RC: It's a great pleasure of Rock Circus
to come down to Club M to track a
band that started off at the
beginning of Ozzfest opening at 10 AM,
ouch that's brutal, to getting a main
time spot by the end of Ozzfest. Because they
catapolted their popularity into the mainstream
of the rock world. Rock Circus has come here to
be baptized into Drowning Pool. This is our buddy
Mike Luce, drummer for Drowning Pool, thanks for
coming on the show. He was telling me it's a little
calm on the bus now, the calm before the storm.
Mike: Yeah, unless you wanna be like Guns N Roses, back
in the day. Just be drunk before you get on stage.
We've done that once or twice, were not good at it.
So we keep the drinking to a minimum until after
the show or until the show starts. Then it's Motley
Crew time.
RC: Where did you learn this at, back in Dallas. Was your
hometown hard on you guys?
Mike: I learned this myself, back in the day. When I was
back in New Orleans, playing clubs doing cover songs.
The band, Drowning Pool, learned it by doing two bad
shows Salt Lake City and Jacksonville, Florida.
Sorry we'll make it up to you. We were way to drunk
to be on stage. The show suffers therefore the
audience suffers.
RC: That's a sign of a true profesional musician,
worried about each individual performance.
Mike: You're supposed to be.
RC: It's not like Led Zeppelin, when they were snorting a
bag of heroine before they went on stage.
Mike: Yeah, somebody was saying to be a true artist you
have to do heroine or something. You're gonna be
dead if you do heroine so.
RC: Oh yeah, I've had a few friends that were musicians
and into that die. So kids stay away from that sh**!
Mike: I'ld much rather be a living mediocre musician than
a dead legend right now.
RC: Now you and CJ were jamming in New Orleans and
decided to pack up and said were out of here. What
made you go to Dallas? You think of a lot of blues
legends, not metal bands, coming out of there. What
was the incintive?
Mike: Well New Orleans, I love the place, it's where CJ
and I are from. We love the place. It's definately
known for it's music and it's heritage. It's
tradition in music and food and culture and just the
diversity. The rhythm and blues, the jazz, the
bluegrass, the dixie, the everything. But for a rock
band, they didn't want to have anything to do with
rock unless you were a cover band playing in the
tourist area. Where people would come in, drink, pay
their money, and would wanna jam out to songs they
know. There's not a thriving original rock scene.
The only two years that I didn't live in New Orleans
I lived just outside of Dallas to go to high school,
junoir and senior year. Which is how I met Steven.
He and I, the two years that I was there, had a little
garage band, a high school band. After I graduated I
moved back to New Orleans where I hooked up with CJ
from before. He and I have known eachother since 85'
and played on and off together and seperately. We kept
in touch with Stevey and he called me about Sept. 96'
and was like just come check out the rock scene. I
know you guys aren't really digging it down there. We
had been in and out of different bands and had
different members in and out of our band. I went up,
I dug it, I asked CJ if he wanted to go and he said
definately. So we went up there and the three of us
just tried different members until finally we came
across Dave in 98'.
RC: That was a good score.
Mike: Yeah, the four of us just clicked.
RC: I'ld give anything to find a singer like that, he's
just got it.
Mike: Well we found eachother kind of mutually. He was
definately the stand out in his band. He was the
one that was carrying them. Our situation was, we
felt, we were a good backup band but our front guy
wasn't necessarily, well he had a different message
to convey. We're like Motley Crew, Van Halen, Kiss,
we want to put on a show, ya know.
RC: A good rock show.
Mike: We're not rocket scientists and we're not trying to
distort our depressed views by just putting on a show.
And complaining, oh check this out, I'm doing a show,
I got it so bad, look at my horrible life, while I'm
up here singing. We didn't dig that. So when we found
Dave it was a marriage and it was good. So we just
went from there. That was like Nov. of 98'.
RC: So things have been rolling right along. So you did
you're own self release. Did the labels get a hold of
that or was it just word of mouth? I heard one of the
radio stations in Dallas picked up one of the tracks.
Is that where the fire started?
Mike: Yeah, the first release that we put out ourselves,
with a friend of ours JD back in Dallas, was just
something to help us get gigs. We played around Dallas
and we met some of the guys from Sevendust. We kept
pestering them, bugging them, just let us do a show.
Finally they were like OK you can do a couple shows.
They were like you can't do a show without a CD though,
just something to give people when you're there. To
prove that you were there, that you did it. So we did
that, word started spreading around Dallas that Sevendust
helped us out with some shows. Then a local radio station,
the Eagle, was like well why don't you come do what they
call the local home grown talent show. That's how our
manager heard us. He came, he dug us, and he was like I'm
gonna finance an EP. That was like six songs taken from
that, but done a little more professionally. That just
wound up in New York some how in the hands of Wind Up. But
it was awesome, things just started snow-balling since the
Sevendust thing. Those guys helped us out, our manager
helped us out early on, and then Wind Up came in and
hit a home run. They swept all the plates, it was
awesome.
RC: Now you guys were on the Ozzfest, what was your most
memorable moment? Does it become all a blur because it's
just that crazy?
Mike: Like a specific moment, like ooh the most partiest time,
there were a lot of parties and a lot of crazinesss. The
most consecutive thing that was the most rewarding thing
for me...not only are you up there three days after you're
album comes out, you're on the start up of a tour such as
Ozzfest and you're up there with some major contenders.
And you're hoping that the album stands up or your show
stands up and you're not considered the suckiest band of
Ozzfest. It started becoming really cool a few weeks into
it, about a month into it, when not just the people on the
other side of the barracade are clapping and singing along
but other bands are starting to walk up on the side and
behind you. And they're nodding their heads, and they're
clapping along, and they're giving you the thumbs up. When
you can look out and there's approval and you look beside
and behind you and there's still approval, that's the best
of both worlds.
RC: When you get the approval of your peers too, that's what
it's all about. Now you were offered by Sharon Osbourne
main stage on the Ozzfest last year, and you guys turned
it down. Is that not true? Was that more than you wanted?
Mike: It was, yes and no. I mean you never want to say a bold
faced no to Sharon Osbourne, for anything. We didn't
quite say no, we felt uncomfortable with it. But it turned
out fortunatly for us and on their part, I think on their
part. But what happened like half-way through the tour
they were gonna do a rotating band from the second stage
on to the main stage to open the main stage. So it would
have been, like one show would have been Mudvain, one show
would have been Taproot, one show would have been us, and
one show would have been Union Underground. The four of us
individually would've opened up main stage every other
turn. But we weren't comfortable with that at all, we
would've done it, we were definately appreciative of it.
But we felt like...
RC: Kind of felt like you were stepping on some toes a little
bit?
Mike: Yeah, exactly, that's part of it. Plus, we want to earn
it, we wanna pay our dues.
RC: A lot of bands just don't talk like that. A lot of times on
our show after a band breaks they're not humbled enough
to come back to cable access or whatever. I just want to
say this on camera, I really appreciate you guys hooking
us up. It's nice because we work hard at what we do and
just because we don't have a corperate logo or seal the
aculades sometimes come with the territory.
Mike: No man, it's our pleasure, believe me. Sooner or later
nobody's gonna want to talk to us, somewhere down the
road. So it's our honor. Going back to the Ozzfest thing,
we started off the very first band at 10 in the morning
in Chicago. By the last week of the tour we were main
support for Mudvain on the 2nd stage. So we had bumped up
like 2 or 3 times and we felt like that was plenty. We
were like we wanna earn our keep, we wanna deserve it, we
wanna pay our dues, we want other people to think we
deserve it. We just don't want to come in and go hey
check out my nuts.
RC: Like the bullies on the block or something?
Mike: Yeah, that's just not the way it is. You know the old
school way of thinking was you get out there and you earn
your keep by playing on the road and being road hogs. By
playing show after show after show after show. Anywhere
and everywhere for anybody and everybody. That's kind of
our mentality and I hope as long as we keep that then
we'll be fresh to the ear.
RC: Now this next video, you guys weren't in it to much.
Mike: Funny thing about that, everybody's always asking why
weren't you in the "Tear Away" video? All right this is
not a dog or a dis or anything, but the chorus blatently
states "I don't care about anyone else..." If you take
it from that view it's one person, so we deliberately
wanted the video to be that way. The mirrors of us doing
the performance.
RC: You just wanted to hang out on the Paramount lot all day
and F*** off (jokingly).
Mike: Between me and you, yeah. But we didn't tell Dave that.
Dave was the one stuck behind the camera. The only parts
that have the bands performance are when we get in to it.
When it gets real heavy and again we're in a very closed,
confined, very vain, mirrors all around, setting.
RC: It's a slick video.
Mike: It came out good and we wanted it to be like that. We
wanted the guy driving the car down the street to be Dave.
We wanted Dave to walk by Dave. We loved the video treat-
ment when we got it and we just thought it worked. And it
made sense.
RC: It comes from the content of the lyrics.
Mike: Exactly.
RC: Bad ass drummer, Mr. Mike Luce. You have to see him live
cause if you don't you're missing out. Right now here's
"Tear Away."
For More Info on Drowning Pool go to DROWNINGPOOL.COM
 |
 |
Contents / Gigz's Bio / Barbie's Bio / Zoa's Bio / Beth's Bio / Playlists
Interviews / News & Contacts / Photos / Mission / Reviews / Message Board / Links