DROWNING POOL To Play Shows With JAMES DURBIN?

Several online ticket vendors, including Stubs.net and TheTicketRumba.com, are selling tickets to two separate events featuring "American Idol" finalist James Durbin performing with the Texas heavy rock band DROWNING POOL:

Jul. 10 - South Bend, IN @ Club Fever
Jul. 17 - Fayetteville, AR @ Georges Majestic Lounge

In a radio interview conducted at last weekend's Rock On The Range festival in Columbus, Ohio (where Durbin performed),DROWNING POOL guitarist C.J. Pierce declined to reveal the identity of his band's new singer, but he did offer that the vocalist's first name contains the letter "J." (See video below.)

Regarding DROWNING POOL's plans for the immediate future, Pierce said, "We've been in the studio. DROWNING POOL is recording a new record. We have three weeks left. I've been in the studio all year long and I haven't gone out at all — 12-hour days, seven days a week; I'm not kidding. . . We have our first coming out show with the new [singer], we're gonna be opening up for MÖTLEY CRÜE on July 13 — it's a radio show in Wisconsin, which is great, to get started, again, right where you left off. We were fortunate… Things have been, the last few years… I mean, things are flowing again. It's been great. . . But the new record is heavier, there's more metal on it, there's a lot of double bass, a lot of guitar solos… stepping up a notch."

DROWNING POOL parted ways with vocalist Ryan McCombs late last year, with Pierce telling the 97-1 The Eagle radio station in Dallas, Texas at the time that the singer and his former bandmates simply "grew apart." He explained, "If you're gonna write music together and tour together, you've gotta be hitting on all four cylinders — everybody's gotta be on the same page. . . So instead of going into the studio and trying to force something and just throwing out a record there, [we thought it would be] better if we part ways now while we're still on good terms."

McCombs joined the band in 2005 and provided some stability on the microphone after the group's first two albums featured two different vocalists. Original frontman Dave Williams died on tour in 2002 after singing on the band's debut, "Sinner". He was replaced by Jason "Gong" Jones, who also contributed to one record, "Desensitized", before being shown the door in 2004.

McCombs sang on two studio efforts by DROWNING POOL, 2007's "Full Circle" and 2010's self-titled fourth album.

DROWNING POOL's fifth album is tentatively due in October.

Durbin's debut solo album, "Memories Of A Beautiful Disaster", came out last November and sold around 28,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 36 on The Billboard 200 chart.