Football. Week 15. Where’d the season go? Has this been a weird one, or what? (Yeah, Pats fans, not so much, right?) Anyhow, here’s the latest: Halestorm singer/guitarist Lzzy Hale and guitarist Joe Hottinger were asked in a new interview with The Rock Revival about how they were dealing with the pressure of following up their hit 2012 sophomore album, The Strange Case Of . . . . Hottinger said, “To me, I hope it does well. With the last record, we chased what excited us. And we’re doing the same thing. So if the song and the sound excites us, we go for it and hope that things follow.” Lzzy chimed in, “We try not to think too much about what it could be, ’cause, in reality, nobody knows: labels don’t know, we don’t know, nobody does. Radio doesn’t know . . . it’s either gonna hit or not. Our bottom line — and maybe this is selfish of us — is that we have to be stoked, as the four of us, we have to be stoked about this record and want to play all these songs out live.” Halestorm recently completed the recording of its third album in a Nashville studio, a first for the group. The set is due for release sometime in early 2015. Halestorm achieved success after spending nearly a decade together and Lzzy Hale told us the band is proud of the journey it’s taken: “We’re a very stop-and-smell-the-roses type band, where we find ourselves reminiscing a lot and talking about stuff that we did and the RVs that, you know, we had that were breaking down and before that touring in a seven-seater conversion van. So it’s like, you know, regardless of the commercial success and, you know, having some Number One songs and the Grammy and everything, besides that, it means a lot that we’re still a band.” The band will head out on a second leg of shows opening for country-rock artist Eric Church soon after the holiday break, beginning on Jan 8th in New Orleans….Things are going from bad to worse. If you are in the Tallahassee area, be on the outlook for a shirtless Scott Stapp riding around on a bicycle with two backpacks. He apparently thinks he is in the CIA and his mission is to kill President Obama! This news was taken from a phone call TMZ posted of Stapp’s wife, Jaclyn and her sister called the police to try to have him arrested. Meanwhile, Scott’s wife now has sole custody of the couple’s children and Scott is no longer allowed to live in their home. Jaclyn Stapp has been attempting to get her husband into a 60-day psychiatric hold, claiming that his drug use has made him paranoid, delusional and possibly dangerous to himself and his family. Stapp missed a court hearing last week that was being held to determine the state of his mental health. In the midst of all this, Stapp set up a crowdfunding site to raise $480,000, ostensibly to fund a new solo album and a writing project. The site has since been taken down. Man, talk about a crash and burn! Sorry to hear about all of this…..My buddy Nate Mendel of the Foo Fighters is branching out. According to Pulse Of Radio, he has announced he’ll release a brand new solo project in spring of 2015. According to Diffuser, he’s releasing it under the name Lieutenant and will issue the album via Dine Alone Records. Mendel told us a while back that he enjoys having creative freedom while still being a member of Foo Fighters: “You know, the Foo Fighters was kind of imprinted with Dave’s personality right from the start, and it’s also developed into its own thing outside of him. It’s got its own sort of culture around it, and that’s fantastic. We all meet and we create that, but, you know, it’s nice to be able to do creative things outside the stricture of that.” Mendel was a member of the cult early ’90s alternative band Sunny Day Real Estate before joining Foo Fighters, and has also played with The Fire Theft. He made his debut as a film composer in 2005 on an independent movie called Our Burden Is Light, in which he also had a small acting role….Jonathan Davis told Rolling Stone in a new article on the 20th anniversary of Korn‘s first album that he gave up a good job and took drugs and alcohol while recording the group’s iconic self-titled 1994 debut. The singer explained, “I had to quit my job where I was making real money as a mortician, and had my own house, to having nothing — working at a pizza place and living under some stairs.” In one of my interviews with the band, Davis said he’d still be in that business if he wasn’t a musician: “I’d probably be a coroner investigator. I went to mortuary college, you know, and worked in funeral homes and worked at the coroner’s office doing autopsies, but I really wanted to be an investigator. That’s really what I wanted to do, other than be in a band.” Davis added he spent most of the recording sessions either drunk or high on meth, saying, “I was 23, I think. That’s when you’re Superman, when that s**t doesn’t affect you. I got sober when I was 28, around when I started getting the bad hangovers and couldn’t do that s**t anymore or I was going to die.” Although Korn’s first album is one of the most influential heavy rock/metal records of the past two decades, Davis admitted he never felt like a metal musician, saying, “I never felt like I was a metal dude to begin with. My favorite band was Duran Duran — I was a child of the ’80s and I loved more of the gothic and romantic s**t”…..This I would like to see! Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith said while answering questions from Twitter via Rolling Stone he and his celebrity lookalike Will Ferrell might take their “drum-off” routine on the road. Smith and Ferrell have both acknowledged how similar they look and had fun with it earlier this year by staging a drum battle on The Tonight Show to prove that they were two separate people. Now Smith revealed, “We have been talking about doing something next year that will combine music and comedy — a show. It will benefit the charities that we’re into. Plus, I think I need to redeem myself from how I was robbed of the Golden Cowbell. I don’t want to burst any bubbles, but he wasn’t even playing the drums, people! Shenanigans! Call the cops, I’ve been robbed! Yeah, so, it’s not over.” Asked about extending the invite to Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich — who looks nothing like either man — Smith replied, “We got such a kick out of saying we’d battle Lars, who obviously looks nothing like us — this small Danish man. We’re like, ‘Yeah, that guy really looks like us.’ . . . He took it and was really fun about it.” Ferrell also joined Smith, Pearl Jam‘s Mike McCready and others for a benefit concert in Seattle a few months after the “drum-off.” Smith said about the whole experience so far with Ferrell, “It’s been a fun thing that has just kept going. It’s got this life of its own.” The Chili Peppers are currently working on their 11th studio album with an unnamed producer for release sometime in 2015. Smith said, “We all have high hopes that it’s going to take off and we’re going to do something very different and unique for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.” He did, however, dismiss the idea of a 25th anniversary tour for the band’s mainstream breakthrough record, 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, explaining, “I wouldn’t say ‘never’ to anything, but we’re always moving forward and we don’t look back too much.” ….Marilyn Manson‘s new single “Deep Six” dropped today. It will be in Smash or Crash this week up against In This Moment‘s “Sex Metal Barbie’ ! Meanwhile, Manson’s album, The Pale Emperor, drops in the U.S. on Jan 20th, the 19th in Europe. You can stream “Deep Six” here.