Q&A: Mistine on summer, friendship, and new EP 'Fade'

Q&AMusic

Aug 11

☆ BY KRISTINE VILLARROEL ☆

MISTINE KNOWS HOW COMPLEX HUMAN CONNECTIONS ARE. Apart from the road, she collects places, emotions and memories from different relationships in an indie-pop-shaped jar. Her debut EP Fade, released June 30, is fresh and nostalgic at the same time. Its approachable sound wraps a collection of delicate feelings and details taken straight from her life experiences.

Christine Meisenhelter wants her music to feel like driving down Californian roads with your friends in the car while the summer sun is setting. With dreamy production and catchy hooks, the record surely achieves this.

After playing on tour with acts like Conan Gray and WizTheMC, the emerging artist finds her own voice in the thing she values the most: human connection. Impulsed by the encouragement of fans met on tour, she put down the bass and picked up the mic to tell the stories that she cares about the most, stories of feelings, moments and people.

With an overarching layer of nostalgia coating the record, every song on the EP details complex emotions from past relationships, friendships, or moments that left a mark on the Jersey native.

Read below to learn more about the connections that inspired Fade and the lessons Mistine learned from touring.

LUNA: Where does your artist name come from?

MISTINE: It was a college nickname of mine that my friends came up with it. I remember we were on a trip to San Diego with like six of my friends and we were running around the grocery store and my friend was trying to come up with nicknames, and he's like calling me stuff like Listerine and then all of a sudden, he said Mistine and everyone was just kind of like, “yeah, that's the one.” It just kind of happened.

LUNA: When you first started in music, did you expect things to turn out the way they did?

MISTINE: No, definitely not. I started playing guitar in third grade and I picked up bass in like sixth grade. I didn't expect it to be like this at all. I was planning on doing pre-med biochem in college and becoming a doctor because I really love taking care of people and helping and connecting in that way. Then I got into USC[’s Thornton School of Music], and I didn't even think this was an option, or that I was good enough to go to school for music or that anyone would care. I didn't really know what happened. it was kind of like a crapshoot, I felt like it was assigned. I remember being like “I'm just gonna do it and see how it goes”.

LUNA: How did the project start?

MISTINE: I put out a few songs in college because I wanted to like experiment with writing, but I put the project on hold for a while because I was touring a lot and just didn't have time. But the more that I was on tour with other artists, the more I realized that there were a lot of kids in the audience that would come up to me and that had a connection with me. They really wanted to hear my voice and what I was thinking – and I wasn't even the artist.

LUNA: Why do you think that connection with the fans came from? Why do you think they felt connected to you?

MISTINE: I think part of it was just the fact that I was really close friends with all the artists that I was working with, or had become close friends with them through touring. I think sometimes, people feel really connected with the artists that they love and meeting their best friends was like “oh, she can be my friend”. I think part of it was that I was a part of it; I was playing bass and guitar and a lot of kids were like, “I want to do that”.

LUNA: How long were you on the road?

MISTINE: I toured through the summer before senior year of college pretty steadily up until the pandemic hit — like, I was in rehearsals when we got locked down. And then I did like two small runs this past winter and fall.

LUNA: How did you balance touring with other aspects of your life?

MISTINE: I was doing a tour when I was in college, and to me, it didn't seem hard because I wanted to do it. It was hard, but it was fun though. I did a lot of work on my laptop on the bus.

LUNA: What did you learn through playing live and touring?

MISTINE: I think touring is really a fast way to grow up in some ways. You learn a lot about how to work with other people and how to be a band and how to live with 11 other people on a tour bus. And you learn a lot about yourself. Like, not only do you learn about all the other cultures and people you're meeting in like regions of the world, which I think is invaluable, but you really just get this time where you're thrown into a situation where you have to figure out what makes you comfortable and what makes you happy. So you have to find out what you want, and how you can make it happen.

LUNA: What are some things you learned about yourself while you were on the road?

MISTINE: I learned that I just really love learning about people. I didn't use to think of myself as very extroverted, even though I'm still the same person, but I do really just love people. I find humans fascinating, and I really love thinking about connections and what it is that makes people click and why we feel connected to some people and not others.

LUNA: What does friendship mean to you?

MISTINE: Friendship and relationships to me are very like intertwined. To me, it means just showing that you care and letting the other person feel that you care. Also, just showing up. So much of friendship is just the safety of knowing that like that they love you and that you could do or say anything, and there's a way to work through it because they're not strangers. There's that trust there that you're going to be there, and you're going to show up. It's a two-way street.

LUNA: It’s about having that mutual care, right?

MISTINE: Yeah, the mutual trust that you're going to show up and you're going to try even if you mess it up — because we're all gonna mess it up, and we're all gonna hurt each other — and that's okay because we're human. But, we're going to hurt each other and mess up and then we're going to try again, and we're going to express our feelings and say that we care.

LUNA: What inspired the EP?

MISTINE: Everything on the EP is about different people and different connections that I've felt with other people and how they affected me afterward. Each song is about a different way that I felt about someone, whether it be a friendship or relationship. Everyone comes into your life for an amount of time, whether that'd be forever or a short amount of time, but the time isn't what makes the difference; it's the feeling and the impact. I think those moments in time are what inspired the EP. Kind of working through the emotions of like, “oh, why did I meet this person?” or “Why did this mean so much to me? Even though it was just a week”.

LUNA: Do you think there’s any common emotion in the EP or are all songs very specific, different emotions?

MISTINE: I feel like they're all pretty, like nostalgic. Think they're all different versions of nostalgia.

LUNA: If you could go back to like a musical era, which one would it be?

MISTINE: I've always wanted to be around in the late 60s, playing around Woodstock and Hendrix and Janis Joplin. I feel like it was a time of lots of controversial opinions in the world, and people were not agreeing with a lot of other people, but there was this camaraderie in the creative and art world where it felt very free and open.

LUNA: You describe this EP as music to listen to in the summer when you’re driving down the highway when the sun’s setting. What do you usually listen to in the car during those times?

MISTINE: I love The 1975 and Maggie Rogers, so I play a lot of that.

LUNA: What has been the theme for your summer so far?

MISTINE: Figuring it out; I'm kinda just rolling with it and I'm trying to be intentional yet very open to anything happening. I’m not stressing out too much about like everything because I feel like every I'm in a very transitional period of life that like, I'm trying not to freak out about everything and like getting older and just like, see what happens. And like, I don't know what's gonna happen, but I'm down and I'm down to see how it goes.

LUNA: What are you looking forwards to?

MISTINE: I'm just looking forward to spending time with people I care about and writing more music and seeing where this music could take me. I'm looking forward to seeing through new friendships and relationships that I've made with people and seeing how they go.

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We couldn’t be more stoked to have Suriel Hess as our new headliner for our upcoming LA show 🤩 🫶 Not gonna lie, us & Notorious Noise kinda went OFF with this line up & you’re not gonna wanna miss it - ticket link in bio 🎫