Drowning Pool: The Tragic Death of Dave Williams & How 'Bodies' Became Huge

Drowning Pool: The tragic death of Dave Williams and the story behind Bodies from the album Sinner.

0:00 - Early Years
2:37 - Momentum Shift/Sinner
4:15 - Marketing Sinner
6:49- Radio ban
7:40 - Williams Death/Aftermath

Tripping Daisy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKEEoPGCgME

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#drowningpool #davewilliams #cjpierece

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I’ve had so many people request that I cover Drowning Pool on my channel and that time has finally come. . Hailing from Dallas Texas, much like the band Tripping Daisy who i covered a few months back, the link is down below to that video. Drowning Pool would sprout up in the mid 90’s, but wouldn’t gain national exposure until their hit single Bodies became one of the biggest hit songs of the summer of 2001. Two events though would almost derail the band’s career, one was the 9/11 attacks, and the other, was the death of one of their lead singer Dave Williams members. Today let’s explore what happened.

Drowning Pool was formed in Dallas, Texas in 1996 by Guitarist C.J. Pierce and drummer Mike Luce (Loose). The band took its name from the Ross MacDonald's 1951 novel of which was eventually into a film starring Paul Newman.
CJ and Mike were originally from New Orleans and had played together for almost a decade together before deciding to move to Dallas. CJ would tell Designer Magazine that New Orleans was a difficult city to get gigs in because bar owners wanted bands to play cover songs and the pair wanted to perform their own original material. In addition to that they found it difficult to find like minded players CJ would tell Just a Rock and Roll Junkie Mike moved to Dallas for like two years and that's where he met Stevie. Mike came back to New Orleans and we were looking for a bass player and a singer and Stevie was looking to put a band together as well and it just made sense to move to Dallas in 1996. The music scene was kicking ass with Pantera tearing it up" he'd remember
The band played with a few different frontmen before Dave Williams entered the picture around 1998. Williams himself was a veteran of the Dallas music scene having performed with numerous bands over almost a decade playing in outfits named Cheri Lane and Mister Lovedog. One of his friends early in his career was Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell who gave Williams the nickname "Stage".
Drowning Pool’s influences would include a broad spectrum of old school rock rock bands including Iron Maiden, Motley Crue, Ratt, Van Halen, Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row, Cinderella,as well as Black Sabbath and more current acts at the time including local heroes Pantera. Of course there was another band the quartet liked as Williams would tell hiponline in 2001 "I think the one bonding question that brought us all together and that was if we liked Faith No More. After that, the rest is history and we’ve been together for three years" he'd say
Bassist Stevie Benton would tell Ghost Cult Magazine about how the band started out as just a fun project with no too much forethought
We had been a club band in Dallas for a couple of years before it all started, we never thought we would do anything more than that to be honest, we were just playing during the week-ends for beer money. All of the sudden more and more people were crowding in the venues where we were playing and then it felt almost like a blink of the eye.
Before the band even got their first major record deal, the band attracted the attention of german liquor company Jaegermister who sponsored the group . Williams would tell Billboard magazine “it boosted our confidence quite a bit because all of a sudden it was like wow somebody likes our band. It felt good and then right after that we signed with Wind Up so it was like the machine is rolling now. ”
Mike Luce would tell Designer Magazine what came next revealing “We did a demo at a friends house back in Dallas and we were just playing local gigs. Then one of the guitarists for sevendust was living in dallas, saw us and we just kept bugging him to let us do a couple of openers for them. We did three or four shows in a couple of states down south.” It wasn’t too long after these dates that Drowning Pool started touring with groups like Kittie and their demo they recorded to get radio airplay. It would be during