Tough Break.

Some Jerk Stole Frankie 45's Guitar From Club Dada Last Night.

For four years now, ever since Club Dada re-opened on January 6, 2011, in advance of its scheduled open date so it could serve as the host venue for a memorial concert for Frankie Campagna, the enigmatic late Spector 45 frontman's blonde Gretsch Hollowbody guitar has hung in the back of the room, encased in a glass frame above the sound booth, where's it's served as an homage to Campagna's connections to the club in which he'd bartended and so often performed.

Last night, however, that changed: Dada owner Josh Florence tells us that he arrived at his club this morning to find the instrument — a keepsake that holds a special place in his heart, for sure — missing.

Someone, he says, broke into the club in the wee hours by hopping a fence, grabbing a chair from the back patio and smashing said chair through the venue's back door. Once inside, the person (or people) responsible for the break-in then broke through the guitar's glass casing, snatched the instrument and, finally, swiped a few bottles of whiskey before bouncing.

Disheartening stuff, no doubt. And, seemingly, quite the calculated move. It's not like there aren't more expensive items to steal from a music venue.

“They had to crawl over thousands of dollars of sound equipment to get to it,” Florence says with a sigh.

At the moment, Florence is in the process of filing a police report. First, though, he wanted to get the word out on the matter in the hopes that news of the theft might spread around and help Dada get the piece back — simply because it matters so much to the soul of the room and, well, because it's the right thing to do, given that Frankie's father, Deep Ellum art mainstay Frank Campagna Sr., had donated it to the venue.

“It's kind of our prized possession,” Florence says. “We don't care about the break-in or the whiskey. We just want it back.”