I've never cared much for The Casionauts.

Given vocalist/keyboardist Ryan Balderas' suggestion for this story on his band's last show on Saturday at Mac's Bar, 2700 E. Michigan Ave. in Lansing, I'm not alone in that opinion.

"You just have 'Casionauts' final show, Lansing, Mich., at Mac's, and then the entire text of the article is 'Finally,'" Balderas said.

Talking to Balderas, vocalist/guitarist Jon Cendrowski and drummer Dan Erck is like being let in on a massive inside joke, probably because the conversation is peppered with actual inside jokes, references to gigs played in puffy shirts and fake mustaches or bands they've played shows with and then feuded with — some jokingly and some seriously.

You can tell that while they'll miss playing as The Casionauts, they're coming to terms with the band's end.

"We have the memories; we have the photos," Cendrowski said.

But as Balderas puts it, there was never much thought about an ending — or a middle for that matter.

"The band's never been about caring about what's going to happen in the future," Balderas said. "Pretty much impulse — have fun tonight, and who knows what tomorrow's going to be like."

There's some debate about whether there have been 12 or 13 Casionauts throughout the band's existence, but Erck is positive he's the 12th, having taken the drum stool six months ago, but not without some misgivings about the band's synth-heavy sound.

"I really dislike keyboards. I especially dislike three keyboards playing at once," Erck said. "It's my least favorite thing, and I didn't want to say that when they asked me to be in the band. Be like 'Yeah, I'll totally drum for you guys, but I hate the sound that you guys have.' I guess I built up my tolerance for it."

Over the course of its 100-plus shows, the band managed to scrape together a couple of tours and a few out-of-state weekend jaunts, and that's where Balderas saw The Casionauts take form.

"All of us come from really different places, and there'd be spats on the road, and at home, but in the end it brought everyone in the band together because we could kind of see that we all had a central goal."

During The Casionauts' second visit to Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Balderas looked out into the crowd to see kids singing his words back at him. And these kids hadn't even seen the band their first time through town.

"When someone you've never talked to or seen is singing the words to the song you wrote, it's such a weird, strange feeling," he said.

Fans several states away who are singing Casionauts' songs fall in line with fan and friend Sean Higgins' comments about the band.

"They're very down to — I hate to use the term — the masses' level," he said. "Whether you love them or hate them, this fact is undeniable."

However, he admitted, "90 percent of my greatest memories of The Casionauts aren't printable in a family paper."

You might say The Casionauts are leaving at a moment of flux in the Lansing music scene. At one point, Erck brought up the coming departure of Hood Booking and its owner, Steve Lambert, whom he referred to as "the Jesus Christ of Lansing."

To which Balderas replied, "If he's the Jesus, then I'm the Darwin."

Balderas, a self-described "Lansing lifer," will be staying in town after the breakup. Erck is moving to New York, while Cendrowski will be in Detroit, putting in a stint as a guitarist for Ferndale-based band Child Bite.

Even with the final show in sight, the conversation turned momentarily to The Casionauts' first live performance.

"(It was) just four songs that really hadn't come together yet. We'd only practiced five times, but there were a lot of people there — everyone was dancing. Looking back on it, it sounded horrible, but it was a moment," a moment Balderas has tried to recapture with each subsequent show.

"It's some weird psychological thing, but whenever I play a show, that is the place I want to be," he said. "Ton of smiling faces, ton of people dancing. The times that happens are so great."

The Casionauts are playing with Now It's Overhead, The Word Play and Natural Monuments at 8 p.m. Saturday at Mac's Bar, 2700 E. Michigan Ave. in Lansing.