INTERVIEW: Ryan McCombs – THE DROWNING POOL Australian Tour Interview

I caught up with Ryan McCombs frontman of Drowning Pool ahead of their co headline tour of Australia with Alien Ant Farm this February. This chat with Ryan must be one of my favourite chats. Unfortunately, there were a few audio moments that weren’t captured but the bulk of our chat is intact. Drowning Pool have never sounded better and in this chat we talk about Ryan’s friendship with late Drowning Pool frontman Dave Williams and what the band means to him in music and friendship.

For the unfamiliar Ryan is also the frontman for alternate metal band Soil. We also touch on Ryan’s decision to walk away from the music industry in late 2004 and how his first tenure in Drowning Pool brought him back.

Andrew: Welcome to The Rockpit Ryan, thanks for taking the time out of your schedule to chat with me about all things Drowning Pool and the upcoming Australian tour. How are you going?

Ryan: I’m great, thanks for being so patient with me running late. It’s great to be talking to you.

Andrew: You have quite a bit of history with Drowning Pool. This is your second tenure in the band and you have just released a new single ‘Revolution’ that is an absolute killer track. Tell me a little about the track and process of writing together. (audio drops out here)

Ryan: It’s strange. It’s very strange to me at the moment, but it’s very cool at the same time that a song that was so much a part of all of us in every aspect of it is the first song that we released together. I know that moving forward, it’s more along the lines of what of the of what I’m typically used to, which is the, everybody looked at me and goes, yeah, the lyrics, what are you doing? It’s up to me lyrically, but this first song ‘Revolution’ was really a melting pot of all of us as far as our ideas on what revolution meant to each one of us and where we were coming from mentally as individuals with that topic in mind.

Andrew: That’s great. I love hearing stories of bands connecting. When you say that everybody came in with their own perception of what Revolution is, that’s exciting. I think there’s a beauty in that, in being a band again. I think, it tends to show in the songs, in the songwriting you can feel the unity, it’s something that’s unmistakable. It becomes the bands fingerprint.

Ryan: Yeah; Revolution is very unique in that aspect, even lyrically it was very much a melting pot of all of our thoughts and feelings on the matter.

Andrew: If we go back to when you first joined Drowning Pool, how hard was it, coming in and singing work that the two previous singers had written, sung and made their own. What approach did you take to that when you came into the band for the first time?

Ryan: Dave was a good friend of mine. I considered Dave Williams to be my best friend in the business when he was with us. He was just somebody that I mean, I don’t know of anybody that ever-met Dave Williams that would ever have a crossword. If I met somebody that had a crossword about Dave Williams it would really questioned me about who I was speaking to. Dave and Dimebag Darrell were very similar in the aspect that they were the type of person that when they walked into a room, they didn’t care about themselves at all. They never did. They always wanted everybody else to have a smile on their face. They always wanted everybody else to be laughing and having a good time, and I think that’s why the two of them got along so well together, because they were very kindred spirits in that manner. Dave meant so much to me. My youngest son, his middle name is Dave named after Dave Williams, and that happened before he passed. My son’s twenty-two now. Dave is the only guy whose name is tattooed on my body; I thought that highly of the man of the person he was.

Stepping into the band back then, it wasn’t something I did carelessly. It wasn’t something that I did for the opportunity because for those that don’t know, I’d quit Soil nine months prior to joining Drowning Pool. The reason I quit soil is because I was sick of the industry; I was sick of the business side of things. I’m very much and always have been, but very much more so back then, was still an Indiana minded small town kid. The ugliness and the backwards talk that took place within the industry on a norm, it just it wore on me and I finally stepped away. You got to think about how much something disgusts you to be living your dream and to be willing to walk away from it. And that’s exactly what I did with Soil. I was so burnt that different opportunities to work with this band or that band and different labels came up to me or contacted me about working with their young bands. I had no desire; I was just burnt out. I just didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. It wasn’t until Stevie, Mike, and CJ got a hold of me that I entertained the idea of getting back into music again and I remember, I’m going to take you completely left field here, but I remember the first time flying down to Dallas to jam with the guys.

It was, didn’t know what we were going to do, but I just knew that if it would be cool to jam with those three again, because I missed them, they were good friends in the industry, and I missed them as people. When I retired from music, my retirement party was actually flying down to Dallas and going to a Dallas Cowboys vs Cleveland Browns game, Cleveland’s my team, Dallas Stevie’s team, going to a football game in Dallas. My retirement party was with these guys. That’s how highly of friends I thought of them. So, anyway we get together in Dallas and we jam. I flew back home to Indiana and I’m driving down the street and Dave’s mom called me and so I pulled over and I answered the phone, and she goes, Ryan, where are you at? I said I’m in Indiana right now. She goes well one of Dave’s schoolmates from back in the day is in a band that rehearses underneath Drowning Pool and he said this past weekend he was in rehearsal and so was Drowning Pool and he heard them playing and he goes it was weird because the singer wasn’t Jason. The singer sounded like the singer for Soil. She goes, so I was wondering where you were. I said Jo, I can honestly tell you that right now I’m in Indiana. She chuckled and she goes Charlie, Dave’s dad, Charlie, and I were talking and we just felt like I should give you a call because I just wanted you to know that. We both are certain that if anybody was going to do it, David wanted it to be you. There’s no saying no, at that point, regardless of what my feelings were of the industry that was the thumbs up of you’ve got to do this. It was cool and I think a lot of the core fan base understood my relationship with Dave.

From the get go I was embraced by the fans and embraced in a way that I think had that relationship not been there I couldn’t have expected it to have happened. I didn’t expect it to happen to begin with, but it wouldn’t have happened had that not been understood, my love for Dave and the person that he was, it was a quick acceptance for me.

Andrew: The four years that you spent in your first tenure with them, what led to you leaving again? Was it through becoming disillusioned with the industry again or was it something else?

Ryan: We beat the streets. Back then our touring schedule was brutal. It was very similar to what my person between the two bands, what my touring schedule has been like this past year. It had been that way for the years that we were together. It wasn’t just a year’s worth of that. It had been that way for several frigging years at that point. It got to a point where a phone call took place between CJ and I, and CJ was like, I feel like you’re getting pretty burned out right now. I was like, I am, the skin’s thin at this point and he said maybe we should just take a couple of months off, just take a little breather, just get away from the road for a little bit to take a breather from each other, not from each other personally, but just take a breather from the band and just have a breather. I was like, yeah, I think you’re right, and we agreed to do that. The phone call ended and all of a sudden, next thing you know it’s twelve, thirteen years later that we’re getting back together. We thought it was going to be a two- or three-month break and ended up being twelve, thirteen years. It wasn’t intended to be what it ended up being. We both ended up getting involved in other stuff. I started getting involved in the Soil stuff again. Jason Moreno was, it was a friend of all of ours, and it was a natural kind of them with Jason. Things just happened without even speaking and all of a sudden we’re like, man, that was a long two or three months.

Andrew: How time flies, it’s crazy stuff. As a singer, who are your earliest musical influences?

Ryan: My influences, I don’t think are evident because of my own ability; I think it’s so limited. I don’t hold myself in very high regard. I grew up listening to what I consider to be real frigging singers, whether it was Layne Staley or Cornell, guys who I consider real singers, real guys that could hold a note. As far as music goes, my influences have stayed the same, I still listen to the same stuff today. If I’m going to throw music on, I love a lot of the music my friends have made. Modern music, I tend to be drawn to bands that I have met on the road or I’ve met personally and I know them as being good people. I tend to like their music more when I know that it’s coming from someone that I think highly of. I tend to listen to their music differently and develop a different appreciation of it. But as far as the stuff that I’ve listened to back in the day that was influential to me, I still listen to today. If I’m going to listen to something and you’re going to catch me with music on as I’m cooking something or as I’m doing something around the house, if I’m cleaning, whatever I’m doing, it’s going to be like Creedence Clearwater Revival. It’s going to be some of that stuff that I grew up to, I still lust the musicianship from back in the day, man you can’t beat it. I don’t care what anybody says, I know I’m not from that era, but I that era was special man even in the recording sessions, you’d have a band just go up set up live and just jam a tune and that’s the tune that came out on the record. There was that’s incredible musicianship back then. Pro Tools? What’s Pro Tools? Auto Tune? What’s Auto Tune? They didn’t have that shit back then, man. Those guys and girls exemplified musicianship.

Andrew: I’m a fan of all of that stuff too, it was such a special time and I think without it, we wouldn’t be where we are today at all.

Ryan: Oh, absolutely not.

Andrew: Despite genres and fads and trends coming and going, it’s the cream that’s always risen to the top, these were the guys that started it back in the mid 60s, early to mid 70s that really, forged the path for music as it’s evolved.

Ryan: Oh, yeah. One of the earliest bands I was in, we played ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’ by Cream, man we jammed that shit, it was that classic stuff, the Clapton, the Zeppelin, it was the good stuff. There’s been plenty of good stuff since there’s been plenty of good stuff since.

Andrew: You can’t discount it the music inbetween, but that era was the foundation of what was to come.

Ryan: Yes it was.

Andrew: You’ve been to Australia a few times now, yeah?

Ryan: This will be my third time. I came over for festival season one year, years and years ago, and then Soil just did a tour with Static X over there last year.

Andrew: What’s your favourite thing about Australia?

Ryan: My favourite thing about Australia is Australian winters (laughs). Dude, I told you earlier, I said Australia was at the top of my list and the bands list. Australia is right there at the top of places that we wanted to go and play in 2025 because it’s we haven’t been able to in so long. Real quick, for anybody out there wondering why the band hasn’t been there earlier, we were completely unaware of the fact that back when there was other management involved, they had fired the band’s overseas rep booking wise and the band was unaware of this.

Andrew: Wow!!!

Ryan: When we got back together, I started asking questions business wise. I started finding out that we weren’t even represented in Australia anymore. We weren’t represented in Europe. We weren’t represented in the UK. We weren’t represented anywhere outside of the USA. We didn’t have representation tour wise or agent wise, we didn’t have representation for these territories anymore. That’s why Drowning Pool hasn’t been to these places in years because the band was sitting back thinking our agent isn’t coming to the table with any offers. So, we must not be wanted, the band wasn’t aware that there was even a desire for the band to be in these places until we all got back together and I started inquiring about why hasn’t the band been in the UK since 2013, Why hasn’t the band been here or there or wherever and all of a sudden we found out, you don’t have representation. The promoters in these territories didn’t have an agent to get a hold of in order to line up a tour. So yeah, Australia was one of our top areas that we wanted to get back to now that we got this all ironed out. One of my stipulations that I was keeping my fingers crossed for was the fact that we would be hitting Australia in an Australian winter time, because I hate the frigging sun but this thing came about. It came about with the offer to step in here with Alien Ant Farm on a co headline situation and it was just a no brainer because instead of hoping something panned out later in the year, it was a definite, there’s a lot of work to get done, but it was a definite opportunity to get over to Australia, so we jumped on it.

Andrew: You never know, your wish might come true in 2026, you might get a winter tour down here on the back of these shows (Laughs).

Ryan: Fingers crossed.

Andrew: I won’t keep you for too much longer, but if you are up for it, I just have a few quick, off the cuff questions, just things about life and music.

Ryan: Ask away.

Andrew: CD, vinyl or streaming. Do you have a preferred listening format?

Ryan: I don’t. I’m still a product of my era. I still love having the hard copy in my hand, nothing beats liner notes, nothing beats the whole experience, one of my favourite things of being a young fan of music was getting that CD in your hand and reading everything in the booklet, reading not just the lyrics but the thanks lists and everything. That was you did that on your way home with when the cassette or the CD was in the player. You did that as you’re listening to it you’re reading through all that was a part of the whole thing, that packaging that it all came in, nothing beats the hard copy in my heart of hearts but nowadays, because of the world being the way it is, and always being on the go it seems like the past year, especially with me spending more time in an airplane than I do with my feet on the ground it’s become a situation where I listen to ninety-ninepercent of my music digitally. I’m not necessarily happy about it, but that’s just the way it’s had to be in recent years, but yeah, I’m still a still a product of my youth where nothing beats the hard copy.

Andrew: Exactly. Nothing beats a magazine either, I have a love for music magazines and print media as well as physical copies. It just seems to mean more.

Ryan: Oh hell yeah. The wallpaper of my childhood bedroom was nothing but pictures cut out  of Metal Edge, Hit Parader, Circus, RIP and Metal Hammer magazines.

Andrew: Exactly. It’s crazy because I’ve still got all that stuff. I’ve got crates and crates of that stuff in my garage.

Ryan: That’s awesome.

Andrew: I just can’t let go of it. It’s a part of my youth. It’s a part of, my musical journey that led me to, photography and journalism, I hold it close to me as it’s very important. It still inspired me. It’s a really lost art; I just wish we lived in a time where you could bring that back.

Ryan: Oh, and so many memories are tied to them you’re absolutely right. That is a part of that whole thing that I say to a lot of people I wish, my kids who are growing up now. My kids are twenty six and twenty two, my stepson is twelve years old and I wish I could take him especially and go back twenty five, thirty or fourty years ago, I wish he could be raised in that era that I was raised in instead of this era where socializing consists of sitting on your phone, or, it’s just I don’t know where I was going with that, but what you said spurred that thought.

Andrew: That kind of leads into the next little question which is, if you could change or stop something that’s changed in the world over the last 50 years, what would it be?

Ryan: I’ve made reference to different times. There’s that old saying, if you go back in time, what’s one thing you would do? For some it’s I would go back and kill baby Hitler. But for me, I would go back and get in the way of whoever created social media. I appreciate social media as a band, as a musician, I appreciate social media because it allows us a way such as this.  It allows a way of being in contact with the people that allow us to do what we do, like being in contact with yourself, who creates that bridge between the musician and the people out there. It gives us all the time of day to allow us to be the photographer or the musician, it allows us to do what we do. I appreciate social media for that. At the same time, I hate social media because it’s been such a punch to the groin of society and it has affected everybody, you got zombies walking down the street. I’m one of them because I’m a product of the here and now. We all get caught up walking around with these stupid frigging dumb smartphones that we have our faces stuck in. I hate what social media has done to society. People being more concerned with their likes than they are with just being a good person or being honest, I hate what social media has done in that regard. It’s a double-edged sword I appreciate it for what it’s done for me as a musician and the ability to be in contact with the people that allow us to do what we do. So, if I could change one thing in the world I’d go back in time and I’d trip the person that was responsible for this whole social media thing.

Andrew: I shudder to think where the world would be without social media and that’s not in a negative way. I would like to think the world would be a happier place, a friendlier place, a kinder place.

Ryan: I just heard my wife in the background go, and we would have never met ….. Honey, we would have met.

Andrew: Love it !!! Drowning Pool have this amazing catalogue of songs under their belt. What’s your favourite song to play live?

Ryan: ‘Bodies’ will always be incredible because it’s that tune where everybody’s goes a little extra nuts, that’s the song where you’re you know you’re able to make a crowd go absolutely nuts. After being invited to festivals like Aftermath, Sonic Temple and Welcome To Rockville where you’re in front of tens of thousands of people and you’ve got multiple pits going and dust is flying and everything. That’s an incredible feeling being able to get down there with the people and enjoy that, but at the same time, and there’s certain songs. I love having the opportunity to play the stuff that we wrote together again like ‘Enemy’ and ‘Soldiers’ because of where soldiers came from our different USO tours and MWR and FE tours with the military.

There are songs from Dave’s era that are very personal.  I know where his mind was; I know what the lyrics of ‘Tear Away’ meant to him when he wrote them. They mean something completely different to me because they were his words and because of what they mean to me, it’s such a personal song live, “Everything happens for reasons. I just don’t know. Do I really want this? Sometimes I scare myself. I just can’t let you go”. The lyrics mean something completely personal to me, and I know it’s not what Dave meant by them, but because they were Dave’s, and because of what they mean to me, it’s a very special song. There’s a tune called ‘Mute’ from the “Sinner” album, that song, the groove in that song is so CJ Pierce. It’s not even funny. We never played that song in those first years that we were together, that first run, we never played ‘Mute’. It wasn’t until getting the phone call and being like, okay, we’re doing this. I remember we had two weeks to get ready for the first shows and I’m listening to songs on the headphones and trying to remember lyrics and stuff. We’re talking on the phone a week into it and they’re like, how are the songs coming along? I’m like, okay. I said, what do you guys think about ‘Mute’? And they’re like, what? I said what do you guys think about playing the song ‘Mute’? They were like, man, we haven’t played that since Dave was with us, and they were like, yeah, let’s do it. I just love playing that song live because the groove, like I said, the groove, that’s CJ Pearce, man, that’s Drowning Pool. That tune is such a cool groove and such a cool vibe; to be able to put into the set live is amazing. It’s that moment where, depending on how you shape the set and the ebbs and flows of it, it’s just such a cool moment of just guttural, internal, emotional vibe and I dig the song for that.

Andrew: Talking about touring, you’ve probably had the best of it all on this run of shows, you’ve no doubt done a club show here and there, theatres and obviously your festivals. Do you have a personal preference between them?

Ryan: No, I don’t. I don’t at all. There is an amazing personal feeling when you’re in a club and you can reach out and touch the hands and you can look at people in their eyes and you make that connection. That connection is why we’re all there, and to be able to actually physically have that connection with people, whether it’s a brief moment, it is one where our eyes connect or whatever it is, you’re right there face to face and that’s amazing. It’s as amazing today as it was the first time I got the opportunity to do it as a teenager. There’s also an incredible feeling about walking out on stage and being in front of tens of thousands of people that are all there for the same reason, that’s to make some memories together and to have a good time. That’s frigging feeling is a different kind of rush. It’s a different emotion, one’s more of a rush, one’s more an emotional connection. They’re both emotional connections, but on different levels I guess, but they’re both really special. They’re both very unique and both very special.

Andrew: What’s been your favourite live moment through your entire career? Is there one moment that you’ve just gone Wow?

Ryan: There’s two there’s a moment that doesn’t really have anything to do with performance. That was being someone that was born and raised in a town of 30, 000 people in the middle of cornfields in Indiana, where you were pretty sure the only way you were ever going to get recognized musically is if David Geffen’s airplane crashed on main street and he stumbled into your rehearsal room; which was the kitchen of our drummers dad’s double wide trailer. There was that emotional moment for me, it was the very first time that I travelled overseas musically. It was flying into London the first time and sitting next to the window, looking out the window; it was at nighttime and seeing the lights of London below us and that moment, I’m gonna get choked up, that moment of realizing that somehow the small town kid from Indiana is flying into London England, the British invasion is flying into, I’m not talking about the, I’m not talking about the colonist era. I’m talking about the music, British invasion. I’m talking about the Beatles and, flying into London and I’m flying into London because they want me to do a rock show here. There was that moment, that emotional moment of how the hell did I get here? And being so appreciative of it. Then the other thing would be the times we’ve gotten to do tours in Iraq, the USO tours in Iraq in 2005 and 2006; getting to play for the coalition bases, on my wall upstairs, I’ve got the challenge coins and the different patches and stuff that different people that I’ve met in the military gave me throughout my years. I remember those shows in particular because we got to play coalition bases. So, I got a bunch of stuff from the Australian military men and women that were there. The different military forces from around the world that were at these shows that we got to play at in Iraq and Kuwait was such an amazing experience because when it’s your time on stage it doesn’t matter what you think about war, it doesn’t matter whether you think the countries that were there were just or unjust for being there. That’s not what it was about. It was about being there and performing for men and women that were there doing their job doing their job for their country. It didn’t have to do with personal feelings. Like I said on the war itself, it was about being there for those people and for that hour, the hour fifteen, the hour and thirty that you were on stage, it didn’t matter what country they were from, it didn’t matter whether they were a fan of R&B, hip hop, easy listening, country, Motown, it didn’t matter, rock/metal, it didn’t matter whether the individuals were a fan of these different genres of music for that hour and fifteen, hour and thirty, they were at home at a concert and that’s all that you saw in their eyes for that moment in time. They weren’t worried about anybody shooting at them and they weren’t worried about having to shoot at anybody. They were at home for a little bit of time, and that was such an amazing experience to be able to give that to people. So, those were probably the two biggest moments of my career. Meeting this person, meeting that person, being on tour with this, doing arena tours with all the bands that I’ve had the opportunity to yet great opportunities, great blessings, but those were the two moments that still stick out in my mind as being some of the most humbling, emotionally charged experiences of my career.

Andrew: Wow. They are some amazing memories.  I’m just visualizing a lot of that you would have experienced. The military stuff would have just been, mind altering in many ways. Just to see that what you were doing is giving these people, a reason and an ability to escape from the shit that they’re dealing with.

Ryan: It was amazing. It was amazing experience just having the opportunity to be a part of it. It was very cool to be in a position to be able to do it.

Andrew: I won’t keep you any longer. Thank you so much for your extreme generosity and time in talking to me today. I can’t wait to see you guys out here. The band has been a bucket list band for me to see forever.

Ryan: Definitely get a hold of John and tell him to make sure that we’re able to say hey to each other when we’re in town there. And again, Andrew, thank you so much for your time and your patience.I apologize for jumping on here late, and as you’ve witnessed, I talk way too much.

Andrew: This has been amazing, again thank you, Ryan. I won’t keep you or your wife from the gym, and I admire her for her passion in dragging you out.

Ryan: Oh, man!

Andrew: I’m looking forward to seeing you in February thank you again for chatting with us, and let’s please do connect when you’re out here.

Ryan: Absolutely. I’m gonna click off right now, but until she pays attention, I’m just gonna act like the interview’s still going on, so I’m just gonna talk to a blank screen for a while and try to put off that gym time as much as I can (laughs).

Andrew: Good luck!

Ryan: Ok, she’s staring at me already. All right.

Andrew: Thank you again Ryan. See you down under.