Interview: Halestorm

It's been just about a year since you guys released your self-titled major label debut. How fast does it feel like the last year has gone by? Lzzy Hale: Oh, it's like a blink of an eye. [Laughs] It's funny, you're in a different city every day and you're doing what you love every day, and just the way this lifestyle is, things change on a dime, everything is different – I'm quite in love with it. So the fact that we've been touring for a year on this, pretty much since last February, we've been touring on this record, and, yeah, it feels like it's been no time at all.

What's been the most amazing or memorable, or surprising experience you've had since releasing the album? The number one most surprising thing for us is just the fact that we're still here. I mean, we just feel very, very lucky because it could have gone so easily the other way. We see so many great bands, great musicians, great songs, great albums that come out and they never do anything or the band never passes the three-year mark and it's just very humbling that we're still here and still trucking and the record's still doing well. It's still just the beginning, 'cause we're going to squeeze the life out of this thing, but another thing that just completely blows my mind is that we'll be playing a show and just the amount of people that are just singing along to every single song. This is the first year that we've really seen that, besides in our hometown area [in California] where we've been playing for years. But to go into a town that you've never been into before and have people that are singing it maybe even more passionately than you are [laughs], to know that it's connecting in that way is extremely rewarding.

A lot of people have discovered you for the first time recently, but you guys actually started the band back in 1998 when you and your brother Arejay were really young. How much does it feel like the dreams you had back then are coming true now? Oh, it's crazy. My brother is the drummer and he and I started it when I was thirteen and he was ten years old at the time. [Laughs] We named it Halestorm and everything and just kind of had tunnel vision and never looked back. It's so funny because it was a different lifetime ago, but like I said, it feels like it went so fast, and the fact that we're still here... we've been very reminiscent lately, because we would watch the music videos and be like, 'Okay, we can do that. Someday that's going to be us on the radio, and on MTV or Fuse and all of that.' And we still have that same feeling. We were talking about that the other day. We still get that same feeling that we used to get walking out onto a stage, whether it be playing for six people [laughs] or six thousand – it's the same. Right before you go on you get just anxious and happy that you're able to do this everyday. It completely blows my mind that something that we thought of on more or less a whim in middle school is something that we're actually still doing. It's very cool.

Does the whole band, with [guitarist] Joe [Hottinger] and [bassist] Josh [Smith], feel like a family or that you've grown your family to include them? Well, it's definitely a family atmosphere. Our whole camp is kind of wacky. We have our own culture. And I think because Arejay and I are blood-related, I think that's bled through to the other two as well, and to our crew as well. We just all have that mentality where we can have our spats here and there, but nothing breaks up the band. In fact, I don't think that the words 'break up' have ever really come up at all, unless I'm talking about how we just won't! [Laughs] We want to make it to the reunion tour! A forty-five-year career here! But yeah, it's nice having that vibe and that family atmosphere, just because it's your brother, it's your family, they're your heart. Nothing that ever happens around you, or that you could come face to face with could ever break that up.

How do you think that family vibe has spread over into your fan base? Since you've won over a number of people on practically a one-on-one basis, having played live for so long before ever putting out your album, and continuing to tour so much, do you think you have a more personal bond with your fans? Oh absolutely, and we've been seeing that more and more as we've been playing our headlining shows. We actually have a last-minute headlining show tonight in Chico, California, and those are the shows where you really realize just who is following you and who your fans are and who are more or less your extended family. It's always been important to us to keep in touch with everybody and we use all the social networks to do that while we're on the road, and everywhere we can we do as many meet-and-greets and making sure we're hanging out all night, just because these people, from what we've realized what our personal fan base is, they're very passionate, and they believe in us like they're related to us. There are some people that follow us that really the only other people that I can think of that follow us with that type of passion and fervor and attitude would be like our parents! [Laughs] So every triumph that you go through is essentially theirs as well because they're in it with us. Every time that something new happens, like we put out a new video or our band takes the next step, people have come up to me and told me, 'Hey, you're our band. We're right there with you.' So it's very cool.

I've read that your song, 'I Get Off' is sort of a metaphor for the experience you have while playing live. Was there one show or a moment onstage that inspired you to write the song? It actually was a particular show. It was one of those shows, that, pardon me for being so forward, but I think it was better than sex. And it was that way for the four us. And those shows come every so often where all four of us just agree that it's a great show. This particular show was in California at the Viper Room, obviously before the record came out, when we were in pre-production making our record, and the place was filling up, and there were a lot of people who had no idea who we were, and two people in particular came to see our show that One was our producer, Howard Benson, and the other was our now A&R guy, Pete Gambler. These two people, I mean they've seen a lot of bands, they've worked with a lot of bands, and they were sitting in a booth, and I told the guys before the show, 'They're probably going to just sit there and stare at you. It's gotta take something extremely special to actually get them up and out of their seats.' Not that they're jaded, but they've seen a lot of bands; some great ones and some not-so-great ones. So we were very anxious to see what they thought of us, and this was the first time that our producer was able to see us. So I turn to the booth just to check it out, after the second song, and here's Howard Benson up on the booth, with devil horns in the air. [Laughs] And Pete's in the aisle fist-pumping in the air for the song, and I turn to the guys with this complete surge of energy, and I say, 'I think they like us, guys! Come on!' So it was one of those moments where, I think the original line we were talking about after the show that somebody said it, that I was just digging the fact that they were into or loving the fact that they were loving us, something cheesy like that. So I wrote it down, and that eventually turned into 'I get off on you getting off on me.' And then I had a lot of fun kind of walking the line on that song, because it was something I fell in love with, just kind of making the lyrics not entirely one way or the other. Because I didn't want to talk about a song; so I thought, how else can we take this? [Laughs] I'm a huge fan of Alice Cooper and the way that he would always word his songs was that he was a master of walking the line. Like, which way is he going? [Laughs.]

Obviously, guy fans of yours have zeroed in on the sexual side of that song and a lot of your other songs. How do you feel about being a rock sex symbol? I really don't mind it. Sex and rock 'n' roll have always gone hand in hand. My personal opinion of it is that I don't mind it at all. I'm not one to shy away from wearing skintight pants or a short skirt onstage. But I think what it does is it makes me work a lot harder to be good at what I do, and to be a good songwriter and a good guitar player and a good singer, because I feel like there are a lot of people out there who do just ride on the fact that they're a girl and they're 'hot' or whatever [laughs] and to me if I don't have something to back it up it doesn't make it as special. You want to have something of substance when they look past your short skirt.

Or even getting them to just look past your gender, since a lot of people still look at women in hard rock bands as something of a rarity, right? Oh, definitely. It's funny because I do know that take that as, 'Oh man, it's so hard being a girl, you have to push through so much.' And I'm like, yeah, you do, but at the same time I'm very glad that I'm not a guy fronting a band because there'd be so much more competition and a lot of the attention that I have gotten for my band has initially happened because I'm a girl. And then they look past it, and say, 'Oh, okay, and they're actually good.' Which is awesome. But yeah, you can take it both ways. I say, with anything you're trying to build up your band and you're trying to do what you love as a career, so no matter what gender you are, it's going to be hard. It's no easier because you're a guy or harder because you're a girl. This is the nature of this business. If you want to get ahead in whatever you do, you've go to work hard and you've got to go through certain barriers. So, the guys, I mean some of my guys would look good in a skirt [laughs] but a guy can't just get up there and do that and then stick out like a sour thumb on a tour, which is another reason why I feel like I'm lucky. There are a lot of girl-fronted bands out there where I feel like I'm being inducted into this exclusive club where I'm usually the only one on the bill, which is sad, but it's definitely helped us stick out, 'cause even if they don't remember your band name, they'll remember the band that was on that tour with the chick. Who were they? [Laughs.]

'It's Not You' has been around for so long (seven years or so and growing). Why do you think that song has just stuck with you and how does it feel to have the song out as a single now? Oh, wow. I think it takes a long time for a certain song to reach its niche. With us, we've had that song on almost every song that we've put out; that song is like five years old. Or six, I'm not sure. It's the song that refuses to die! [Laughs] So we've kind of always been putting it out and we've constantly been revising it, and are like, 'Okay, maybe we can make it better.' I'm a huge believer of a song can always be better. Even if it's on another recording, I always think, 'Well, I can do that a little better and maybe it will make it on this record.' And lo and behold it made it on this record and I think with the fact that it became a single and it's doing well, and we did a great video to it, I think it's been a sigh of relief because I don't think I'm going to put it on anything else. [Laughs.] It won't have to be on the next record.

Speaking of that, are you anxious to record a follow-up since your major label debut was so long in the making? I'm definitely anxious to get another record out. Writing is just something that we do, or that I do so much, so I'm already writing for the next record, and have quite a few collected up that we think we'll make for the next record. I can't tell you when that will be, but I'm always interested in where we can go next. So if these new songs make it or not, we're in the process.

Halestorm will hit Intersection March 7. Their self-titled debut album is in stores and online now. For more on the band, check out halestormrocks.com.