“Addiction is a family disease,” says Jakob Nowell, the 28-year-old son of late Sublime frontman Bradley Nowell. “Rock & roll is a family disease, man. I seek to keep it in the family.”
Jakob bears an eerie sonic and physical resemblance to his dad, who was also 28 when he died of an overdose in 1996, cutting his band’s career short on the brink of superstardom. This April, at Coachella, Jakob will make his official debut as the new lead singer and guitarist of Sublime, alongside his dad’s original bandmates, drummer Bud Gaugh and Eric Wilson. “It seemed like it was time for me to step into that role,” Jakob says, in his first interview about the band’s revival.
“I look at it as like a custodial role,” he continues. “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 band’s songs have had a robust afterlife, most recently in the form of Sublime with Rome, a band that featured Wilson and frontman Rome Ramirez; Gaugh briefly played with them circa 2011, but bowed out, feeling reluctant to tour extensively. “I was raising a family,” Gaugh says, “and really needed to be there for my family.” But that band, which recorded new music and toured extensively, is coming to an end this year (though, confusingly enough, it still has some dates booked). “We’re not gonna be playing Sublime with Rome songs,” says Jakob, who admires Ramirez’s talent but always had mixed feelings, at best, about that band’s existence.
The new Sublime began in December at a benefit for Bad Brain’s H.R., who’s been battling health issues. “The first time jamming,” says Gaugh, “just closing my eyes, it was bringing me back to the first early days in Brad’s dad’s garage. It fit together really nice.” The show was sloppier than Jakob hopes their real gigs will be, but they all saw the potential for something bigger. Coachella will just be the beginning — they expect to play other festivals this year, and continue on with a modest number of shows each year for the foreseeable future. “I would never have expected this,” Gaugh adds. “I’m still waking up and going, ‘Is it real? Is this just a dream?’”
There are no plans to write new songs for Sublime — Jakob, previously the singer and bassist in the band Law, saves his own inventive songwriting for Jakobs Castle, an eclectic solo project with a debut album coming in April on Epitaph Records. Instead, the band plans to find ways to release new music that draws from a giant treasure trove of unreleased Bradley Nowell compositions that their former sound engineer held onto for all these years. “There’s a plethora of stuff,” says Gaugh. “Anytime we had a tape machine, it was constantly recording.”
Jakob has no memories of his father, and his path hasn’t been easy. His own drug problem started when he was just 12 years old. “I’ve been at the depths of my addiction,” says Jakob, who’s been sober for the last seven years. “I’ve been on the bathroom floor throwing up blood and convulsing. The fact that me and my dad have that in common, it’s a pretty trippy story. I think it allows me to connect with the music on another level.”
Jakob describes a chaotic, “white trash” upbringing that left him feeling alienated from the hedonistic SoCal lifestyle his dad exemplified. For years, too, listening to his dad’s music was too emotional to bear. But he found his way to Sublime’s sound and ethos after realizing he liked all the same music they did — punk rock, reggae artists like Barrington Levy, Nineties hip-hop.
He made the final decision to embrace his dad’s legacy after a tour date with Jakobs Castle in Petaluma, California last year. Not for the first time, he made a “sacred pilgrimage” to the Phoenix Theater there, where his father played his final gig just before his death. While he was there, he happened upon a recovery meeting filled with punk-rock locals. “I had to stand up,” Jakob recalls, “and be like, ‘Yo, this is who I am, and my dad died from a drug overdose the last night he played here, and here you guys are, 28 years later, having a meeting, all of these cool people who probably love the style of music that my dad did.’” And in that moment, he adds, “I decided that this is what I was supposed to be doing.”
Meanwhile, a Sublime biopic is in the works, with Ozark creator (and former Rolling Stone writer) Chris Mundy working on the screenplay. “I just don’t want the movie to be cringey,” says Jakob, who definitely has no interest in playing his dad onscreen. “I think there’s a kissing scene with my mom’s character,” he adds. “So that would be a little too Oedipal.”
