Halestorm guitarist Joe Hottinger has shared his take on what makes a relationship work when you share both a stage and a life, opening up about his more than two-decade romance with the band’s frontwoman, Lzzy Hale. For Hottinger, the answer comes down to one simple but powerful thing: communication.
In a new interview with “Gear4music Guitars“, Hottinger responded to Hale‘s recent public acknowledgment of their long-running relationship, suggesting the reveal was hardly a bombshell for anyone paying attention.
“Most people [already] knew [about it]. We didn’t even think about it,” he said.
Asked for his tips on being part of a couple within a band, Hottinger described the unique balancing act of life on the road, while noting that he and Hale are lucky to share the same passions.
“It’s funny. It’s a double-edged sword, ’cause you go tour a lot in a band and you either leave your wife at home or your girl’s with you everywhere doing everything. But luckily, we love the same things. We love rock shows. We love music. We love guitars. It’s, like, anything I like do, she likes to do, and vice versa,” he explained.
For the guitarist, the real glue isn’t a secret formula but a commitment to open, unfiltered honesty: I don’t know what the secrets are. The only thing we do, we communicate — we’re very good communicators. I think that’s true, and it doesn’t matter if you’re in a band or not, but it’s, like, deadly honest, which is — to me, that’s a love language, being deadly honest. ‘Cause if I’m feeling something funny, just say it. Like, ‘That’s how I feel. Now you know. Do what you want with that. And now I’m free of it.’ So maybe that’s it. You just talk.”
Hale had spoken candidly about the relationship this past March during an appearance at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, where the couple took part in a conversation moderated by Katherine Turman and performed an acoustic set. Before playing “The Silence“, the closing track from Halestorm‘s 2018 album Vicious, she addressed the crowd directly.
“Just to throw another wrench into the works, for those of you who have just met us, I know there’s a lot of different dynamics and things, but Joe and I are together, and we have been for 22 years,” she said.
“Like Joe was saying earlier in the night, when we met, we had never met anyone like each other,” Hale continued. “You actually wanna sit till four in the morning and manifest our dreams and make them into reality. And so we were hanging out all the time and I’m, like, ‘Man, it sucks that he’s in the band.’ That’s a big no-no. Like Joe said, you don’t wanna [end up like] Fleetwood Mac. What you wanna do is Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo. But you can’t predict those things. So we had these very adult conversations, like, ‘Well, if we…’ ‘Cause we were very immaturely flirting. We were flirting, but pretending we’re not… But no, we made the decision, we’re, like, ‘If we don’t try this, then we could be losing out on something too.’ Because I will tell you over the last 22 years, there is nothing like having all of these firsts and chasing your dream, doing the thing that you love with the person you love.”
Lzzy and her brother, drummer Arejay Hale, first formed Halestorm while still in middle school in the late 1990s. Hottinger joined the band on guitar in 2003, with bassist Josh Smith coming aboard the following year. The romantic side of things became public knowledge in October 2015, when Smith confirmed the long-rumored relationship between the two musicians.
