Halestorm bassist Josh Smith was interview by The Sound Lab at this year’s Download Festival and talked about starting work on a new studio album, “Yes, it has. When we were just home, we spent a week with someone who I’m not sure I’m at liberty to say. So I’m just gonna keep it hush for now. I try my best not to speak out of turn, which means I usually don’t speak a lot. But yes, we’re working on new music.”
Smith continued, “There’s been a lot of rehearsing and preparing for [the current European shows], but it’s fun to sort of couple [that with writing] when you are in this mindset, because then you are thinking about what would be effective in front of a crowd. Yeah, it’s been really productive, and some ideas have just popped out, which is exciting. They’re cool, which means we’ve still got it. [Laughs]”
As for the band’s songwriting process, “It happens every which way. This last time we were all involved. But it started with this little melody line that Lzzy [Hale, guitar/vocals] had. That was it. It was just this idea that could potentially be a melody line and an idea for a chorus, maybe. So we went with it, and it popped out really quick. But, yeah, truly, [it happens] any and every which way. I could be playing something on the piano or Lzzy or Joe [Hottinger, guitar] plays a riff and [we go], ‘Oh, that’s cool.’ It’s just, like, anything goes. We just try to spend a lot of time together so we can sort of bottle that spontaneous magic.”
Meanwhile, if you didn’t catch it, last month, Halestorm teamed up with country singer Ashley McBryde for a re-imagined version of the band’s song, “Terrible Things”.
