Halestorm singer and guitarist Lzzy Hale has had her fair share of embarrassing incidents on stage.
“Challenging onstage moments happen every night!” she admits with a laugh. “We don’t use clicks or anything - we’re each other’s God when we walk out onstage, you know?
“We all hold hands, jump off the cliff, and then be like, ‘Hey, did we pack our parachutes? I hope we did…’
But as Lzzy tells MusicRadar, there was one particular incident during a show in Nebraska in 2006 that really sticks in her memory.
It was an incident when Lzzy’s brother Arejay Hale, the band’s drummer, pulled victory from the jaws of defeat.
“We had just begun touring,” Lzzy recalls. “This was before we put out our first album.
“We got signed by Atlantic, and then we went right out on the road.
“We were in Nebraska, and starting the first song, which started off a cappella - kind of like [Black Sabbath classic] War Pigs.
“So, I was channeling my inner Ozzy and starting this song a cappella, and then I’d make a cue for the guys to come in, and we’d all slam into the chorus, right?
“So I started off, and I got to my cue, and I looked left and right, and my bass player and guitar player were just waving at me, saying, ‘Stall! Stall! We can’t find Arejay!’
“Turns out Arejay was locked outside of the building!
“So I had to make some stuff up. I said something like, ‘I’m in love with Nebraska' or something like that!
“Then, out of the corner of my eye I see my little brother…
“He comes running onstage, doesn’t even go behind the kit, he climbs over the front of the kit, and I’m like, ‘One, two three!’ and we go into the song!
“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh!’
“But that was a good lesson - because you have to learn that you don’t stop the show for any reason—not even when you don’t have a drummer onstage because he's locked outside of the building!
“So, it was definitely a lesson learned, and we pulled it off.
“But it was just so funny how, like, after the show, while we were signing some CDs at the merch table, everybody was like, ‘That was such a crazy intro! Do you do that every night?’
“I was like, ‘Hopefully not!’”
