Indie group Hotel Fiction talks band origins and tour life

Hotel Fiction is checking in to be one of the best up and coming indie rock bands. The band is on the last leg of their Enjoy Your Stay Tour, where they have been traveling cross country for the past month.

Hotel Fiction via Instagram.

The dynamic band born out of Athens, Georgia consists of five members: Jade Ireland (singer and keys), Jessica Thompson (singer and guitar), Aaron Daughtery (guitar and synth), Aiden Hill (bass), and Gideon Johnston (drums). The two lead singers, Ireland and Thompson, have deep roots gripped in friendship that birthed the budding flower that is Hotel Fiction. The indie rock group pulls sound and inspiration from many different genres including folk, rock and indie, across a multitude of decades, to create their unique and perfectly balanced sound. They released their first single in 2019 and have been touring and releasing more music ever since.

Off The Record Press talked to Jade Ireland and Jessica Thompson a few days after their June 16th show at the Mercury Lounge. 

Off The Record: Can you give a brief background to how you got started in music?

Jade: My dad is a pianist, and he always was playing music around the house. At a very young age I was inspired and wanted to learn to play. He taught me a lot of what I still know now. They (her parents) bought my first keyboard at four. I was just influenced by the music my parents listened to a lot. I was involved in theater and was always trying to find a community where I could perform and sing. That’s how I met Jess and found something that is true to me. 

Jess: I started learning guitar when I was 9 because my dad also plays guitar, and he taught me my first chords. I was instantly very into guitar and rock music. After that I just wanted to be in a band immediately. I started taking lessons and practicing and started my first band when I was 11. I started another band later on, probably 13 or so. That band I was in until I graduated from high school. I really loved playing with people and that community aspect of music. I came to college and was looking to start another band and explore more songwriting. And explore a different style than my bands were in high school and early on. Then I met Jade and we started making music together and doing it ever since.

OTR: Going off of that, how did you decide to start playing together? Was it something that clicked and you worked well together? 

Jade: Yeah, pretty on the nose there. We both liked to perform a lot and got lucky with our first gig. It was something we both were very interested in. I feel like we both wanted to take whatever we were writing and share it with people. 

How did the other members join the band and create this group now? 

Jess: We for a long time were playing with different people. My brother started off drumming for us. Jade's friends were playing bass for us. Tommy did a stint drumming for us as well, and also playing bass. We were adding new people to the group of people that knew our music. We would sub in whenever they were available. About a year and a half ago we started getting more serious and wanting our sets to be more consistent and having a full band.

Aaron joined our band on guitar, and later started playing synth. He’s my boyfriend, so that’s how he met us. He started playing with us right during covid, we started doing outdoor shows and then started touring. Gideon, our drummer, is our friend's younger brother. We had met through the music scene in Athens, Georgia. He joined around the same time and clicked very well musically with us. Aiden, our bassist, is brand new to the band. He joined for this tour and has been killing it. Most of the people we met through college and through the Athens music scene. 

How has the Athens music scene inspired and influenced you and your music?

Jess: The Athens music scene is very, very supportive. It's unlike a lot of music scenes because it's small yet a huge part of the town. It's not as tied to industry as other music scenes are. It seems like a lot of it is purely about the music. People will just show up and play on a song while you’re recording, not as a business transaction, but just because everyone is around and wants to be a part of creating music. I think the barrier to entry is pretty low and people are very excited about new bands, there's always opportunities.

People like us who have been around for a little bit longer are always really excited to see new bands and play with them. Our producer lives there, he’s influenced our music a lot and (we’ve) grown up with him in the music scene. Just a lot of our other favorite bands are in Athens. It's a really great place to be a musician. When we started recording our first record we had support from our friends and were excited about their friends having a band. We had so much support from the Athens music scene in general. It was a very good place to start playing together.

OTR: What’s the origin of the name?

Jade: We wanted something that was unique and that wasn’t taken before. We compiled a list of words we liked. We both wanted something that didn’t really mean anything. We were inspired by bands like Portugal. The Man, and Cage The Elephant. Kind of random words that come together and all you think of is the band. Hotel Fiction was kind of spawned out of that. It didn’t have much meaning to start. But I think we liked the meaning behind the word fiction and how it was magical and fantastical, whimsical, and just fit our vibe a lot. 

What was the first show you played as this band? 

Jess: I was walking on campus at UGA (University of Georgia), and I ran into our friend on the phone. He hung up the phone and was like ‘man, that was a band canceling.’ He was managing another band at the time. And I was like well, we have a band that has never played a show, if you want we can play the show. This was about a month after we met. We hadn’t played with any other people, it was just us. We played a little bit with a friend or two. But, we ended up playing the show. I got my brother to play the drums, Jade got her friend to play bass, and our friend played acoustic guitar. We started writing more for the show and practicing a lot. The first show was so magical. Way more people showed up than we thought. ItwWas very fun and it is still very special. It was just very fun. 

OTR: Musically, who are a lot of your influences? 

Jess: We both grew up on The Beatles. I grew up on Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and a lot of folk singers my dad liked. Today I think I'm still very inspired by older music. Recently I have gotten more into David Bowie. I love a lot of modern artists, like Briston Maroney, I love his guitar. Lately I've been into Madison Cunningham, to name a few. 

Jade: Definitely The Beatles, and Pink Floyd growing up was a huge inspiration. A lot of jazz, piano stuff my dad would play. Recently I feel like we both take inspiration from everything and every genre. Every song has something to learn from it. There's not really one specific thing lately, more like everything and the world around us. 

OTR: You released your first song in 2019. Your latest EP, Enjoy Your Stay, was released this past October. Can you give some insight on the creative process of developing that album? 

Jade: I feel like a lot of it kind of happened during covid when we had time off to write. A lot of it came out of the anxieties of what was happening during that time. “Monster,” for example and also “Instead Of Us” too, was inspired about what was happening with our relationships at the time and the people around us. The whole album itself  was the kind of songs we played live after covid and had a similar feel, being a little more indie rock than previously. It felt a little darker to us. We originally conceptualized an album about space.  We thought we could put “Astronaut Kids” on a full album about space. Some of the songs ended up on this record. 

Jess: The timeline was a long time. The earliest song we wrote was three or four years ago. The latest song was a year and a half ago, pretty recently. It kind of started a long time ago. The songs felt like they were in the sphere. 

OTR: Which song on the album was the hardest and easiest to craft? 

Jade: “Allure” was definitely the hardest. It took it three different tries recording and starting over to get it right. It was so hard to capture that feeling in the studio and how delicate it is at the same time. The easiest was “Man on The Moon.” 

Jess: I think “Athens” was fun because we brought the whole band in to live track it which isn’t our normal process. For “Man On The Moon” we were flowing with whatever weird production ideas we had which stuck really well. “Instead Of Us” might have been the most simple. We had tracked four or five instruments and it was almost finished, it felt like it was already. “Allure” definitely takes the cake for the hardest. And “Monster” was a monster to finish. 

Jade: “Monster” was harder to structure.  

Jess: We were constantly changing the structure and negotiating with each other and what felt the best. 

OTR: Do you have a formula when it comes to songwriting? How does inspiration hit, is it more you sit down and try to write or do it when it naturally comes to you? 

Jade: It’s different for most songs. Sometimes inspiration hits you and you can write down the idea. A lot of times you have to hold onto inspiration until you have time to write. Sometimes you start writing and it comes out and you don't really know what you were feeling or thinking at that time. It's very different for each song. I feel like most songs we probably finish 50 or 70 percent on our own and then bring them to the other person if we don’t write them together. We will write some together. 

Jess: It's very different for every song and not one of our songs has had a similar process, which is cool. Sometimes it will be fun to write about a fake story, creating our own story for fun. Situations that didn’t really happen and come from a much deeper place emotionally. Lots of different methods. 

OTR: What's been your favorite part about the tour so far? 

Jade: I'd say just getting to stay with people we know and love. Seeing family and friends in different cities, it feels like a vacation on our off days. The more we tour in different places the more it feels like home away from home in different cities. 

Jess: It’s been cool on this tour, as headliners, to meet people at our shows who have really connected with our music. And it’s been really fun to further explore performing and our musical skills with each other. We’ve been trying to hone in on our set more. The audience has been receiving it better. It's been a very fun thing to keep pushing the envelope on and keep pushing ourselves to be better. 

OTR: Any funny tour stories?

Jess: We're just a pretty goofy bunch and we started a quote book, that’s just been fun to keep track of all the weird things people say when they’re half delirious in the middle of the night on the drive. Our show got canceled in Nantucket because there was a fire in the basement of the venue. We went to the island and spent a few days there, it was very fun. There was a music studio we got to jam in, we ate a bunch of seafood, and the weather was perfect. That was my favorite stop of the tour. Another funny story is that after our show in Brooklyn we couldn't find parking for our van and trailer. We were all so tired and annoyed. We happened to find this perfect spot that was slightly too small so we separated the trailer and van. We put them in different parking spots and the boys just wheeled our trailer to be able to fit.  

OTR: Plans for when the tour ends. Are you taking a break? New music? 

Jess: Kind of all of the above. We're going to be recording and writing a lot in July, working with our producer Tommy. In August we're going to be touring again for a month. In September, possibly again. More touring in the works, writing and recording. 

End of Interview.

Interview conducted by Emma Hug Rosenstein, cover photo and all photos via Instagram

Find Hotel Fiction on Instagram and their website for upcoming news. Stay tuned for their next tour in the coming months. And maybe one day check them playing on the moon!