Halestorm – Haleiday Tour 2012

Haleiday Tour 2012 Review

12/27/12 – Electric Factory – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

12/29/12 – Wellmont Theatre – Montclair, New Jersey

12/31/12 – Baltimore Soundstage – Baltimore, Maryland

Every late December for the past three years, I’ve been taking a trip up to the Northeastern United States for a little phenomenon fans have dubbed “The Haleidays” – a mini holiday tour the band Halestorm has been putting on for quite some time now. This year though, was a bit different from the rest, as Halestorm was opening more than half the shows themselves, for themselves. Save for New Year’s Eve (since they needed the show to last until after midnight), Lzzy and the boys performed a sort of Jekyll and Mz. Hyde routine where they would first come out for an acoustic set all dressed in white and then come out for the electric set clad in black and turned up to eleven.

Not only did the Haleiday Tour 2012 offer these two juxtaposed sides of the band, it also debuted quite a few songs that had not been previously performed live, as well as some rare crowd favorites. For the first time, “Beautiful with You” and “I Hate It When You See Me Cry” were all played as well as some new covers like AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” and “To Love Somebody” by the Bee Gees. The acoustic set opened up a ton of unique opportunities for the band to also play some of their older songs as well, like “I’m Not An Angel,” “Better Sorry Than Safe,” and the rare “Rose in December.”

Since there was an acoustic set to begin with, the plugged in set was amped up a couple notches with no rests or breathers in the middle, which made for an even more amazing live Halestorm experience! The band showed no signs of slowing down during any of the concerts and they all gave 110% each night. In fact, Lzzy’s voice seemed to be a bit tired after three of the shows in a row simply because she doesn’t get any rest during these holiday runs and always seems to get sick as a result, but have no fear; she still rocked out as hard as ever and sounded absolutely amazing.

On New Year’s Eve, there was an opening band called Bad Seed Rising out of Baltimore. The band consisted of four members ranging from the ages of 10 to 14. Yes, you read that correctly: 10 to 14 years old. Upon initially hearing the news that a group of kids were opening for Halestorm, I was a bit shocked, but after some thought, I realized that they had to be good in order to be opening for Halestorm on this Haleiday run. It was a good thing I kept an open mind, because Bad Seed Rising was impressive to say the least. The band was extremely tight as a unit and played their live show with the experience of a band with much more age. They played so well, in fact, that Lzzy was raving about them throughout Halestorm’s entire set saying that they were the “future of rock” and that “rock is not dead.”

Now, I’ve been to my fair share of Halestorm shows (20 after New Year’s Eve, if you must know), but this New Year’s Eve show was, by far, the best concert I’ve ever been to. It may have been the toast at midnight and Arejay spilling half a bottle of champagne on me. It may have been the constant attention I was getting from each member of Halestorm since I was basically front and center. It may have been the sheer amount of fun that Lzzy and the boys were having onstage messing with each other. It may have been the fact that there was no photo pit, so we were right up against the stage, which also wasn’t that high off the ground. It may have been the company I was with. It may have been the fact that Arejay beat so hard on his drums that he cut his finger open and broke a snare. It may have been a combination of all of these things. Whatever it was, there was nothing like that show and nothing like this Haleiday run.