Interrupting 80s dive bars and the Boston punk scene, goodkarma is stomping onto the local stage. Catch them at Midway Cafe on September 4.
Boston is not without its fair share of punk bands, many of them bright lights in the underground scene. However, if you’re lucky enough to stumble into a bar like State Park or Midway Cafe on a special weeknight, you might spot a star like goodkarma.
On Sunday, August 25, I found myself in one such situation as goodkarma took the stage (or, rather, the stretch of wood paneling usually taken by a pool table) at State Park in Kendall Square. Aglow with vintage beer decor, the smell of fresh orange drowned in whiskey, and lighting that would make the Coen brothers swoon, goodkarma played second in a goodbye show for a local musician and State Park bartender. The venue’s homey haze quickly precipitated into the sulky and thundering rhythms of a goodkarma storm. Jumping in with their song “Easy,” State Park came alive with shredded bass chords, stringent vocals, and some seriously stellar percussion.
Relatively new in town, goodkarma comprises guitarist and lead singer Kavoi Mutisya, bassist Brody Guara, and alternating drummers Ramon Yusuf and Tai Hofmeister. Each member, however, has had a unique journey into music that has led to the electrifying and ever-changing sound that goodkarma has quickly cultivated. While Guara’s musical background began with a trumpet in middle school, Mutisya and Hofmeister started their careers a bit younger.
“I was forced at five years old to play guitar,” Mutisya shared, chuckling. “My dad was like, ‘I want my kids to be musicians,’ so he slapped a guitar in my hands, gave my sister piano, and I had to take lessons every week. It didn’t really click with me for a long time, because it was something I had to do.” Around the same age (but with less parental enforcement), Hofmeister has “been hitting boxes since [he] was a baby.”
The musicians’ paths collided in August 2022; as Mutisya described, “like any modern romance, we met online.” Guara and Mutisya found each other on an app made for matching up musicians (as Guara characterized it, the “Tinder for musicians”), clicking in large part due to a similarly eclectic taste, ranging from blink-182 to Sam Cooke. The two found Hofmeister in early 2023 via Instagram, and the group started jamming together that same spring. Despite their name, goodkarma ironically booked their first show as Hofmeister discovered that he would be studying abroad, putting the band in a scramble to find a new drummer. Yusuf came to the rescue, and the band now alternates the two drummers depending on their availability.
Dynamic in both its music and membership, goodkarma has a flexible and deeply collaborative approach to cultivating its sound. As they continue to develop their discography, the group has relied on some of the music Mutisya has had in the arsenal from his years of artistry (check out his solo music as Kavio on streaming services).
“We’re slowly getting into more, ‘whoever has an idea, just throw it in the group chat, and if you can build on it, build on it,’” Mutisya explained. “Sometimes when we’re rehearsing and we have extra time, we’ll be like ‘Oh, here’s a song idea — let’s build on it and see what we can do from there.’”
This authentic creative collaboration flows freely into the raw quality of goodkarma’s music. As the band played on at State Park, the audience wailed their excitement as Mutisya’s smoothly striking vocals met with Guara and Hofmeister’s desperately driving instrumentation. As a rotating drummer, Hofmeister especially shined with quick and radical rhythms, propelling the band’s energy straight through the bar.
The band’s vigor and potency lends itself perfectly to the group’s #1 value: having fun.
“When I play a show, I just want people to move, dance, just have fun,” Guara explained. Mutisya echoed: “I don’t want it to be such a serious thing where we have to be the coolest guys on the block. We just wanna have fun.”
On Sunday night, goodkarma delivered on this front with ease. The rapid drive of their sound, delivered again by the almost violent percussion, ripped through their audience; head-banging was a necessity, not a choice. Toward the end of their set, the frontmost fans dissolved into a mini-mosh that multiplied the effect of goodkarma’s elevated sound.
To sum it all up, in the succinct words of Hofmeister: “It’s a fun band. The songs are fun. You should dance to them.”