By Grant Kelly, Contributor

[Photo courtesy of Alice Falkowski]

Mourning Star is a rock band from Bloomington, Indiana, made up of drummer and producer Cameron Parker, vocalist and bassist Anna Prager, guitarist Tom Kitchel and guitarist Nova Hardie. I spoke to Cameron, Anna and Tom on a video call about their recording projects and Lobsterfest night one appearance.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]

Grant Kelly (GK): How would you describe your sound?

Cameron Parker (CP): Loud.

Anna Prager (AP): Dynamic.

CP: On show fliers and stuff like that, we’ve been [called] shoegaze, noise rock —

Tom Kitchel (TK): It kinda jumps around. We’ll have a bill where it says something like ‘independent alternative rock,’ but then we’ll have one that says ‘noise rock’ and another that says ‘Bloomington shoegaze.’ I would say describing our sound is easy, but categorizing it is not. 

AP: We kinda just made up our own term — more so because it’s just funny with our name — called ‘stargaze.’ That was just a fun word to coin. 

CP: Shoegaze is like a big buzzword, and it’s not necessarily the vibe we’re trying to give. ‘Hoosiergaze’ is another one you could apply [to us]. That’s a term invented by a band here called Seventh Cloud, which classifies all the noise rock/shoegaze that happens in Indiana. 

GK: Where did the name Mourning Star come from?

TK: I know I came up with it, but I don’t remember why. I think it actually had to do with the medieval weapon. Since there’s also MorningStar Farms, the veggie burger company, we joked that we would be called ‘veggie burger.’ There were a lot of runner-up names.

CP: I remember early on, you sent a screenshot of your notes app that had a few in there. 

TK: Oh, I still have that. Any time I hear something where I’m like, ‘ooh that’s a good band name,’ I throw it in. Every time I don’t like a name I delete it, but deleting one when there’s 300 in there doesn’t do a whole lot. 

GK: I‘ve noticed that most of your shows so far have been around your hometown of Bloomington; How do you feel about playing outside of Indiana?

AP: It’s awesome. We played our first out of state show [on April 9th] in Cincinnati, and it was so cool. We usually play to really similar crowds, a lot of times our friends, friends of friends or just locals. So, playing in a completely different environment, we’re meeting the people that live there and kind of learning about their scene and just getting exposed to so many new people and new bands. It’s been really awesome, we’re excited to play more. 

TK: I think for a little bit I was getting pretty burnt out on our current set of songs, part of that was just because we’ve been playing in Bloomington so much. Playing it for a whole new crowd of people who have never heard us before was really fun. 

CP: [I’ve gotten] really comfortable playing a lot of shows at venues here in Bloomington, it’s like we know every single person, all the regulars that normally come to shows. You get a little complacent with how things go. I think, especially like yesterday, a show where you’re a little uncomfortable, where you’re not used to what’s going on, it made me play a lot better. I was a lot more engaged. Not a fan of the driving, even though I didn’t drive.

TK: What do you mean you’re not a fan of it if you didn’t do any of it?

CP: I didn’t like just being in the car, I got really tired.

TK: Cameron’s like a dog, if you don’t roll the window down he doesn’t like driving. 

[Laughter]

CP: But it is super fun meeting all sorts of new people. 

GK: What are your performances usually like? 

TK: Loud.

CP: I’ve been telling everyone this, but we’re a for-fun band. There’s some people – we even have friends who are like this – who kind of have a very serious thing. They’ve got a whole setup and a certain sort of vibe they want to give with their performances. I feel like every time we play, it’s like, ‘how can we make this the most fun to play?’ Whether it’s in between songs, trying to do a little jam to keep each other engaged, or making jokes at each other during a performance, we always just go for whatever’s most fun. Yesterday, we all played facing each other in a circle, it kinda helps everyone lock in. 

TK: It was also a little bit for necessity, to get the mic to stop feedbacking, and we didn’t have a lot of room for our cables. We kind of had to squeeze in really close. I think our shows have changed as we’ve all gotten more comfortable playing with each other. I think for a while we were trying really hard to be super professional and not make any mistakes or have to start and stop or anything, not even really having much banter. I think our shows are fairly fun to watch, even when the songs sound pretty sad or angry. I think we maintain a fun vibe. 

GK: I found it interesting that you chose to do a cassette release for your latest EP. What was the reasoning behind that?

CP: It actually started with the kind of scene that’s arisen with cassette culture, in Bloomington and some other places. It’s actually super common for bands here to release their music on tape. Almost all the bands that I know of that have made physical music have done it onto cassette. People just like being able to support an artist in some way, and a cassette is sometimes cheaper than a shirt. It’s a lot cheaper than a vinyl. 

TK: It’s collectable.

CP: It’s collectable, it’s got art in there. Our first run of cassettes that we did for the two singles we have out, I dubbed them all here at my house. For the EP, an awesome tape label called Pleasure Tapes made tapes for some of our friends and reached out to us and asked if we wanted to work together. They’re an awesome non-profit and they help support a lot of artists by making tapes and stuff like that. You just pay for the materials, and they send it to you. That was super fun. It’s really surprising how much tape culture has come back, we sold out of tapes within the first 2 or 3 shows.

TK: We sold out of tapes very fast. 

CP: I’m glad that it’s coming back. I’m glad that we have a way to get physical releases. We did some CDs too because it’s a little more accessible than tape.

TK: I would say the irony is that CDs are more unique for bands to have nowadays, I feel like a lot more bands have cassettes than CDs. 

AP: Especially in Bloomington, there’s a big hardcore scene there and they all do tapes. I’ve never seen a CD for any of those bands. 

CP: Sometimes they don’t even do stuff on Spotify, they just do [tapes].

TK: The only hardcore-adjacent band I can think of [that made CDs] would be Pat and the Pissers, but those were like homemade burned CDs that they gave me. 

GK: Was there anything you learned from producing the EP? What would you do differently?

CP: For me, a lot. 

TK: My advice for all musicians — if you’re going to record music, don’t do it in the evening. It’s going to take a lot longer than you think, and you’re going to be in a bad mood. Put aside actual days, like afternoons, and make sure you have food and water, because you’re going to get cranky and you’re going to get tired. Recording is really like going to work. It’s a lot more fun than going to work, but you still have to take care of yourself. When we inevitably start recording again, I’m going to get more rest and bring more food and water with me. That’s what I learned.

AP: Tagging on to Tom’s advice, having cats helps a lot. We have two cats, and they love when we play music. They’re like therapy cats. 

[Cameron holds a black cat up to the camera]

AP: This is Noodles/Mr. Meow. She helped us through the process. 

TK: She likes to sit on the amps. 

CP: I’ll try to keep it brief because I could say a million things about this. They trusted me with recording everything, so I recorded it all in my basement and I mixed it and did all that, which was a huge learning experience. I’m not (at least at the time of recording it) in any way experienced with making an EP. It was like I learned something new about how to record with each song. The last song that we recorded, which was “Sad Song,” is my favorite song because it was kind of everything that I had learned from all the mistakes I made with every other song. I had the most fun doing that one because it was the least amount of friction, in terms of my lack of knowledge and what I actually wanted it to sound like. We really know a lot more about how we function as a band, and we know a lot more about how we record, how we write. I think we’re all excited to get more music out there and get more music recorded. It’s rewarding in a whole different way, seeing something you worked on appearing in front of you in some physical sense, like a tape, or even just a collection of files. 

GK: How are you feeling about playing Lobsterfest?

CP: Very excited.

AP: We’re so excited for Wishy. I help plan a music festival in Bloomington that happens every year, and we had Wishy headline last year. I was so excited about that, but I was trying to be chill because I was helping run the festival. It’s cool, like a year later, getting to play with them, another Indiana band. 

TK: They’ve really blown up, it’s crazy.

CP: It’s a reminder, like ‘you can make it if you’re from Indiana!’

AP: You’re not doomed!

[Laughter]

AP: We’re big fans of student radio, so being able to play a student radio festival is super cool. I’m honestly pretty jealous [ACRN has] a three-day festival We only have a one-day festival. It’s pretty awesome to see a school and students that love music that much to have that many bands come through. 

CP: I was looking at all the past lineups and seeing who played. Even super small artists that I didn’t think many people knew about, I’m like “Oh, they played Lobsterfest?”

GK: What sort of plans do you guys have for the future?

TK: Since we’ve been playing so many shows, we haven’t had as much time as we’ve wanted to write, but we are in the process of working on a split EP with the Indiana band Fox Runs East. It’s been like a dual process, writing and just playing with them. They have songs and we have songs, but we’re also writing together, so it’s a lot of fun. 

AP: We’re thinking maybe six songs, two songs from Fox Runs East, two songs from us and then two songs that we collaborate on. I’m really excited. Actually, getting back to writing has been really fun. [As for] other plans for shows, we plan to go out of state again. I think in May we’re going to Chicago. Probably other places too, we just have to figure out those dates. Oh, and we’re going to Milwaukee for this really cool shoegaze festival called Gaze at the Moon. We’re playing with some bands that we’re really big fans of, like Interlay and Sign Language. We’ve got some cool stuff coming up. 

CP: As bands love to say, we’ve got a lot of big things coming —

[Laughter]

CP: — but there is a lot of cool stuff coming. I would say, even outside of just Mourning Star stuff, go check out what’s going on in your local scene, because there are probably shows happening every weekend. There’s probably some sick bands playing that are going to be like the next Wishy, and you can say ‘oh yeah, I saw them in a basement. They were much better back then.’ You can be pretentious about it. 

TK: ‘That was before they sold out!’

[Laughter]

CP: Just check in with your local scene, check in with your student radio, there’s tons of stuff going on. 

AP: I think now that we don’t have shows every night, we can actually go to more shows that we’re not playing, which is really fun. Sometimes there will be multiple shows a night and we’ll only get to go to the show that we’re playing. I think we’re all just excited to have more time to do that. 

CP: We love live music.