Photo: JOE ESCALANTE
When the Coachella 2024 lineup was released last month, one name that stood out was Sublime. The band's founding members Eric Wilson (bass) and Bud Gaugh (drums) had recently performed with Bradley Nowell's son Jakob, and after Sublime with Rome announced its breakup it was clear the new iteration of the band was who would be performing at the acclaimed festival.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Jakob revealed why he decided to take on his late dad's role in the band. “It seemed like it was time for me to step into that role,” he explained.
“I look at it as like a custodial role,” the younger Nowell continued. “I’m not Sublime. My uncles Bud and Eric are Sublime. My dad never got to step on that stage, man. My dad never got to sing those songs in front of an audience that big, at Coachella, of people who adore him and his sound and his message. If you were a father, what would you want? And I know what I would want to have happen in that situation. So I have to do what I have to do.”
The trio will be sticking with classics, too. “We’re not gonna be playing Sublime with Rome songs,” Jakob clarified. “There is an emotional aspect that I want to make known to people I had to deal with growing up. I remember being 14 and chilling in my friend’s basement and we’re all listening to music and smoking weed. My friend put on a Sublime song, and I was like, ‘ha ha.’ I thought he was kind of messing with me. And I look over and it’s Rome singing it. And it was weird. It hit me like a gut shot. It didn’t feel right.”
Jakob also won't be recording new songs with Wilson and Gaugh; however, Sublime plan to finish tracks with snippets of Bradley's vocals that their sound engineer kept since the singer died in 1996. “We’ve discovered a vault of unfinished tracks… and there’s a plethora of stuff,” said Gaugh. “Anytime we had a tape machine, it was constantly recording.”
For now, the trio are set to play Coachella and are expecting to play other festivals this year, as well as a handful of smaller shows.