During this year's BeachLife Festival in Redondo Beach, CA, KROQ host Megan Holiday got a chance to speak with Rome Ramirez, frontman of Sublime with Rome, as well as late singer Bradley Nowell's son Jakob Nowell, to get their thoughts on this year's festival vibes and keeping the legacy of Sublime alive.
LISTEN NOW: Rome Ramirez at BeachLife 2023 with Megan Holiday
"Life is good, we're here at BeachFest. Look at this... I live in Nashville now, so you don't get a lot of this at all," Rome tells Megan. Seeing his former hometown of Los Angeles shut down during COVID was "very painful," he explains, "because L.A. has got an electricity to the city -- if you live there or are from there, you know what I'm talking about. When that light dimmed during those years, it was really hard for me to be there. I wanted to go where I was feeling creative as an artist, that's always my mission, and thank God my wife is awesome, she's always down for my plans. So, we decided to go to Nashville and, um... it's really hot. But we like it..."
"What's cool about it, no matter where you go there's a music note on a park bench, or a guitar on the side of a building, or bands playing live in every restaurant. You're just surrounded by music and it reminded me a lot of early L.A., when L.A. was powered predominantly by film and music and it just has that kind of energy now. I go where the energy goes."
Sublime with Rome has been working on new music, the inspiration for which truly came about when the group began touring again post-pandemic. "We've been trying to write this record since 2020," he admits. "Spending a lot of time together again; being on the bus and traveling, dressing rooms and such, we were able to get a scope on the sound we wanted for this record, and then kind of make the record off of that versus trying to make a record for making a record's sake. I'm sitting on 14 songs right now... it's cool, I've been working with all kinds of awesome homies on the record."
Carrying the Sublime legacy forward over the past 15 years while always honoring late frontman Bradley Nowell -- especially now, celebrating the iconic group's 1992 album 40 Oz. To Freedom -- never gets old Rome says. "Because of the fact that I'm such a fan of the band," he admits. "The least part of work about my whole job as a musician is getting on stage for an hour and a half and playing the music. All the other stuff, the like the bureaucracy, and all that stuff is boring. But doing something like this where we're honoring an album that was actually pivotal to my life personally -- it hits different. It's important to me that I come up there and f**kin' knock it out of the park man. Because I think Brad's watching, and I think he's listening."
LISTEN NOW: Jakob Nowell at BeachLife 2023 with Megan Holiday
Jakob Nowell, the son of late Sublime singer Bradley Nowell, also performed at this year's BeachLife festival on day three with his new project Jakob's Castle. "I feel like I'm finally playing the music that I can 100% endorse," he says. "It's 100% me... It's amazing." Pulling the plug on his old band LAW, literally right when he was approached by a label to consider submitting solo work ended up being perfect timing. "They hooked the old duder up with some producers and other writers," he says, and was given the space to be able to develop his new "beach-meets-internet" concept.
"I grew up in a specific culture, without a choice or whatever" Jakob admits. "If your dad owns a car dealership, you end up working at a car dealership, but I never had a sense of self in that. I love performing, and I love storytelling, and hearing the sound of my own voice, I guess."
"Recently, in the last year or so I've been trying to come into my own," Jakob continues. "That's why I bring up that era of music in the mid to late-'90s and early 2000s. My first album that I ever bought with my own money was a CD of 'Demon Days' by Gorillaz. My favorite record, still to this day, and I think so many musicians of that time were fusing together all these different genres and styles and it was a really big, cool, collective thing. You had 'Warped Tour' with all these different styles on it -- which Sublime was a part of at a time. So for me, with the music now, I want to keep the spirit of that era while mixing together all the cool genres I see happening in the Southern California underground today. There's so much amazing, cool stuff happening."
Also getting a chance to perform with bands that were inspired by his late father's music, like his cover of "Doin' Time" with Stick Figure at this year's Coachella festival, also makes him realize that "my dad never got a chance to play these songs that are so good, so inspiring and informative to many musicians... So for me to be even a part in a small way to something that has touched so many fans' and musician's lives -- I almost started tearing up on stage."
Listen above for Megan Holiday's full interviews with Jakob Nowell and Sublime with Rome's Rome Ramirez -- and hear more from KROQ backstage at BeachLife 2023 on the free Audacy app.
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