"Do you want to see me bleed?" Wayne Oatmeal Bachelor, his shoulders draped in Old Glory, questioned the crowd. After a resounding yes, he produced a tube of fake blood and soon his brow hid under a thick crimson mask. As he sang, he dabbed the flag to his forehead while his band, wearing suits surely reeking of mothballs, encouraged him with a drum roll. When the set was done, his backing trio remained on stage, thanking the previous band known as Food, Food, Food. With his departure, they became the Wizards of Boat.

That was my first brush with the enigmatic Wizards of Boat. I could have met the band before and never known it, because obscuring their faces were solid black masks, devoid of features. At the show, a young woman informed me that the drummer is actually a guitarist from another band. Later in the night I saw him in his civilian garb enjoying the rest of the line-up. I e-mailed him about it, and he gave only the cryptic response, "that guy is from the future, maybe he and I will meet on day." If he was a Wizard of Boat he wasn't letting on. I let it go for some time, always wondering, who were those masked men? Then I saw Myspace.com/wizardsofboat.

The tracks available for play on the site are the most absurd thing this side of Ween. One song, "Grumpy Ol' Panda Bear," sounds like a lounge song written by a 10-year-old. "There is no Santa Claus" starts out simple and turns into a scream fest, as band members tear their vocals over the fact there is no Santa. "Brain Impaler" is a love song. Spurred by these gems, the hunt started again. It wasn't just me they were fooling. For their first shows, singer for (the) Frames of Reference and scenester James Vanway III acted as middleman helping them land gigs.

"The first two times they played here I had no contact with them, it was all second-hand," says Renaissance Café & Niter Club owner Judd Kennedy. The only info Vanway gave him was that he would not reveal their identities. Before some of their Renaissance shows, Kennedy watched for the band to set up and reveal themselves. He reports seeing someone fiddle with the stage, but couldn't ensnare a clear identity. Their secrecy even extends to fellow Lafayette indie rock bands.

"I don't even really want to know," says Christopher Slim, singer of The Transmission. Eager to book a show with them after seeing them play at Artmosphere clad in offshore jumpsuits and doing acoustic covers of Incubus, the band's drummer theJim sought to discover their true identities. After a close encounter with someone posting flyers for a Wizards of Boat show (he claimed to just be a friend), theJim hit a brick wall. But he does have theories on the matter.

"Especially if they are part of that group of people - (the) Frames of Reference, The Object (at The End of History), that brand of humor - I wouldn't be surprised if one's dressing up just going in there, just showing an appearance while another one is walking around, just because they're pretty bonkers," theorizes theJim.

Before the discussion ends, theJim warns, "Don't be surprised if someone picks you up, blindfolds you and brings you somewhere."

When the blessed light of knowledge finally shone down on me, it wasn't obscured by a blindfold. I put a few feelers out and Vanway and (the) Frames bandmate Matt O'Neal let me know they'd use their "future phones" to contact the band. Sure enough, a week later I received an e-mail from the Boxes & Girls Club. In it, speaking as one being, the Wizards of Boat wrote they would be pleased to speak with me. A phone number with a 225 area code was given.

The voice that answered never offered a name. The background noise changed, even going into a room where others could be heard talking on phones. When he had to call back, he answered with "this is the Wizards of Boat." My first question shouldn't have been a surprise: who are you, you enigmatic Wizards? The answer he gave was quite a jaw dropper.

"It's really one guy who put his brain into two different bodies and he goes back in time and plays with himself, not in a dirty way but in a band way. Of course he's a scientist," offers The Wizards of Boat, further stating the two musicians are labeled Twin B and Twin D. After I press him, he ponders it for a second and says he must be Twin B, because of his body type. According to him, the B and D have no meaning. Others who have unraveled their cloak-and-dagger routine suggest it might be the first letter of their names. He also drops a bombshell and says the Wizards wear no masks.

"That's their skin, it's just really loose and looks weird to the human eye, like a blob in more dimensions." An answer about their appearance contains a taste of contradiction and a heaping dose of confusion. Asked about why the two of them wear thrift-store suits or oilfield jumpers, he rambles something about "the two that come from the other time have a different job than the two in the suits," but maintains there are only two bodies for the "brain with two mans."

The questions flow and the answer trickle out in a curving, twisting, ever-changing stream. Why are there only two of you, when I know I have seen three? Was it a body that didn't work out? He answers that the drummer was an experiment of their own and not one of the brain containers.

"It's difficult to explain," he says, emphasizing the line-up was short-lived. "We attempted to do stuff without time travel, but we just decided that it would be easier if we played the bass and drums instead of getting someone else to do it."

He's saying things no human can understand, but I listen intently. Who are those out flyering the town? Friends do that, he relates. Not only can't the time travelers find the time to do it themselves, but "it's hard enough getting through a gig looking the way we do. While it would be thought-provoking, I'm pretty sure it would be illegal to look like you are wearing a mask during the day in public."

Their music, Twin B says, is an evolving thing. Currently there are four Wizards of Boat CDs, but the first - Secret Songs - is unreleased. The music is randomly selected, forming what they call awesomeness with a smidgen of dumbness. Twin B says sometimes they'll decide to make a song swing or be half reggae without knowing what half reggae sounds like. For a while, they covered the Gummi Bears song, but stopped after being hailed as the band that plays the Gummi Bears song. They'll still kick out a version of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and play an ode to the He-Man sleeping bags that once muffled the sound in their practice space. It usually ends with a version of Danzig's "Mother," Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" or Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."

Twin B offers no explanation about his whereabouts and the 225 number other than he resides in the future. It's a Mad Max-style future, pre-Thunderdome, that might owe part of its fate to Starbucks, but he really can't say for sure. It's a man's-man future and "a woman can be a woman man's woman type man woman thing."

"You have to be careful, in certain respects," Twin B says about time travel. "Of course, to us, we already know what happens and how everything ends up for us because it has already happened. We can just look in the papers, or we can try to keep it a mystery for ourselves. In the future everything is desolate and bleak, that's why we come back to the past to have our fun."

Twin B reveals perhaps they do things to confuse the astute, directly going against an initial declaration that if any one wants to know, they can easily find out as hundreds or less have. Confronted about the drummer changing clothes and a theory The Transmission explored involving Matt O'Neal changing his guitar-playing stance and donning a mask, Twin B offers the Wizards often do little things like borrowing another musician's instrument to confuse the masses. He also tells a story about one night at Legends when a crowd grew rowdy after the show and two attempts were made to remove their masks.

"I think more people would be confused than anything else and then we'd put the masks back on and they wouldn't even know if what they saw was right or not," he says.

As the conversation draws to a close I can almost feel him giving me permission to ask him who they really are. I build the courage to question if we have ever met, noticing his voice sounds familiar. He says we have never shaken hands, but he thinks someone has pointed me out in a crowd. I'm certain he would tell me if I only ask. Instead, I end the conversation, settling with the fact that, like Slim, I don't think I want to know.