DROWNING POOL Guitarist: 'It's The Love Of Music That Keeps Us Going'

Simon Milburn of Australia's The Metal Forge recently conducted an interview with DROWNING POOL guitarist C.J. Pierce. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow.

On whether the band has ever thought of packing it in through all the singer, label and management changes:

"There was never a question or stopping or not wanting to play music. I mean, Mike [Luce, drums], Stevie [Benton, bass] and myself, we share a love for music and we love playing live, and we've been good friends since high school. We've definitely been through a lot of things but I definitely cannot see myself not playing music with them. That's how we live and this is something we love. It's just, y'know, there have been a lot of challenges our way the whole manager thing and label, and obviously losing Davey [Williams, vocals; who was found dead on the band's tour bus in August 2002]. It's quite the challenge but it's the love of music that keeps us going."

On having had to search for a new vocalist twice since the passing of Dave Williams in 2002:

"Yeah, it's pretty excruciating. Honestly. I don't want to go through that ever again. So, um, yeah, the last record after losing Davey was pretty hard, because I don't think we were dealing with the mourning process and here we were trying to record and trying out a new singer. With Ryan [McCombs; ex-SOIL; current DROWNING POOL singer], things are a lot easier. Ryan was kind of our first choice anyway. We'd been friends with him for years and years. We did Ozzfest 2001 together. He just fit right in pretty much. The day he walked in we started working on songs and it just clicked."

"We had looked at a bunch of guys before we got Jason ['Gong' Jones; DROWNING POOL's second singer] and we probably should have taken a bit longer and gotten to know these guys a little more personally. But with Ryan, man, he walked right in we'd already been friends, we stayed in contact since we toured with them before and we just picked up like we never stopped playing. That's kind of where we came up with the idea for 'Full Circle' [the new DROWNING POOL album]. It's kind of like starting over again and actually everybody getting along and having a family vibe before we started writing music."

On how the vibe in the band with McCombs is different to the vibe that was there with McCombs' predecessor, Jason "Gong" Jones:

"It's immensely different. Going back out on the road after losing Davey, I think we were all still pretty broken up and in the depths of depression, and on top of that, personalities were different. With Jason, we didn't really know him, and when you get on the road with somebody and you don't really know them, and your claws start coming out ... you have that on top of the fact that you're missing your buddy there, all that in that shell, it was pretty horrible now that I look back. The mental state of the band was pretty rough. That won't happen again. We're all having fun and that's what it's all about."

Read the entire interview at www.themetalforge.com.