Q&A: With Feet Firmly Planted on the Ground, Hotel Fiction Reaches for the Stars in Newest EP, ‘Enjoy Your Stay’
WITH WARMEST REGARDS, WE WELCOME YOU TO HOTEL FICTION — though, we’d like to make it ever so clear that this hotel offers much more than just free Wi-Fi and room service. At Hotel Fiction, you are given a home. Jessica Thompson and Jade Long are your welcoming receptionists, and the soundtrack to your time here is their newest EP, Enjoy Your Stay, released today.
This dreamy duo formed in 2019 almost immediately after meeting, and ever since then, the music that Thompson and Long have created together has been made of pure stardust, connecting every being through the universally-relatable messages purveyed through their tight lyricism and whimsical indie-rock melodies.
For as long as they have been collaborating, this dynamic duo has set their sights on the cosmos. Space is often thought of by many as a daunting and largely unnavigable territory, but for Long and Thompson, the vastness of the universe is a comforting concept. The two musicians feel the safest when they are gazing across the galaxy, relying on the stars to provide answers to various queries they have grappled with.
“Throughout college, I was obsessed with space,” Long describes. “It was this idea of escapism. I was unhappy with the life I was living, bored sitting in a dorm or in class. Space, the sky, and the moon all represented this fantastical life that I could be living — just to escape into different worlds and to embrace the possibilities of life out there, or the possibilities of the universe.”
But looking to the stars for too long can be tiring — it hurts your neck and strains your back. Thompson and Long have found that sometimes, the answers that they have been searching for can be found right here on Earth. “Since we've been on tour, life itself has been pretty expansive, crazy, and exciting,” Long confides. “I feel less of a need to escape from it to outer space. It's just as exciting on the ground these days.”
Thus, the duo has purposefully set aside time to sit in the present moment within the six tracks of Enjoy Your Stay, reflecting on the experiences that have shaped their time on this earth.
Long encourages listeners: “Don't be afraid of the dark parts of yourselves. Don't be afraid to dig deep and discover who you are in a lot of ways.” The process of making this EP guided both Thompson and Long through the intricate process of deciphering their feelings, which proved, at times, to be an arduous undertaking.
“The world can be heavy in every way and completely oversaturated,” Thompson asserts. “Talking about it with others, creating things and validating yourself in some way creatively is a good way [to take time for yourself].”
The duo did just that through working on Enjoy Your Stay, addressing many of the difficult emotions that they had been neglecting. Each track is imbued with the duo’s boundless energy and hope for the future, propelling listeners through life’s toughest moments with their effervescent melodies. From summoning the courage to affirm their sense of self-worth in a toxic relationship to forcing themselves to stay rooted in the present moment, Thompson and Long made sure to imbue the EP with a plethora of invaluable lessons pertaining to the human experience.
“We always hope people feel less alone in their emotions and more validated by the fact that we're all going through the same thing in different ways,” Thompson expresses. “I hope that they're hopeful for the future and understand that even if they're stuck wherever they are — in a heartbreak or in an uncertain time — that there's always good things to look forward to.”
The duo hopes that Hotel Fiction will provide listeners with an emotional home to return to time and time again. So, sit back, relax, and Enjoy Your Stay.
Continue reading to learn about the stories and life lessons that informed the tracks of Hotel Fiction’s newest EP, Enjoy Your Stay.
LUNA: I want to start by getting a small sense of your musical journey together. You two have been parts of different musical projects throughout your lives, but what makes Hotel Fiction different from your previous projects and endeavors?
THOMPSON: I've never worked with somebody who I've connected with more musically but also emotionally. We have a very deep connection. We're best friends and business partners. We both give our all to this project. It started in a time when we were both in school and we're continuing in a time where we're committing to it entirely. We're making music that we both really believe in and that feels true to us.
LONG: We're both very passionate about it. It felt like something special from the start.
THOMPSON: It's nice because we're almost always on the same page too — we're very similar in a lot of ways.
LUNA: Can you talk a little bit about your band name and how it came to be? I know it was a different one before you settled upon this one.
LONG: It's two random words that we liked, and we put them together. At the beginning, it didn't really mean much. We were both studying abroad in different places and had a show coming up and we really needed a name. It has had different meetings over time for us. Right now a lot of bands are staying in our house, so it’s literally the hotel fiction. We're also nomads in a way, so we sometimes don't have a home — it's very fictional. But we do have a home now!
THOMPSON: We recently moved into a home after a year of pretty much just touring, living in temporary places or with our parents, so it feels nice to finally have a non-fictional home.
LONG: It's also a place of creativity and imagination
LUNA: Who wouldn't want to stay at Hotel Fiction?
THOMPSON: Right? One day we're gonna open an actual Hotel Fiction, and it'll be really cool. Look out for that years from now.
LONG: But not like the Hotel California.
LUNA: You said you're in a new house. Are you still based in Athens?
THOMPSON: We actually just officially moved back to Athens. We sort of spent the year in Nashville, Atlanta, and a little bit of Athens, but Athens is our home. It's a really creative and supportive space where pretty much all of our best friends live. It has been nice to be there and get to sit in that and experience Athens again.
LONG: Once you're on tour all the time and seeing different cities, [it] makes where you came from even more special. It has been nice to get back in touch with who we are in a lot of ways.
LUNA: How do you know that you have found a good community of both artists and friends?
THOMPSON: Part of it is that it doesn't really feel like we're ever “networking” or having business interactions with our friends. They're our best friends and we make music together. They're really supportive. Especially in Athens, every night of the week or a lot of nights of the week we're all going to our friends' shows, we're telling our other friends to go to friends' shows. Everyone shows up for each other in a lot of ways, plays on each other's tracks, sets each other up — people refer Jade's graphic design work and stuff like that. People are always trying to support and not really compete. It's more of a welcoming environment of all genres of music and all types of people.
LONG: We're fans of everyone's art. There are really cool photographers and videographers that we want to work with, and they're all our best friends.
LUNA: It's so nice to have a safe community to fall back on, especially with how tumultuous the industry can be. I'm so glad that you have that.
THOMPSON: It's really cool to have people around us that have been able to be our friends for a long time. They knew us when we were just starting the band, they knew us when we weren't even in a band and we were just going to their shows. That's cool because it feels so recent, but at this point it has been over three years. They understand us from the longer term perspective.
LUNA: You have an EP coming out on the 28th called Enjoy Your Stay. Where did the name come from? What was the thinking behind it?
THOMPSON: We were recording "Think Twice” and our producer Tommy was like, "Enjoy your stay at hotel fiction!" At first that was kind of a joke, and then it stuck. We had always wanted to create merch with "enjoy your stay" on it, so at one point, Jade made a hoodie design with that. When we were coming up with the EP, we were trying to decide what the name should be, and Enjoy Your Stay felt like a cool name. It had been something where we were like, "Oh, it'd be cool to have an album or EP named Enjoy Your Stay."
LONG: [The cover art for] every single that we've released is a room that pertains to the single in a lot of ways — the colors or the items in the room. The whole EP cover is all of the rooms combined. The whole record is about us coming back home and about wanting your friends to stick around — those are some of the main themes. It felt right in that sense.
LUNA: Your music provides listeners with an emotional home to feel their feelings as well.
THOMPSON: I never thought about that!
LONG: I feel very at home with certain albums and stuff, so I hope people feel that way [about our music].
THOMPSON: The name feels like we're inviting people into an experience, which is cool. We're like, “Enjoy listening to this."
LUNA: You've been playing these tracks live for a while — I saw a recording of your performance at the Mercury Lounge on YouTube. It was so awesome. How did playing these songs live help the development of them in the studio?
LONG: It vastly helped, and working on them in the studio vastly helped them live. We were able to write a lot of parts before getting into the studio, so we already had the structure of a lot of the songs nailed down. We were able to give it our all on stage, and we took that energy into production and made it feel more live and energetic.
THOMPSON: We were also able to see what worked and what didn't work, with structures especially, just by trying to play them live at first. When we went into the studio, there were other things that we added, and that has been kind of funny to try to unlearn certain parts because we want to play similarly to the record. [We have had to] decide what we were going to keep that we just do live and what we were going to take from what we've already recorded. Especially with one of our songs, "Athens, GA," coming up — the band has been playing it live for a while. We live-tracked a lot of it fully as the band and it felt like we were just playing a show, and we were doing it in our friend Tommy's house. That was a cool way to bring what we'd been practicing into the studio.
LUNA: I've noticed that there are a bunch of different themes on the record, some pertaining to feeling a sense of imposter syndrome or affirming your own value in a relationship where it might feel like a hard task. How does writing songs help you process these feelings that might be harder to think about and experience?
LONG: It's very helpful. I don't know how people that don't write music or have an artistic outlet get through life and understand themselves. Sometimes songs are ahead of me emotionally, where they just come out. It's all subconscious feelings where you learn about yourself later. You listen to your own messages in the songs and follow them.
THOMPSON: They have different meanings. When you read them versus when they're coming out, versus when you're playing them live. At each stage, the songs take on different meanings, even personally and to other people as well.
LUNA: I've heard a lot of artists say that sometimes the act of singing those lyrics is a manifestation or reminders of positive energy. Repeated lyrics can sometimes be like that. Do you relate to that?
LONG: We actually wrote this one song, that's not on this album but we're working on it now. It's called "Good Things Are Coming." We kind of were writing it as a manifestation — if we write this out in the world, maybe good things will come our way.
THOMPSON: We say to each other a lot too — good things are coming!
LONG: Life definitely imitates art, like we always say, but it definitely manifests in real life. It's dangerous, actually!
LUNA: I've noticed that a lot of your discography implements themes of space, cosmic energies, and things like that. Why are you continually drawn to these themes?
LONG: Throughout college, I was obsessed with space. It was this idea of escapism. I was unhappy with the life I was living, bored sitting in a dorm or in class. Space, the sky, and the moon all represented this fantastical life that I could be living — just to escape into different worlds and to embrace the possibilities of life out there or the possibilities of the universe. It's interesting because since we've been on tour, life itself has been pretty expansive, crazy, and exciting. I feel less of a need to escape from it to outer space. It's just as exciting on the ground these days.
LUNA: It must be comforting to know that the universe will hold you! Let’s talk about some of the tracks on the EP. “Athens, GA” talks about being in a space of purgatory where all you can do is sit and wait for action instead of taking action. You sing, “Now we’re stuck in the inbetween / One step closer to our dreams / Are we lazy / Or are we just Paralyzed.” When you're stuck like this, what do you do or what is there to be done to kind of make the best out of those circumstances?
THOMPSON: Essentially, understanding that you're stuck is one of the ways to get unstuck. For most of us when we're in that in between — which Jade and I found ourselves in for a lot of this year and the year before — of everything moving really quickly and yet nothing happening at all. Understanding that you might be paralyzed out of fear of the future or the endless possibilities that we have in this modern age — understanding that is the first step to try to have action and take action in some way. The world can be heavy in every way around you and completely oversaturated. Talking about it with others, creating things, and validating yourself in some way creatively is a good way: journaling, talking to friends, reconnecting with who you are, discovering what your values are and what you want to see in the world.
LONG: Leaning on your friends is a big thing, and to not be afraid to ask for help. Also, don't think of things too big-picture. It's okay to take things one step at a time and one day at a time. Trust yourself. You know deep down what you need. Just listen.
LUNA: Staying in the present is a big thing that many of us have trouble doing. Not thinking about the future all the time is such a healthy thing, even though it can be stressful to sit with yourself.
THOMPSON: We were forced into that, especially this year — we couldn't really figure out where to live and we weren't liking some of the decisions we made, and we were feeling pretty stuck, but also with no real answers. It was cool to realize that we were not making this decision for the rest of our lives. We just needed to do what felt right at the moment, which right now is coming back to Athens and being with our community.
LUNA: Your song “Allure” is a breakup anthem of sorts. You sing, “Now that you know it was all a show / And it was all a lie / You can’t go back in time / Cuz now you’re the one who walks away / Since you heard what she had to say.” How do you quell these feelings of love that might still exist when you know that a relationship might not be good for you?
THOMPSON: "Allure" has come to mean different things, but we wrote it about a situation we made up for fun.
LONG: Honestly, for those types of situations that are messy, I always think that if someone leaves your life, it's a blessing. Maybe I was really upset about this, but maybe it's a good thing that this happened. It's an “impending doom” kind of song because you can't take back what you did, so you have to live with your mistakes and grow from them.
THOMPSON: It's supposed to be a warning in a way — sometimes you need to leave a relationship, and it can be for any reason, but the grass can always seem greener, especially if you're in a long-term relationship. Other people can seem really intriguing or can be really cool to get to know romantically, but sometimes that can just be a veil or something that you invent fictionally in your head. Once you break up with somebody to experience other people out there, you can't really go back, you can't undo that. Sometimes people are alluring at first and then you realize they're just normal people.
LUNA: There's definitely a tendency to romanticize everything and then be really let down when reality bursts. Jade, you mentioned a sense of doom in one of your statements, and I sensed that in "I Like You Around" — it's a really sweet love song, but there's this omnipresent worry that it's all going to go wrong. This loops into what we were talking about earlier, how do you stay present in a healthy relationship when at the same time you're already worrying and dreading the end?
LONG: You totally just completely understood the meaning of the song. It's tough because if you have something good, you could lose something good. It's hard to live in the moment but you have to try, and also let the people around you know that you want them there. They want you there too, but also [you] have to know that you can't force anything. It's a love song about unrequited love in some ways and longing for someone to be there forever, even though they might not be.
THOMPSON: My friend's mom once told me, if you really love somebody, your heart breaks every day. Even when you're in love your heart feels that they might not be around one day. It's such a blessing in the present. It's comparable to having a really amazing day in your twenties but there's a part of you that's like, "I'm not going to be in this space forever; I'm not going to be with these people forever." So, the better it gets, the more your heart breaks in a way.
LONG: It's better to have loved and lost [than] never to have loved at all.
LUNA: “Instead of Us” is all about growing, even if it comes at the consequence of losing a relationship that was holding you back. “I’m not sorry for putting myself first for once / Instead of us,” you sing. How do you summon the courage to put yourself first, and what do you do to put yourself first in these circumstances?
LONG: You just have to trust yourself. It's not pretty at the end of the day, but you have to do what's best for you. You can't live your life lying to yourself. Even if it's hard to hurt people along the way, everyone is gonna be better off with what's best for you. Even if they don't see it at the moment. Trust your instincts — if your heart is telling you something, go for it and listen to yourself; see where that takes you. The more you do that, the closer you get to being true to yourself and finding happiness, but it's really hard.
LUNA: You do a really beautiful job at capturing both the highs and lows of love in this EP! What do you hope listeners take away from Enjoy Your Stay?
THOMPSON: We always hope people feel less alone in their emotions and more validated by the fact that we're all going through the same thing in different ways. I hope that they're hopeful for the future and understand that even if they're stuck wherever they are — in a heartbreak or in an uncertain time — that there's always good things to look forward to. I hope that it inspires listeners to follow their hearts, to be true to themselves, and also to find comfort in their friends and in their community.
LONG: Don't be afraid of the dark parts of yourselves. Don't be afraid to dig deep and discover who you are in a lot of ways.
LUNA: I love that! I like to end my interviews on a high note, so I wanted to ask: What has been giving you joy lately?
LONG: Honestly, friends and good food. We've been cooking meals with our friends lately. Our band will come over and make a bunch of pasta and we'll watch a movie together. It feels like we're all taking care of each other in some ways. Those bring me a lot of joy. We've been having a lot of fun bonfires outside lately in the fall, and that's really sweet.
THOMPSON: Living with Jade in our own house, having friends over, and fall in general — feeling the weather change and having beautiful days — makes me so hopeful. On top of that, having bonfires at night and seeing so many people in our community this month has been so wonderful. We're both super hopeful for the future and super happy to be where we are now too.
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