Lzzy Hale has praised a group of die-hard fans in Europe whose support helped her to recover from a depressive episode during the touring cycle for Halestorm‘s last album Back From The Dead. 

The singer and guitarist reveals that she had been struggling with her mental health while on tour during an interview for season 2 of The Allison Hagendorf Show, but an interaction with a group of 11 fans in Europe who call themselves ‘The Lzzy Birds’ helped her to speak out and process what she had been going through.

• READ MORE: Lzzy Hale: metal isn’t about “what’s between anybody’s legs”

“Something snapped in me during this last album cycle,” she says. “I went through a very depressing time during Back From The Dead. It started out very joyous and then halfway through the album cycle, I started to lose the idea that it was me doing this… it’s almost like I’ve built this thing and it’s beautiful and I’ve had all of these things happen to me that are wonderful but it didn’t seem like it was me. But it’s like now, all of a sudden, I built this monster that now I have to live up to and is who I am.

She continues: “I started to almost be down on myself for the things that I get sad about or the things that I still have to work through in my life and something happened – I’m going to try not to get emotional about it but on the last tour, I had somewhat of a mental breakdown.”

Hale goes on to explain that halfway through a seven-week tour, she encountered The Lzzy Birds in Europe. The group has been following the band for a decade and come to “every meet and greet, every show” and usually end up in the front row. When they met with her, they said they noticed that she didn’t seem like herself while on stage.

“They started talking to me about it and they’re like ‘Hey, are you okay? There isn’t a light in your eyes right now.’ I did the normal thing of being like ‘Oh no, I’m just tired, it’s just tour.’ It’s like they didn’t believe me.

“The next day they come the meet and greet and each in their own individual way gave me a letter. Each letter said in its own way, ‘Hey, here’s the reason why we come to your shows, here’s the reason why you speak to us, here’s the reason that you make us feel so strong, and it’s okay if you’re not doing well right now. We are not gonna abandon you and it’s okay not to be our leader , our strong person. If you need anything we’re here, you don’t have to tell us anything but it’s okay to feel what you’re feeling right now.”

She adds: “I just lost it. They gave me permission to be flawed. And so the next day, we’re hanging out and they all ended up by the buses, so I kind of held court and I just told them everything I was going through. And then I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I can be all of the things.’

“So from that moment, I’m like, ‘Okay, what is not serving me?’ So I’ve shed a lot of things that don’t serve me. All of the weird depraved thoughts that I have about myself, I just stopped thinking about that and I’m like, ‘You know what? That’s not a me problem, that’s everybody else’s problem. I like myself and I can honour even the things that I think are wrong about me because even the wrong things were [still part of] the vehicle to get me here, to get me to the right place. It’s like, I am the sum of all my parts.”

In other news, Hale launched a signature Kramer Voyager model in December, which was the company’s “first artist model for a female guitarist”.

Listen to season 2 of the Allison Hagendorf Show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all good podcast platforms.