For Hotel Mira, the LA-based indie rock group fronted by actor and playwright Charlie Kerr, the party just keeps going. In March, they released Pity Party, an album that tackles the detrimental, back-and-forth routine of feeling pure elation and hopeless despair. As heavy as it seems, others out there could easily relate, prompting the album to yield several singles in the top ten on Canada’s alt-rock charts and make appearances on notable Spotify playlists like ‘Ready to Rock’ and ‘Your New Alternative.’ In October, the band took their pity party on the road, where they have been playing to numerous sold-out crowds in venues across Canada and the U.S. These shows leave fans wanting more, so to oblige their requests for more feels, Hotel Mira released After Party. A five-track project that focuses on the emotion and self-reflection that sets in once the music stops and the lights come on, After Party serves as a strong follow-up. It gives listeners some time to unwind, but not for long. Hotel Mira recently announced a U.K. leg of ‘The Pity Party Tour,’ which will take place in January. The North American leg is set to wrap in December, but meanwhile, Charlie took the time to talk to us about the tour, Pity Party and After Party, and giving fans “some hope going forward.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and time.
This year has been pretty busy for Hotel Mira, where you released Pity Party back in March, you’re currently on tour for it right now, and then you dropped After Party earlier this month. Out of everything you’ve done this year, what stands out the most?
I’d probably say just these last 25 shows that we’ve headlined. We’ve got to see these crowds get bigger and bigger, and more people understand who we are. There’s people who’ve been riding for us for a very long time, and they’re still coming to the shows too, so that loyalty is beautiful. But yeah, there’s something about selling out the L.A. show, the New York show, Salt Lake City, Denver, D.C.,… It’s felt incredibly validating and exciting and made me think even more was possible.
Are there any songs so far that you love playing live on this tour?
“Cowboy” and “Re: Valentine’s Day” both sort of feel really, really good and were really embraced quickly. You can never really tell what people are gonna grab onto, but sort of the bridge of “Making Progress,”—the ‘We’re so alive, we can’t play dead’—has become really anthemic. That song feels like it’s been out forever, in terms of how people are singing along.
I see that you have the Canadian leg of the tour to go still and then you take a little break. You pick back up in January in the U.K., so what do you have planned for this down time before you head across the pond?
That’s a beautiful question, thank you. I think it’ll be a lot of trying to promote the shows and writing and rehearsing. Like, it’s technically down time, but I’m sure it’s not gonna feel like it.
Do you have a whole new setlist or new show design for that leg or is it mostly going to stay the same?
We’ve been sort of building as we go and falling into things by experimenting and taking a step back and being like, ‘Oh, that really worked, we should keep that!’ We were touring with a sound tech named Sean, and he sort of encouraged us to think outside the box and create some moments in-set that were not exactly like the record to give the people something special.
Getting into Pity Party, I saw that you had described it as “being so caught up in the self-obsession of both the joy and the despair that you forget to give yourself to anything of use.”
Oh man! [Laughs] Wow, I can’t believe I said that. I must’ve been in a hell of a mood! I get why I said that, you know. There is a lot of chaos and despair in the world right now, and it’s easy to feel like you’re not doing enough, especially when certain forces in the world are straight-up making things so much worse for the sake of greed and power. So yeah, I think sometimes it’s tricky to… I would hope it’s a little tricky for the average person right now, in terms of ethically how they want to show up. You know, singing songs and writing songs for a rock band, there’s an argument that that’s not all that helpful, in terms of how I would want the world to change and how I would want these marginalized groups that are sort of under attack and stress… I’m certainly thinking about that most of the time when I step to a microphone. But yeah, I think Pity Party was kind of about what we distract ourselves with.
Do you think its meaning has changed at all since you’ve been on tour?
Not entirely. I think that what we do live—I hope this doesn’t sound self-aggrandizing or pretentious—but you know, I see kids in the audience that are very much being affected by the sort of bigotry that is on the rise, casually and legislatively, and so I think it’s really cool that we give them a place where they can feel safe and celebrated and embraced for the night. And hopefully that gives them some hope going forward. Believe it or not, I’m kind of reluctantly political. I don’t really think I have any good answers, but I can’t help but just comment on what’s happening. The inverse of that feels really cowardly and detrimental.
How soon after you released Pity Party did you know that you wanted to do After Party?
Oh, that’s a good question. We had a couple songs left over, and at the photo shoot that we did with Fiona [Garden, for the album cover], we got Cole [George, drummer] to cross out Pity Party and put After Party ‘cause we had this idea that maybe we’d be doing an EP, or an extended thing, or it was just a cool visual. So, we took that shot that became the EP cover, and yeah, I wrote some songs in the U.K. when we were shooting with Fiona and doing that tour. That, combined with a couple other songs, is what made the after party an EP. I think we recorded that early, early, early this year between a headline tour and a support tour. It came together pretty quickly.
Do you have an after-after party planned?
That’s a good question. No, nothing. I think we’ll be, when this tour in the U.K. is done, I think it will be sort of time to probably move on from that aesthetic, or era, as the kids say.
If you had to pick your favorite songs from both projects, which ones would they be?
I’m pretty proud of “America’s Favourite Pastime.” That’s a really cool song. “Cowboy.” I think “Runner” sort of expresses a lot of that initial concept that we talked about. And then, I think “Re: Valentine’s Day” is sort of just… I’m really proud of that song ‘cause it was written six years ago in an acoustic setting on Valentine’s when I was in a bad spot. We sort of toyed with it for years and then finally made a version that everybody could kind of agree on, and then the fans really ended up loving it. I think it’s cool to have a song that’s simultaneously anti-consumerism and, you know, about feeling used and about feeling confused and really warped ideas of love and sex… I think there’s a lot of threads to pull on, in terms of that.
My last question here is, what do you have planned for 2026?
Sort of same as usual, just in the sense of more shows, more music… Hopefully go to some places we haven’t been yet. It would be really cool to do the summer festivals and do some support tours and work with some bands we’ve never worked with. The whole thing feels beautifully open-ended with the momentum that we’ve had recently. It just seems like there’s opportunities to do a lot of cool things.
Thanks again for your time. Do you have any final thoughts or any comments?
Not really. I mean, thank you for listening, and I hope everybody’s enjoying the music and can make it out to some shows.
You can listen to Hotel Mira here.
Hotel Mira will hit the road again on December 5 to play the final shows of their North American leg of ‘The Pity Party Tour.’ Once that wraps in Vancouver on December 13, they have a break before making their way to the U.K. in January. Once there, they will bring ‘The Pity Party Tour’ to places like Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester, with the final performance of this leg taking place in Brighton on February 12. Tickets can be found here.
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