Lzzy Hale
You can't please everyone. There's always going to be someone disappointed, so you might as well make yourself happy and Be You.
I am holding on to every shred of femininity that I can with heels and dresses.
What I really realized is that by being myself, regardless of what that means, you become a better role model.
We're so humbled and lucky to be in a position where we've been a four-piece for over 15 years. We're signed to a major label. We're on our fourth record on a major label. We've won a Grammy. We've toured the world.
I've dealt my entire career with sexist and condescending people.
When you have a relationship with music, and it's that deeply a part of your life, it's so much more than a career choice for me. It's an extension of who I am.
I had, like, a keytar. I was always attracted to the guitar, but I never really thought that I could be good at it because I was trained on piano, so it was kind of a jump.
Deep down inside, I'm a cheeseball and still listen to Bryan Adams and all that stuff.
If, through my own personal journey, I can inspire someone else to self-love, that would be the biggest accomplishment.
I go back to the rock n' roll black leather jacket, red lips, smoky eyes. I like my high heels, maybe some leather pants or ripped jeans, things that have never really gone out of style. Again, it's very reflective of who I am as a bandmate in our band.
In my efforts to better my stamina and career, I find myself becoming more monk-like. And I'm not talking about the 'holy, praying, create awesome Trappist beer'-type monk. I'm talking about the 'go to bed early, no drinking, no talking, and no having any fun'-type monk.
It's important for people to realize that music is gender-less. We are proving that every single day. On this tour, there are more women than men in the audience, and it's beautiful to see these girls own these hard-rock moments.
When we began to tour, no one expected me to be a part of the band, so I used that as a tool, and would start the set off-stage or in the audience, as a surprise, because no one expected this little girl to get up and rock the way I do.
There's a misconception that, as you have success with a band for a long time, things get easier, and that's not necessarily true. It's harder to keep connecting with that fire that got you started in the first place when you're amongst all the politics in the business, and just having a little bit of that looming pressure.
I've been in the songwriting circuit as well. I've been in a couple writing camps where there are seven top writers or whatever, and they're writing songs for a young girl or a young guy that are coming up, and they're kind of nuts.
We don't dip our toe into religion or politics, because you can't win.
I grew up in a household that never talked about limitations.
I feel like, as a girl, I would have reacted or maybe been more depressed about some of the things that would have happened in my life if I didn't have music.
It'd be great to have more categories in the rock and metal category - but I don't want that job, picking where everybody is supposed to go.
There is something in my brain that said if I get Halestorm to a point where people are actually listening to what I have to say, I might as well put out positivity and be that empowering figure that I would have wanted in a rock star.
In my world, before I knew about Eddie Van Halen, I was playing piano, and at that point in my teenage life, I thought he was just a guitar player.
I wanted to be a multi-instrumentalist.
I got this cheap guitar, and then I fell in love with it and basically put down the keyboard.
I play mostly Gibsons. In fact, they have just given me a signature guitar.
I keep changing my stuff. I used to play through a Marshall JCM800, and then I also had a Randy Rhoads signature amp. So before I was playing EVH, I was playing an ODB pedal. I still have my Dunlop Jerry Cantrell wah pedal because I love that.
There's always an element of truth to what I write because that's why I write.
What people don't normally know about us is the hustle is very real, and it's sorely driven a lot by how we consider ourselves. We don't pay a whole lot of attention to any type of judgment that we might get from outside people. I think that comes from growing up onstage.
Something that I don't normally tell, and it's not necessarily because I wanna keep it from anybody - I just don't think about it - but one thing about me that not a whole lot of people know and that never really gets brought up is that I actually don't have a driver's license. I've never taken a driver's test.
I remember that when people started listening to what I had to say, I had a choice to set up a veil, even if it meant being something that I'm not. Ultimately, that's not the decision I made. I owned more of everything I am, which was a little nerve-racking.
My new year's resolution is to stop making five-year plans. I stress over where I'm going to be in five years so often.
I think it's less stressful to just make decisions as you go, because plans never work out, but you never run out of dreams. You have an eternal bucket list where you keep crossing things off, and keep adding things to the bottom.
I wore Chuck Taylors for a couple shows, and the second show I wore the Chuck Taylors, that was the one and only time I fell onstage. I haven't really bit it onstage in high heels yet. It will happen. It's not about if, it's about when.
I can count on less than five fingers the things I can do well, so I'm just going to stick to those. It's crazy; it's literally all I've ever wanted to do in life is sing and play and get out there and rock.
I ended up starting guitar because I didn't want to just be the lead singer.
It keeps my feet on the ground just making sure that I'm always trying to learn something new or trying to be a real guitar player.
I'm always trying to evolve my sound. I love the simplicity of my setup. I play Gibson guitars and Marshall amps. So it's kind of like the standard rock sound.
As far as people, I've always loved Tony Iommi's sound, just the grittiness that was in that era of metal where it wasn't too fuzzy, and you could still hear the guitar and the fingers, but it still had this chunky, meat-and-potatoes sound to it.
I grew up with my dad's music, so my introduction to rock was Alice Cooper and Cinderella and Dio and Black Sabbath, so I was listening to a lot of dude bands - Guns N' Roses and Metallica, all that stuff.
You can pick out the scariest dude on the tour and, guaranteed, he's probably a smush - I just find that so incredibly attractive.
I think that's a big part of what I love about the boys in the band, too, and what I find attractive in men in general is, really, the ability to not take everything so seriously because it is rock n' roll after all; it's a freakin' circus. We're not accountants here.
The good thing about most of the girls that I've met on the road is that, regardless of whether they're cute or not, man - they can bring it onstage, which is inspiring not just for young girls and young people in general but for myself because then it makes me want to step it up.
Cinderella obviously got caught up in the hair metal scene, but they were such a blues band. And such a good live band.
Once I started to make the transition to guitar - because I was playing keyboards when we started the band - I was trying to figure out riffs I could play without really having a lot of knowledge. And my dad ended up showing me Black Sabbath's 'Heaven and Hell,' because he knew I loved Dio.
What I love about Zeppelin is that you can listen to their entire catalog and kind of see where they were at in the moment.
I dare anybody to display a more amazing body of work than Tom Petty.
I have learned that you can't be high-maintenance on the road. I've groomed myself to not be high-maintenance. You have to maintain and be a girl and not become a dude.
I like to sew, and I am into bending metal and making industrial jewelry. I sew a lot of my own clothes and customize stuff.
I have always been 'small town.' I was born outside of Philadelphia, so we lived on a 20-acre farm and then spent two years in a log cabin on the Appalachian Trail. We lived outside of York in Red Lion, which is an amazing town. It's perpetually 1982 in that town.
One of the things that helps my vocal health immensely out on the road is stopping all my eating/drinking at least four hours before I go to bed. I actually set a timer after my last meal so I can't cheat. This is to prevent acid reflux when I lay down in my bunk at night.
Here's the breakdown: alcohol dehydrates you and stimulates acid reflux. Then, when you sing on dry, irritated vocal folds, your folds swell. When your folds swell, they cause hoarseness, which makes you feel like you have to push harder to get a sound out.