Probably not his doing about the towns. Management uses whatever sounds good, people identify with etc. Halestorm is from Red Lion (by address - actually Windsor Twp, I believe) and often hear that they are from 'York'.
No, he openly railed against Seymour for a while. Mainly because they generally, as a town back then didn’t exactly support rock and roll music. Hence his “Bible Belt gonna save my soul” line. So it was kind of warranted for a while.