Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: Halestorm

Joe Hottinger: On top of that, we were writing the whole time. We went out to L.A. We were supposed to be there a month, just to write with people, which I think was really cool. We ended up out there 19 months and left with a finished record. There were snag-ups along the way. There was a few months lost here and there. But it was mostly writing, which is great. You get to write with some of the best writers out there. It’s like going to college, rock n’ roll college.

Lzzy: Going to school. And we’re better because of it. We’re better musicians, we’re better songwriters. So even though it took a long time, it was so worth it because we’re so proud of this record. And there’s nothing about it that we say now like, “Oh, we should’ve done that, we should’ve done this.” We probably will be that way in a couple years, but if we had come right off tour and done a record with the songs that we had, we’d still be out on tour probably on that record, but I don’t know if we’d be as proud of it as we are on this one. A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into this one.

Josh Smith: It was definitely worth it.

Arejay Hale: The best things come to those who wait, so it was a good thing that we waited, we didn’t rush it.

Lzzy: Plus, Atlantic is amazing. I was just talking about that with somebody this morning. We spent the past couple days in New York with our extended family at Atlantic , and they’re great because they’re so passionate about what they do. And we’re passionate about what we do. But you can tell that they love their jobs and they do not let anything slip by, like the most minute detail. I remember making the record and coming up with the artwork for the record. They’d send me proofs of it and then they’d say, “Do you want it this shade of greenish gray?” We’d send a song and like one line—“Do you think you could make that better?” Of course, the answer was always like, “Well, yeah, if it can be better, we’ll make it better. Sweet.” But we love that about them because we’re the same way. I think that, again, the combo of that, we’re seeing that happen now. We’re seeing collective excitement in both parties, Atlantic and, obviously, with us.

Lzzy: Oh yeah. It felt like one long summer.

Joe: The best weather. Always something fun to do. I loved it.

Arejay: It’s always entertaining. Every day is a Saturday in L.A.

Lzzy: We came back to Pennsylvania, we have no tolerance for cold weather anymore. You can probably tell because it’s actually really warm today, but we all still have our hoodies and our coats on. No walking around in shorts today.

[laughter]

Lzzy: We’re fortunate to live a lifestyle that every day there’s something different happening and we meet different people and are in different situations. So I think that above anything else inspires a song. It’ll be something funny that someone says or that we meet in Texas or a situation. For example, on the record there’s a track called “What Were You Expecting?” That song was inspired by being out on tour and being one of the only, for me personally, one of the only girls on any tour anywhere. And so you walk in and there was one specific situation where I was changing the strings of my guitar and one of the road crew guys comes up and like, “Ah, my girlfriend never does that for me.” And I didn’t correct him and I didn’t say like, “Well, I’m in the band.” And then you walk out on stage and you have a Les Paul strapped on and you front a band. After the whole show was over, he’s like, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” And I’m like, “It’s totally cool.” We, over a period of a couple years, really have begun to use that as almost part of our show, ‘cause nobody’s expecting that. And I don’t blame anybody for saying that to me, like hey, guess away, it’s all good, ‘cause there are so few of us out there. But yeah, that song was fun because it’s kind of poking fun at my own situation.

Arejay: I think we all kind of come from different areas of influence. Lzzy and I were hugely raised on classic rock. That’s kind of what our parents did. My dad played bass in a million bands when he was younger. So definitely, the things that got him inspired were the things he turned us onto, like Cream, like Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Vanilla Fudge, Deep Purple—all those cool, old psychedelic bands. Our music kind of has a little bit of that in there.

Lzzy: Yeah, there’s classic rock. There’s obvious ‘90s rock overtones because when we were kids we would be listening to that.

Josh: Kids of the ‘90s.

Joe: We are kids of the ‘90s.

Lzzy: They were good times. You go back and listen to those albums and get warm, fuzzy feelings.

Arejay: Definitely a little Soundgarden. Superunknown was a great record.

Lzzy: I think right now we’re in a fortunate situation to be exposed to so many different types of music. We listen to everything from bluegrass to heavy metal. I think anything that’s good and you can tell the band loves what they do, it shows through and so we’re a fan. Fans of good music.

Lzzy: Well, [Arejay’s] my little brother, so obviously, we started it around 10 years ago and then a few years in, we kind of met Josh through a mutual friend.

Josh: Yeah, they worked with this guy who I worked with in a different project. My project fizzled and they were looking for a temp bass player. I played a few shows and—

Lzzy: So we were like, “Just come in for a little bit until we find a permanent bass player.”

Josh: One of the first shows was opening up for Finger Eleven.

Lzzy: Three Days Grace.

Josh: Yeah, it was huge. I was like, “I can do this. This is fun.” So I was hooked.

Lzzy: And Joe answered a wanted ad.

Joe: I went an auditioned and they called me back. That was my perspective anyway. Jammed with ‘em a bunch.

Lzzy: You were late, though.

Joe: ‘Cause your dad gave me the wrong directions.

[laughter]

Lzzy: That was kind of a series of crazy events. We were showcasing for some people and we went to New York City to showcase for a guy we met who used to work at Atlantic . He used to work there, didn’t anymore, but he wanted to invest in us and wanted to bring a couple rich friends and say, “Hey, let’s put a bunch of money together and send this band out on the road.” That ended up for whatever reason not working out, but the club that we played at was called Don Hill’s. And Don Hill himself, the owner, really liked our band and so he basically told us, “Come back a couple times next month and we’ll put you in regularly so you can start building a buzz in New York City and maybe something will happen for you.”

Don started bringing people out to these shows we would play at Don Hill’s. He brought his lawyer out and then his lawyer was an entertainment lawyer [and] ended up bringing our then A&R guy out to see us—before we were signed; he’s the guy that signed us. And then he got excited and brought interns from Atlantic and then it was like from the janitor the chairman. We did like 20 showcases for Atlantic Records over a period of like seven months. And finally put ink to paper in June of ’05.

It was cool. It was a great decision for us, too, because at the time we were doing 250 dates a year by ourselves, doing whatever we wanted to do. The decision was, “OK, so we could be like kings of the scene and probably make a decent living doing what we love to do playing bars or we could kind of take this chance with these people that were really cool.” At the time, we were like, “Maybe they’re just being nice,” but we’ve come to find out that they’re really great people and really understand what we’re about.

Arejay: They just have a really great mentality on how to break a debut band, a new band just starting out. I think out of all the labels they have one of the best teams around them to help develop their new artists and help break them, get them out in different ways, different marketing strategies. They’re really ahead of their time, I think, so especially a lot of the strategies they’re using to help break us. We’re very lucky.

Lzzy: Well, especially today, with financial problems, instead of saying, “We’ll just wait it out and see what happens,” they’re actively trying to figure out they’re going to stay afloat—“OK, we can do this and this and this, this will cover that.” So yeah, they’re real efficient with that. We were happy with the decision. After we got signed, went right out on the road with a five-song EP [One and Done]. We did really well and Atlantic was like, “Yeah! Keep going! Do it!” So we stayed out on tour for a while and finally settled down to do the record.

Arejay: Yeah, when we first got our EP it was just a little thing, we were gonna be on the road for a few months and, like she was saying, once they found out we were selling that much, they started putting the barcode on it, they started putting it in Best Buy and FYE, and they kept us on the road for another year or so. It was good, though, because it really helped us get tight as a band and be able to understand how to structure the songs to create energy.

Lzzy: It’s one thing to love what you do and know what you can do live. It’s another thing when you’re like, “OK, now we have this label” and they’re finding out for the first time what you can do. It’s a cool moment for us. It’s almost like a constant state of proving yourself, but it’s more like, “Hey, yeah, did you know we can do this, too?” It’s exciting.

Lzzy: They’re on our label and management, so it’s kind of like—

Arejay: They’re family, brethren.

Lzzy: Yeah, kind of a given. I think this is our fifth tour with them.

Josh: The first time we met ‘em was in Milwaukee, Summerfest.

Lzzy: Their fans are awesome, too. The first time we played for them, their fans wanted an encore. I thought that was really cool. There are some fans of the headliners that are like, “Oh no, we want the headliner and we don’t want anybody else.” But they have the best fans in the world. We always know when we go out with Shinedown there’s somebody that’s gonna know who we are and really welcome us with open arms.

Arejay: Oh, absolutely.

Lzzy: Especially in the last two tours with them—This one is exciting for them because they have an amazing record and they’re crossing over into pop. A huge production. You’ll see it tonight. The lights are ridiculous. Brent [Smith] has one of the most recognizable voices in rock radio, so it’s neat to be that close with a band and really get to see every night what a headliner does and “OK, this is how you put on a show.” That alone is good to see every night and see the reaction to their songs. Brent works the audience like no other. I have yet to see him make everyone do the chicken dance, but he’s done about everything. They are with him 100 percent of the way.

Arejay: He’s got a great frontman dynamic. It’s actually funny, on a side note, I actually met Brent and I met [drummer] Barry [ Kerch ] in New York a long time ago before we were even signed and hung out with them on their bus. We kind of hit it off and became buddies. Then when we actually got signed and got to do our first show them, it was a cool moment because we kind of passed each other, like, “Oh, hey, what’s up? It’s good to see you. We’re labelmates now. You guys are on Atlantic . So are we.” Then we ended up doing all the tours together, so it’s a cool thing.

Lzzy: Yeah, we stopped at the house and got showers, did some laundry—just because we didn’t want to smell for you.

Lzzy: Yeah, absolutely. Just from the little that we’ve heard on MySpace, there’s a lot of people that actually haven’t seen us in forever—and we apologize for that. But it’s really great to see everybody again. It’s neat to see the response because we thought that one side effect of taking our time and being out so long would be we would have to start all over again and everybody would’ve forgotten all about us. But the opposite actually happened and some of our tried-and-true have actually brought people to come and see us now that we’re finally back. So it’s really cool.

Lzzy: I can’t remember the first time we did it, actually. I think it was just an experiment.

Josh: We would do long three-, four-hour shows, hometown bar shows. They’d be really long nights, so we would just tell Arejay, “Go off, do something.” So he’d always go off and do a solo. It started there.

Arejay: I never really liked just doing a drum solo ‘cause it’s like 15 seconds of “Hey, look at me! I’m doing a drum solo!” It’s already been done. I was like, “Let’s make it a full band drum thing.” The reason we did it was to give Lzzy’s voice a break, and it just kind of evolved into a full band drum solo. It started catching on. People were like, “You guys are doing it this time, right?”

Lzzy: We just had that happen tonight. We were doing a meet-and-greet over there, and they’re like, “Now tell me you’re doing the drum circle thing because I brought my sister, and if you’re not doing it, please add it in.” I’m like, “No, we’re doing it tonight. It’s all good.” But yeah, it got to that point where we were doing it occasionally, every couple shows or something for opening, and then we wouldn’t do it, we would get flooded with e-mails.

Arejay: “What the hell?!”

[laughter]

Lzzy: So it’s become a really cool part of the set. It’s great because no matter what album we’re on, whether anybody knows our new songs, nobody has to know the lyrics to that one, it just comes back to the primal drum beats.

Lzzy: Right now? So typical day, I’m gonna go by the Connecticut show that we just had: Wake up and as we’re rolling to the venue, usually have one or two, sometimes three phoners—morning show phoners, phone interviews—and then get to the venue, this specific show we had to drive to the morning show, Good Morning Connecticut, we do a morning show, go back to the venue, have an on-camera with local Internet stations or whatever and sometimes just regular interviews for the press.

Arejay: She did a phoner interview on the way to the TV station and a phone interview back from the TV station.

Joe: We drove up to Springfield, Massachusetts, to do acoustic on the radio.

Lzzy: This is all before the show. Then you do the show. You go up and do the show, and hopefully you get enough time to soundcheck. There have been many a shows where you don’t even see the stage until 10 minutes before we go on because there’s so much going on. And then, so you do the show, and then we come back to the merch table after the show, sell CDs, sign them, meet everybody, say hi. Then we go and we eat. Before Shinedown comes on, we try and have a sandwich because we realize, “Oh, I’ve only had coffee today!” And then at the end of the night, we come back and see everybody again, count out and go to the next show. It’s getting absolutely crazy.