NEWSWEEK, JULY 2025 BY DEVIN ROBERTSON
Famed ska-punk band Sublime, originally composed of the late Bradley Nowell, Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh, rose to prominence in the 1990s with a multi-genre approach that blended elements of punk and reggae.
But, in the decades since, things have evolved a bit.
Nowell's son, Jakob, met with original members Wilson and Gaugh as part of a special charity performance. The show was so well-received that it sparked the trio to reform Sublime with Jakob as frontman. Since 2024, the group has been in the studio preparing new music, including the fresh single "Ensenada."
With that in the cards, Newsweek sat with the lead singer and guitarist to talk about the reunion, channeling the Sublime vibe, and the reception to the band. When it comes to music, there can be a tendency to lean on nostalgia and want things to remain the same. The renewed Sublime trio, though, has been traveling and headlining shows across stages, including their public debut at Coachella, to much praise from fans.
"If people didn't like it, we wouldn't keep doing it. I do it for the fans, truly. So Sublime for me really has to be like, 'Do the fans want this kind of thing, Is this legit enough? Is this authentic enough?' Nowell said. "And for the most part, you know, 99 percent of people are on board. You know, I see families out there in the audience. I see multigenerational. I always say that is like, every single generation is like, into Sublime right now. If you just go to any of our shows, you just see it from the teenage demographic, the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, even 60s and beyond."
And, for Nowell, that reception is more than just a positive omen for the group's commercial prospects. There's something larger at play. "This is a brand of music, or a scene that just appeals to people on this unique, specific level," he said. "And my theory has always been because the music seems genuine and authentic. So we never want to put on airs or become too poppy, or change the style and sound when it comes to Sublime. Because for me, that crowd response and that reaction and people telling me how emotional it is for them and how much the music got them through their own loss, maybe their family, losing loved ones just like we have, I think we share in our trauma and our music is our song of hope and an escape too, from all of those difficult things. So for me, it feels really special to get to be a part of it."
"I was on tour with my band, Jakob's Castle, and I had this kind of cool spiritual experience at the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma, California, where my dad played his last show or Sublime played their last show. That coincided with me turning 28, the same age my dad was when he technically left the band," he said. "I had always said, 'I'll play Sublime songs when it's something for charity or when it can raise awareness for something or shed light on other things, but never for my own personal benefit.' And so my uncles wanted to play this benefit show for H.R. from Bad Brains. He's just like a hero to us, and good friends of Bud and Eric. Playing that show, we had just connected and we rehearsed, and it was so awesome getting to be in each other's lives that it all kind of coincided naturally."
But even if something feels natural, there can still be challenges. Stepping into that frontman role once held by his father and as part of such an iconic band can be rattling, Nowell admitted.
"Especially in the beginning, it's just so much pressure, because I want to prove myself," he said. "And I think we all have a little bit of impostor syndrome. Everybody out there, in every industry, we just want to fit in, and that would also feel like we legitimately belong. "And I think that the worst one was Coachella, for sure, because that was really like our first real show together in Sublime, and it's like, 'All right, your first one, go play Coachella.' You're kidding me," he laughed. "This is going to be the most publicized event. And I really shouldn't care what people's thoughts are of me, but I'm the only human and I care because, because I care, because I love Sublime, I love the music, and I respect it." Even out of the public eye, there's still pressure. Hitting the studio with an iconic group requires being authentic to the original sound, but Nowell is well-versed in the music. And there's an additional ace up Sublime's sleeve should any additional challenges arise.
"We have a book. We call it the Skin Bible, and it has all of our notes," Nowell explained. "We check to see if things are canonical and authentic, and if someone's like, 'Well, I want to put this in there.' It's like, 'Well, prove that it was in a Sublime song. And we have to do that [to] keep us on track. But you don't want to be too rigid. But I felt like in this process, you almost did like the fun part. We can make it fun, but we kept this big Venn diagram, too, on the wall of all of the differing influences and how we wanted to stay in the middle, never on any one, two sides of this huge multi-circle Venn diagram. And so that way, if we ever want to do something that was slightly outside of it, it was very conscious and intentional."
Experiences Researching and Recording
To tap into the quintessence of Sublime, the frontman immersed himself in the band's catalog and emerged with a deeper reverence for the music.
"There were two phases of my Sublime research," he said. "There was learning about the performance and how to portray it live, which, you know, obviously listen to all the songs in the catalog and then watch a lot of live performance videos and be like 'OK. What's the essence of this band? What is the vibe like? How am I gonna do this without just feeling like I'm copying and make it authentic?' I got really familiar with the sound of the band and their approach to playing music.
Nowell described the recording process of "Ensenada" and the band's upcoming new music as "a bonding experience," saying, "I think when you're sitting in any room for eight hours, eventually it becomes sort of like a little bit of a therapy room, too. I mean, the world outside the studio doesn't stop. It's kind of like the hyperbolic time chamber. The other world slows down. You're just in there practicing our f***ing martial arts.
"It's so cool when people will accept that material, too. It shows that we're doing something right and that it fits in the catalog. That's all I want. I don't think that you know. I'll knock on wood. Who knows, time will tell. I'm proud of what we did, but I don't think we were able to achieve writing like a 'Santeria' or even a 'What I Got' like, I consider those two like their big, big, just timeless rock 'n' roll classics, just without a doubt, alternative classics, and that's because those go beyond their influences. That's a riddle that we would not be able to solve without the original members.
"They probably didn't know. They probably had versions of those jams 100 times, and then one recording just sort of did it time and place, bam. You know, timeless song. You can't out-legacy. You can't out-myth, the original myth. So we just wanted to create a bunch of songs that were well within the same sound genre."
And, on the subject of timeless, iconic music, what is Nowell's favorite Sublime song? "Definitely the song 'All You Need.' It just is such a good example of the band's influences and capabilities," he said. "'All You Need' and Greatest Hits and 'S.T.P.,' as well."
Sublime's new single "Ensenada" is available now.