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The appeal of rock band Halestorm is such that one East Tennessee resident — first name Michael, who goes by the online handle BlueCatsFanatic — once drove 14 hours to see the band play a 20-minute set.

No doubt, Michael — and roughly 999 other people — will be in the audience next week when Halestorm plays a sold-out show at The Valarium in Knoxville, opening for Theory of a Deadman. Although the headline act is responsible for a chunk of the ticket sales, up-and-coming heavy rockers Halestorm, fronted by poised and polished rock chick Lzzy Hale, did its fair share to move all those box office receipts as well.

After all, the band's single “Get Off” recently peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart — not bad for a song about voyeurism and Hale's titillation at being watched through her bedroom window. Although its follow-up has done well, reaching No. 15 on the same chart — not to mention the success of the band's self-titled debut for Atlantic Records, which currently sits at No. 25 on the Hard Rock Albums chart — that song in particular says a lot about the sex appeal of Hale, who graced the cover of Revolver magazine recently as one of the “Hottest Chicks in Metal.”

“I've never been the type of girl to completely shy away from that,” Hale told The Daily Times this week. “My personal opinion is that sex and rock ‘n' roll kind of go hand-in-hand. The song ‘I Get Off?' My goodness, man — I've had lengthy conversations with female fans who don't take it in a sexual way at all. They look at it as a female empowerment song, and in a way it is. They tell me, ‘I'm so glad a girl is in the driver's seat of a sexually driven song!'

“There's no point in denying that, and if you can pull it off, why not? I think it makes me work a hell of a lot harder to be a good musician, to take care of my voice and practice my guitar (in order) to back the ‘Hottest Chicks in Metal' cover up, because I don't want to be just that. But if you can use it, then use it. It's extremely flattering that they picked me, and I'm very humbled by it. It's been a good two months of great coverage, and I still get asked about it a lot.”

She's come a long way since first forming Halestorm with her brother, Arejay, when she was 13. Her brother was 10 at the time, and as a kid growing up in York, Pa., she was surrounded by blue-collar townspeople who appreciated classic rock ‘n' roll blaring from a car stereo during a Friday night cruising session through the center of town. It's a time she remembers fondly, and an area she still holds close to her heart — which makes performing in mid-sized cities like Knoxville even more rewarding, she said.

“My parents still have a house there right in front of York, in this very small town called Red Lion,” she said. “It's actually the only town I know of named after a bar — the Red Lion Tavern came first, and I think that's a true testament to the people who live there. Obviously, they like their beer, but it's a place where no one's trying to follow any trends.

“There's just a plethora of rock ‘n' roll there. Some people still don't have cable, and they're hungry for music, and that's how they pass their time. There are a lot of young musicians coming up in that area, and I myself grew up on AC/DC and Van Halen and Alice Cooper.”

Their father played bass in that early version of Halestorm, and eventually the family band gained a reputation as quite the local rock group. Area bands gave the kids an opportunity to open for them, something Hale feels strongly is endemic to small-town life. As a result, she keeps that in mind and tries to make it back home as often as she can.

“Every milestone we make now is a hometown triumph as well,” she said.

Eventually, the band — with Josh Smith on bass — gained statewide fame; the magazine Pennsylvania Musician featured Halestorm on its cover three times, the first in August 1999. As that regional fame grew, the band earned the attention of labels, and in 2005, Atlantic signed the band and put them into touring rotation. Early 2006 saw the band hit the road with Seether, Shinedown and Flyleaf; mid-2006 included more touring with Shinedown and Trapt; the next year, Halestorm appeared in one of the “Jaywalking” segments on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

The band's self-titled debut was released last April, and thanks to “I Get Off” and “It's Not You,” the past year has been a whirlwind of activity, Hale said.

“I will tell you, I have some really great bandmates around to make sure that I'm not turning into the stereotypical singer who doesn't know what city I'm in,” she said with a laugh. “It's funny, man. We love what we do, and there are many shows that are quite, quite memorable. It's the people who really make it for us, like Michael — he lives for music, man, and for some reason he really loves what we do.

“We didn't know what to expect with this record — our whole goal was to make sure our collective conscience was good and that we were making something we were really proud of. The fact that people took to it and that we're still here and still touring and that it's just the beginning, it's unbelievable.”

The communal process of performing, she said, has been magnified tenfold since the release of “Halestorm.” Before, the band could always count on a room full of enthusiastic fans. Now, with something physical to play and hear and memorize, fans aren't just excited — they're dedicated.

For Hale and her bandmates, that too is humbling.

“In the beginning, you write these songs almost selfishly, about yourself to get it all out, and now that we've released this record, I get to be on stage and they mean something completely different to me because the fans are singing them to me,” she said. “Some of them are singing so incredibly passionately with their fists in the air, singing every word, that in that moment, the song becomes about us. It becomes about whomever is singing to me in front of me right then, and it becomes our song. It's a great feeling. We hoped they would like it, but we had no idea the level that people were going to attach themselves to the music.”

As intensely personal as the experience can be, and as reverent as Hale becomes when she talks about it, she's careful not to lose focus on the most important thing — having fun, and making sure the fans have fun. After all, that's what rock ‘n' roll — the rock she grew up on, at least — is about. And she's honored to carry on that tradition.

“It's something my bandmates and I hold very near and dear to our hearts — when you listen to somebody play music, I want to then, after I come back from a concert, pick up an instrument or an air guitar or anything,” she said. “The music we were attracted to were bands where you could really tell they were having a great time. We didn't relate a whole lot to the depressing, my-life-sucks kind of thing, because our lives didn't suck back then when we were growing up. We were having fun.

“And we still are. Seeing things happen with our songs and our band is more than we could ever ask for, and the fact it isn't over yet just makes us want to keep going. At this point we've fallen in love with the chase.”