Somewhere, a tap-dancing cowgirl is telling whoever will listen that she once beat Halestorm in a talent competition.
You see, when Red Lion, Pa., native Lzzy Hale was 13 and her drumming brother Arejay was 10, they played at the Schuylkill County Fair. It was their first show as Halestorm — they decided on the name on the ride to the fair — and they finished in third place in the contest. To the tap-dancing cowgirl.
The fair performance emboldened the Hales to keep going as Halestorm.
“I don’t think my parents knew that determination was going to turn into obsession,” Lzzy — born Elizabeth Hale — says with a laugh during a recent phone conversation with the Weekender.
Halestorm has come a long way since then, having logged more than a decade as a band. However, it’s a career that, in some people’s eyes, is brand new, because Halestorm only came to more widespread prominence since it signed with Atlantic Records a few years ago. Last April, Atlantic released the band’s full-length, self-titled debut, and the rising band scored a radio and video hit with “I Get Off.” It recently released another single, “Familiar Taste of Poison” — which it played on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” — and landed a main-stage slot at the inaugural Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Festival, which hits Scranton Friday.
In many ways — the major-label deal, the newfound media exposure and main-stage time on a major tour like Uproar — it’s been an era of new beginnings for Hale and her brother, guitarist Joe Hottinger and bassist Josh Smith.
“The best analogy that we’ve come up with this far is it’s the whole high-school-to-college thing,” Hale says. “You go from being a senior in high school, and people know you and you’re doing well. Then you get to college.
“It’s neat. You have to prove yourself. That’s kind of been our mentality from the beginning.”
Indeed, even though Halestorm calls the main stage home on the Uproar dates, the band is still paying its dues, having to play the stage’s earliest set. In Hale’s opinion, the band has 30 seconds to hook unfamiliar attendees, and 30 minutes to keep them interested.
“It’s kind of back to the beginning, when we were the first of four on the main stage,” she says, “so it’s kind of a quick set, kind of wham, bam, thank you ma’am. We have to hit ’em hard and fast.” Hale stops herself and laughs, noting all of the sexually charged phrases she’s just unintentionally used.
She’s more amused than embarrassed, though. Indeed, Hale’s sex appeal is part of the Halestorm aesthetic, pushed to the front in promo photos and videos.
“As far as the whole ‘hottest-chick-in-metal’ thing and getting up there with a short skirt and a guitar, I don’t mind that at all,” she says. “But my whole point is, if I’m going to dress to the nines and have the stiletto heels and the short skirt, I better practice so I can back it up.”
That said, she adds, “The only real pressure I come across in that area has kind of come from my own mind. I know what I want to keep hidden, because there’s a line, and also I know what I can pull off. You’re walking a line, and it’s fun in a way, because (I’m) able to maintain my personal integrity and what I’m trying to do.”
Hale says she and Arejay have “perpetually been about 10 years behind” in their musical tastes, but it’s a situation she relishes. When the siblings became serious about music as a career, their parents became more serious about sharing some of their favorite classic rock and metal records with their children.
“Even the videotapes and music videos we watched when we were young were the ‘Help!’ and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ videos that The Beatles did,” she remembers. “Those were the childhood VHS tapes. A lot of Queen, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Vanilla Fudge. The ’50s through ’80s metal. Black Sabbath, Janis Joplin, Pat Benatar, some Cinderella thrown in there.
“My parents’ song is ‘Panama’ by Van Halen. You can imagine the kind of household I grew up in,” she says, laughing.
After Uproar concludes in early October, Halestorm will enter “lots and lots of craziness,” says Hale. That includes the band’s first Japanese tour and then a position on the Rockstar Energy Drink Taste Of Chaos tour alongside Buckcherry, Disturbed and Hellyeah.
“This is like our last tour of the year in the States, pretty much,” the singer/guitarist says of Uproar, but notes the band will likely, as is its custom, play some shows in Central Pennsylvania during the holiday season. “And it’s neat,” she says, “because we’ve developed this kind of intimate relationship with our fans to the point of where we really want to see everybody when we have time off.”
That is a connection Hale and company relish, one that was apparent during a recent Northeastern Pa. show at Eleanor Rigby’s. She’s looking forward to meeting some more of the fans in our area on Friday.
“Considering your area and the people that are reading your publication, I really want to say ‘thank you,’ and we mean that,” Hale says, a sense of seriousness edging into her voice. “You guys keep us alive. And our fans, you guys are crazy, and you keep us sane out here, man. And thank you to everyone that says ‘hello.’”
w
| Tweet | Follow @wkdr |
|
|
