Interview: Big Changes Ahead for Anton Kellner & the Lone Stars

In late February, Anton Kellner & the Lone Stars released their sophomore album, Understand. But now, two months following the project's debut, you won't find the band discussing upcoming shows or promoting a single; in fact, their website no longer exists, and their social media accounts have been virtually wiped clean, with absolutely no activity visible prior to April 12, 2016.

So what, exactly, is going on with Kellner and his group? In short: big changes.

For starters, Kellner -- the Lone Stars' songwriter and primary creative decision-maker, generally -- is officially striking out on his own, under his own (full) name, Anton Josef Kellner. Which, really, shouldn't come as a surprise to fans. As Kellner tells The Boot, although he "prefer[red] the way that this last record was written, that the collaborative process was way better," the Lone Stars' first project, 2014's You Were the Fire, proves that Kellner's got solo chops. On that album, he played a large amount of the instrumentation -- guitar, bass and piano, and even drums on a handful of songs -- and although he brought others in to contribute additional sounds, those collaborations were more in the vein of "me [going], 'Hey, play this part here.'"

Then there's Kellner's varied influences. The Lone Stars' first disc featured a complete mish-mash of genres: a little bit of folk and bluegrass, a little bit of synthwave, a little bit of rock and pop ... the list goes on.

"I wanted to make a record that was sort of genre-fused," the Southern California-based artist explains. "Nothing is original these days. It's really hard to sit there and be like, 'I'm going to try to make the next original thing' [because] somebody's already done it before, and they've probably done it better."

And while Understand stayed more in the "soulful singer-songwriter, alt-country-slash-folk" vein, it was only a matter of time until Kellner wanted to change it up again.

"Even a simple conversation, I want to write a song about," he says, by way of explaining his bevy of influences; also, he notes, "[I'll] get obsessed with [a particular genre] for a month, then put it down and find a new obsession."

This time around, Kellner is thinking about another fusion-type project -- likely bringing together folk music with his current inspirations: R&B, Motown and electronic music.

"I'm not an artist who likes to dwell in the same sounds for so long," Kellner admits. "There is a lot going on in the music world for me, and I cannot wait to show everyone the sounds that I am working on."

If you're intrigued, you can keep tabs on Kellner's upcoming new work on Facebook, Twitter and Soundcloud. In the meantime, the Lone Stars' previous material is available via iTunes and on YouTube.

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