Drowning Pool: An Interview with Mike Luce (continued)

Oh yeah just drop the, The.

That’s happening though, I like it.
You know I like the way you guys integrated everything artwork-wise on the cd cover. It's a nice piece of art work and the music is tremendous. You guys worked with Jay Baumgardner.  How’s he to work with?   

Man he was great.   We didn’t know what to expect going into it of course with it being the first album. We were kinda walking on eggshells the whole time. But he was real cool, he told us to just relax and take it easy. Just told us all to focus but at the same time he was real laid back about it not too up in the face not too crazy but it was an awesome experience.

What kinda things as a producer, you know cause other bands are going to hear this, what kinda things do you look for in a producer?  What kind of things do they contribute?

He just basically kept us real centered.   You know being a drummer you've got to be in that pocket.  He wanted to make sure I was in that right frame of mind. We worked really well together.  He was that somebody that was gonna bring out the positives and not get you into all that other stuff. It just gets you straight thinking and focused and ready to do it.

Right on. Did you guys record, I mean in terms of the recording part of this album Sinner, which is totally killer, did you guys put down the rhythm tracks live or was it real “studio”.  Or how was that done?

Yeah, you see what happened was,  I laid down my tracks first, but we all, everybody, we would all play together. We’d just record the drums and then we would go back and layer it after the live drums were tracked.   Then C.J. went in and did guitars, and Steve went in and did his bass track. Then Dave came in and laid the vocals.

Right on. Well you guys went from playing the second stage at Ozzfest to playing the first stage. How the hell did that happen? Not that you guys don’t deserve it. I guess the buzz was so big they decided to bump you up. Is that what happened?

Yeah it was pretty cool. Basically, we were the first band to play at the start at Ozzfest in Chicago. It was ten after, ten minutes in the morning and we stayed on the third stage there probably for like four or five shows, and then the album came out and it started to get good acceptance so then they bumped us up to the second stage probably about one or something. Then the final week of Ozzfest they bumped us up again to direct support for Mudvayne, so yeah we did three nice little jumps there, well two jumps I guess.

Yeah right on. Are you surprised how fast things are moving for you?

Oh definitely yeah. You know you have the hopes of putting out an album and hopefully your friends and other bands and you know the listening audiences will enjoy it, hopefully kinda dig it.
But we didn’t expect something like this.

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