Last year, Jakob Nowell, the 28-year-old son of late Sublime vocalist-guitarist Bradley Nowell, officially stepped in to be the frontman of Sublime along with original members bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh.
The number 28 is significant for Nowell: It’s not only his current age, but it’s the age his father was when he died of an accidental overdose after playing a show at the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma on May 25, 1996. Two months after his death, the band’s mainstream self-titled debut was released, launching the band to superstardom thanks to songs like “Santeria,” “Wrong Way” and the lead single, “What I Got.”
Jakob had just celebrated his first birthday.
ALSO SEE: ‘Sublime’ at 25: Remembering Bradley Nowell and the Long Beach band’s massive hit album
Rising from the Phoenix
In the years since, Nowell grew up to be a musician, too. Whether he liked it or not, he drew comparisons to his father’s singing and guitar playing. And much like his father, Nowell struggled through his own addictions.
He got sober in 2017. Even that seems to share a little connection to his late father. While on tour opening up for Orange County group Common Kings in Northern California last year, Nowell stopped by the Phoenix Theater.
“Whenever I’m up there, I do sort of a little spiritual pilgrimage,” Nowell said during a recent phone interview while out on tour in Florida with his other band, Jakobs Castle. “Now, it’s like a little community center and I walk in and there’s skate ramps and kids hanging out and I’d been there a million times it feels like. I walked up on the stage and I was just kind of soaking it all in and stage left, there’s these double doors and a production room, and I hear clapping. I walked through the doors and there’s a big meeting, like an NA or AA meeting, happening and I’ve been sober for seven years.”
Nowell randomly happened to show up during this gathering, which also got him thinking about turning 28. He looked around the room and saw old Sublime logo stickers and band member names carved into the walls. That period of time also coincided with the Nowell Family Foundation opening its first Bradley’s House treatment facility in Redlands, which raises awareness about the opioid crisis and offers help to musicians struggling with addiction.
“Addiction is a family thing and rock and roll is a family disease as well,” he said. “I’m not a religious man, I’m hardly even spiritual, but when you see all of those sorts of synchronicities lining up, the individual gets to decide what that means. For me, it was like OK, it’s time to pay my dues.”
Getting the band back together
Back in December, Nowell joined Wilson and Gaugh to play a small set at a benefit for Bad Brains’ frontman H.R. in December at Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles. The rehearsals and live performance went swimmingly.
“It was incredible,” Nowell said. “They are some of the best musicians that I’ve ever played with. Bud is hands down the best drummer and the same with Eric on bass. It was crazy how much fun we were having and I never wanted it to stop.”
The group is keeping that momentum going and are scheduled to play more shows, including Saturday sets at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio on April 13 and 20; the Brightside Music Festival in Orlando, Florida on April 27; and the recently announced No Values Festival at Fairplex Pomona on June 8. There’s even been talks of making new music, too.
But this was never the plan, Nowell insists.
Being with Gaugh and Wilson at rehearsals and picking up this father’s old brown acoustic guitar — an instrument that had previously been lovingly cared for and passed down by one of his dad’s closest friends, manager and musical cohort, Michael “Miguel” Happoldt — Nowell said it felt like the right fit.
“It was so nerve-racking,” Nowell admits about playing the inaugural run with Sublime in front of so many seasoned players and artists his father admired greatly. “It was cool, amazing and magical — all of those things. To get to connect with my father’s music, it’s always going to be a trip. There are people who are not going to like how I sing the songs or how I play the guitar or think that I’m not up to snuff. But you can’t compete with a ghost. I’m not here to compete. I’m here to do it my way and have fun with my uncles on stage.”
For Gaugh, getting to play with one of his best friend’s kid in a band he helped create more than three decades ago, was a very surreal experience. He also hadn’t played with Wilson in more than a decade, since he left the Sublime offshoot, Sublime with Rome, which was fronted by guitarist-vocalist Rome Ramirez.
“It was wild,” Gaugh said of those early band rehearsals. “Eric and I go way back and we’d take breaks from playing here and there, so it was just like riding a bike to be jamming with him. But playing with Jake, that was a mind trip on many levels. I can’t really explain it, but it was like going back to Brad’s dad’s garage early on, kind of like just learning each other’s vibe and each other’s way of playing stuff. It was eerily familiar. I jammed with Eric before we even met Brad, so I knew how he played, but I remember being like, ‘I don’t know how this Brad kid plays yet.’ It was like going back to that.”
Since Sublime is now intact with Jakob at the helm, Sublime with Rome is wrapping up a final tour, playing the “40oz. to Freedom” record in full. That band recently played the Cali Vibes Festival in Long Beach and Ramirez ended the set, seemingly passing the torch back to Nowell.
“Thank you, guys, so much for the best 15 years of my life,” Ramirez said to the audience before playing his favorite Sublime song, “Live at E’s.” “All right, Jakie, it’s all yours,” he added as he walked off the stage at the end of the performance.
A sublime future
With the first show jitters out of the way, Nowell and Gaugh said they’re serious about putting on some fun sets at the forthcoming festival dates. Though both players let out a mighty laugh when asked how they’d compress Sublime’s catalog of songs into a single festival set.
“We were the band that when we’d do a Summer tour, we never had a setlist that we’d play from every night,” Gaugh recalled. “Every night of the tour it’s like we’d write things down on a napkin at the bar across the street from the venue at lunchtime and then we’d vaguely, very loosely use that as a map, but it wouldn’t always work out.”
While Nowell has done Sublime songs like “Boss DJ,” “Pool Shark” and “Bad Fish” in his other bands in the past, he’s looking forward to mixing it up with these shows and maybe throwing in “April 29th, 1992” and “STP.”
“Though learning a bunch of songs with Bud and Eric and going through their catalog, you discover all these interesting little artifacts,” Nowell said. “They’re unusual songs. They’re not just verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus … it’s very much unique and genuine and it transports you to all these places where you wonder, man, where were they when they wrote this or did that? What were they doing when they made this part here? It’s great music and I really do feel lucky that I get to be the one up there portraying it.”
“Whenever Bud and Eric are playing, that’s Sublime,” he continued. “I’m just lucky to be a small part of it. I’m not Sublime. I’m not the guy.”
One of the things Nowell and Gaugh are looking forward to in playing the Coachella dates is reuniting with fellow Southern California band No Doubt. The ska outfit from Anaheim, fronted by Gwen Stefani, announced they’d get the gang back together for special sets at Coachella. Stefani and Bradley Nowell famously performed the song, “Saw Red,” together a few times live and the bands often crossed paths while playing within the local music scene.
“I’m hoping we can convince Gwen to come do ‘Saw Red’ with us; that would be so rad,” Nowell said. “Come on, Gwen! Let’s do this!”
While the upcoming Sublime shows are at the forefront of their minds, Nowell does have another more alternative pop-style project to promote. Jakobs Castle’s debut album, “Enter: The Castle,” comes out on Epitaph Records on April 12. It’s a passion project he worked on with Rancid and Operation Ivy frontman Tim Armstrong.
“We collaborated on three songs on the record, actually,” Nowell said of Armstrong. “I took the songs we wrote to my producer Jon Joseph and we Castle-fied them and made them all weird and it’s been a very fun process. And working with Tim, he’s a legend.”
There’s a Sublime biopic in the works, too. Though Gaugh doesn’t know who would have the chops to portray him in the film.
“That’s a really good question … I just feel really sorry for the guy,” Gaugh said with a laugh. “He’d just have to be passionate and rebellious and really get in it, feel it and live it. He’d have to live, eat and sleep drums, and hopefully, he’d be a drummer, too.”
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival
When: 1 p.m.-1 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays April 12-13 and 19-20; 1 p.m.-Midnight Sundays April 14 and 21
Where: Empire Polo Club, 81800 51st Ave., Indio
Tickets: $499-$719 for general admission passes with shuttle access (Weekend 1 is sold-out); $1,069-$1,269 for VIP passes for each weekend. Parking, camping and other add-ons can be purchased, too, at coachella.com/passes.
Next: No Values Festival, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Saturday, June 8 at Pomona Fairplex, 1101 W. McKinley Ave., Pomona. $199 no values general admission passes; $229 some values general admission passes; $249 more values general admission passes; and $399 VIP passes. All tickets are available at novalues.com.
