as he works his way out of a financial hole.

“I’m back at square one. I lost everything,” the rapper, whose real name is Ryan Peters, said in a phone interview Tuesday from Denver. “I’m still figuring out what to do.”

Peters has turned out six self-produced albums since 2008 and is one of Maine’s best-known performers. His self-deprecating rap song “I’m Awesome” was a local hit and landed him a record deal with Universal Republic Records in 2010. Though he never released an album for Universal, Spose used the $190,000 that the label paid him to buy a car for his wife and to establish himself as a self-supporting musician. Still, he said he typically makes “less than someone working at Cumberland Farms.”

When he headlines a tour himself, he often makes just a few thousand dollars, Peters said. But he was likely to make much more on this tour because he was performing before large crowds as the opening act for MC Chris.

Losing all of his equipment, along with about 22 songs he planned to release on two future albums, is a major setback. Peters said he spent about $10,000 to rent the van and equipment for this tour. Just a day before the break-in, he calculated that he had already made enough on the tour to cover those expenses.

Peters told the three men traveling with him that “we’re just starting to make money now.” The men, Jay Caron, Channing Day and Chadd Willner, help put on Peters’ shows and perform with him. They also lost about $10,000 worth of their property in the break-in.

Peters is married to an elementary school teacher and has two daughters under age 6.

“I’m a small-business owner, basically. I have never been away from Maine and my family for this long. This is really the biggest sacrifice I’ve made for my career,” he said. “My wife has been so supportive. She’s back home with the kids, and I’m on the road, worrying about paying bills and touring, and now this happens.”

Peters says he doesn’t know yet how much of his financial loss will be covered by insurance. But he will get some help sooner rather than later, thanks to the quick action of one of his fans.

Adam Fishman, a high school senior from Northampton, Massachusetts, set up a fundraising effort for Peters on the crowd-sourcing website GoFundMe.com. Less than 24 hours later, 290 people had contributed nearly $9,000.

Some of the music he’s created over the years is backed up on a hard drive in Wells, Peters said, but not most of it, and he’s not sure whether he can re-create what’s lost.

Peters said the rented van was broken into around 12:30 p.m. while the group was getting sandwiches at an eatery called Pappy’s Smokehouse. He had heard there were break-ins in the area of St. Louis where he performed Sunday night, and one of his crew members had stayed with the van while he performed. But he did not think the same precaution was needed during lunch hour the next day.

When the men got back to the van, they found the lock had been busted and their goods stolen. They learned that two other vans in the same area were broken into and that police have surveillance video and a license plate number for the suspect’s car.

After the break-in, Peters and his crew spent a couple of hours listing for police all of the stolen items, from major electronics to cellphone chargers and toothbrushes. Then they drove to a show at the Granada Theater and later slept in the van in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Peters had not heard back from St. Louis police.

Having equipment stolen while on the road is an occupational hazard for touring musicians, and several Maine musicians have dealt with it over the years. The Portland rock band Paranoid Social Club had an amplifier and two guitars stolen from its van in North Carolina about 10 years ago, said singer Dave Gutter. Rustic Overtones, which also featured Gutter, had most of its equipment stolen out of its van in Portland in the 1990s, Gutter said.

In 2002, just after landing a record deal with Universal and using the money to buy a van, trailer and new equipment, York-based band Jeremiah Freed lost it all while the group slept in a roadside motel on tour near Philadelphia.

All told, about $75,000 worth of goods was stolen. The band was insured for the full amount, but the trauma of the incident lingers.

“It was the worst feeling in the world, and I’ll never, ever forget it,” said Matt Cosby, 33, who was the bass player for Jeremiah Freed. “On tour you’re away from family and friends, you’re not paid much and you’re not sleeping much. The one thing you have, the backbone of your tour, is your van. In it is everything you need to make your living.”

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