Get Ready For The Halestorm At Knotfest

‘The rock and roll fans down there are feral and they love the heavy music. I get this sense of gratitude that a lot of them are just so thankful that we travelled twenty two hours in an aeroplane just to be there, but it’s really kind of a vacation for us, it’s just so beautiful and so nice down there. So Australia is one of those places where I’m like, yeah, I could live here. This is pretty awesome’

Arejay Hale, co-founder, drummer, writer and younger brother in American rock giants Halestorm is excited about his bands return to Australia and Knotfest.

‘We’re happy to go there. We’re always like, if y’all want us there, we’re stoked to come down there.’

To interview Hale is to go on a rollercoaster where if you scream it just goes faster, and the man’s work is not limited to just Halestorm either, with music recorded with Taylor Carroll from Lit called Kemikalfire and Hale’s own YouTube channel Dr. Magnifiscent. At mention of the channel, Hale’s eyes light up.

‘We were all just looking for things to do and I’d always kind of been nerdy about fragrances. I think it probably started from the early years of touring when you don’t know when you’re going to see a shower, you’re doing meet and greet and you don’t want to smell bad. So I used to always kind of travel with two or three different scents with me.’

‘I was kind of really interested in fragrance and also just loved the idea of creating content and being inspired by other creators. I started following other fragrance YouTubers and I was thinking, I wonder if I could do something like this but kind of inject my own personality into it. I’ve always loved comedy and it’s always been a love of mine as well, so I get to kind of combine my passions for perfumery and silliness. So that’s kind how that started and it just kind of snowballed.’

‘So it’s just been fun, and it’s also a fun way for me to kind of distract myself from the grind of touring. I can just put my headphones in and edit fragrance content and it’s just fun for me. So that’s really cool that you know what it is. It’s kind of an underground thing right now, but it’s growing.’

To watch Hale’s, sorry, Dr. Magnifiscent’s channel is is to get all of his personalities, joy and wonder in 10-15 minute comedy segments, however he is still very much a fan.

‘The whole frag tube, frag com, whatever you want to call it on YouTube is kind of a culture. I’ve made friends with a lot of other fragrance YouTubers just from doing it who are also Halestorm fans and like, ‘oh, hey man, it’s such an honour to meet you’. And I’m like ‘no, it’s an honour to meet you! I’ve been watching your videos for years and I’m a fan of you.’ So it’s a pretty cool thing.’

‘It’s also kind of helpful. You can’t smell anything through a video screen yet. We haven’t invented Smellovision yet! So it’s a good way to guide people towards using the descriptors and analysing notes and also describing how it performs. But in the end of the day, you have to test it on your skin because that’s really going to be the deciding factor. It could smell great on me and it could smell terrible on you and vice versa depending on your skin chemistry.’

‘So I’m excited to get to Australia and get to nerd out with some fans about fragrance and maybe help turn them on to some really cool ones that they may not have heard of.’

Oh that’s right, Hale is actually coming to Australia to tour with Halestorm. Let’s bring it back to that and what show they are bringing us.

‘A lot of the fans that we know down there, they love to travel from show to show. In fact, we see them a lot at the airport or on the same aeroplane, and we’re like ‘Hey!’ So I think in true Halestorm fashion, we’re probably going to switch it up every day and throw in some new stuff that you might not have seen at the last show.’

‘The difference between a headline show and a shorter festival set, which I think we’re playing like an hour, so it’s not super short. It’s basically the same level of energy, it’s just much more condensed. So when we’re playing a shorter set, we have much shorter breaks in between songs so that we just try to get as much in as possible. So you’ll still be getting a lot, even if we’re playing a shorter set,

Halestorm constantly work, if not touring, they are recording. As it’s been two years since last release Back From The Dead this would mean they are deep in album recording?

‘Yeah, we started getting in the studio and just kind of hashing out ideas around last fall, I think like end of summer, early fall last year. We’re doing this little two week run in New Zealand and Australia, and then when we get back, we’re pretty much going to go straight in the studio and start working up some more stuff. So yeah, we’re kind of doing it simultaneously. We’re not doing a lot of touring this year, so we just have this tour and then a big summer tour. And then I think the rest of the year is going to be pretty much focused on recording.’

Since their last visit here, Hale got engaged to a ‘hundred out of ten’ and ‘she is as independent as they come. I even ask her, are you going to miss me when I’m gone? And she’s like, yeah, not really!’ so we will give the last word to the man and his obvious passion.

‘I’ve got a few that I’m going to be taking with me. I could show you real quick actually. This one right here, this is Yves St. Laurent’s ‘Tuxedo’, it’s a really great chili scent and really perfect for fall, really sexy, really classy. I’m going to be bringing in this one. ‘Tobacolor’ by Dior is a tobacco scent, and fall time is great for tobacco, although I’ve heard it’s still kind of hot out there. So I’m also going to be bringing this one, it’s called Le Male Le Parfum which is an iris scent. So it’s really powdery, a little bit floral and also has some deeper spices and stuff like that, but it does have some freshness to it, so this is a good, well-rounded scent that I’m going to be bringing with me.’

Interview By Iain McCallum

Catch Halestorm at Knotfest, tickets HERE…

And Knotfest Sideshows, tickets HERE…