Local band give fans more shows after summer long hiatus

Thor Goodman cannot stand still. Squeezed into a small living room, his eyes stay focused on the wall in front of him as he stomps the carpet and wires under his feet. His bandmates surround him, matching his level of excitement, crammed onto the small section of floor space.

“Say what you will about the Apathy Wizards, but there is one thing that we have no problem bragging about. We put on one hell of a live show,” said Goodman, lead vocalist and mandolinist.

Nestled in a quiet residential neighborhood, local band Apathy Wizards practice for their upcoming show at Muncie MusicFest on Saturday.

Described as gypsy, punk, folk, pirate music, the Apathy Wizards have created a sound all their own.

Forming the band in 2010, Goodman turned his insomnia into an opportunity to start writing music. He recruited a gang of musicians in the smoking section of Studebaker West. Included was current flutist April Echlin and bass player Weston Morgan, a guitarist and drummer. Together they formed The Been Force Five.

After the lead guitarists left the band, and drummers came and went, the band was finally made complete with drummer C.D. Tolbert and guitarist Matt Kassner. The change to the Apathy Wizards followed.

“We spent a week, just on drugs and alcohol trying to come up with a name and arguing at each other’s throats,” Goodman said. “Apathy Wizards came around because we were tired of arguing about band names like Dinosaur Breakfast.”

Sitting together around a coffee table littered with leftover pizza and video games, four of the five bandmates drank wine and cracked jokes about scurvy and komodo dragons.

“We talk to other bands that don’t hang out except for at practice,” Goodman said. “Honestly we weren’t looking for the best musicians, but people who want to have a good time and can put on a show.”

Since getting together in 2010, the band claimed Ball State’s Battle of the Bands and gained a gathering of loyal fans they call Apathy Acolytes. When asked how they gathered such a large following, they agreed on two simple words: stage presence.

Dressed in kilts, leather jackets, army hats, business suits and covered in face paint, the Apathy Wizards aim to give audiences a show like they have never seen before. Sticking with the band’s motto of “Be crazy, go crazy,” they parade on the stage, messing with each other and feeding off the audience’s energy.

“We want to have a better party on stage with five people than the audience of 30 is having in front of us,” Tolbert said. “The more fun we have on stage, the more the audience is going to want to party their asses off.”

Kassner thrives off of the audience and wants to give them a show with meaning. As the band performs, he enters a space where playing the guitar is the only thing that matters.

“A meteor could come crashing into earth and destroy everything in front of me, and I would break out of my focus,” he said. “When I do look up and see the audience, I always focus on that one guy who is there, just having the time of his life. That’s what the Apathy Wizards are all about.”

In the past year the wizards have been working on fine tuning their sound and working toward making music and playing shows as a full-time gig.

After being on tour and living out of a bus, making only enough money to get gas and eat, the band found it difficult to adjust back to their lives in Muncie. Bassist Morgan compensated the transition by drinking more.

After the Apathy Wizards took the stage at Muncie Gras in March, Morgan blacked out after chugging a beer from an old fedora and ended up spending the night in the Muncie Police Department.

“I had to move back to my hometown for the summer, which started our hiatus, aka my sober-iatus,” he said. “But I’m really happy because I played my first sober show in three years.”

The Apathy Wizards returned from their summer-long hiatus with a show at Be Here Now in August. They are currently booking shows in the foreseeable future. They plan to do two or three shows a month.

The Apathy Wizards are set to play at 9 p.m. Saturday during Muncie MusicFest at Be Here Now.

To listen to some tracks before the show, check out apathywizards.bandcamp.com to listen to their complete first album.