Sublime's Jakob Nowell Talks With Apple Music 1 About Discovered Music and More

07-23-2024

(ALT CTRL Radio on Apple Music 1) Sublime's Jakob Nowell joins Hanuman Welch on ALT CTRL Radio on Apple Music 1. He talks about finding old hard drives in the Sublime storage vault and their plans to complete and release them. He talks about working with Stick Figure on new Sublime song "Feel Like That" and who is dream collaborators would be. Then, he shares what its like to balance the potential of the future with the legacy of the past, and what it was like to perform at Coachella for the first time.

Nowell About Finding Gold On An Old Hard Drive In The Sublime Storage Vault And Working It Into New Songs...: I was trying to drop off this weird, old, encrypted external hard drive that we found in the Sublime storage vault. I was hoping there was gold on there that we could use for it....Rather than just being like, "Hey. We want to make a whole new Sublime record. Let's write new Sublime songs." It feels almost like cheap and it doesn't feel like it's my place. I'm just so stoked to bring my uncles back together to do stuff. And there was so much unreleased material that got left on the cutting room floor. So we're meeting up all here, taking it to our lab here at the studio in San Pedro and doing like remixes and re-imaginings of stuff that's either unreleased or never got a good proper recording. Just doing cool versions of it and then looking to collab with other artists in many different scenes that were inspired by Sublime.

About Balancing The Ambition And Potential Of The Future With The Legacy Of The Past...: Yeah. No. It's definitely. You're always walking a fine line because you want... What made Sublime so cool was the fact that it was genuine and it almost seemed effortless. So us coming in here, there is an element of thought that goes into it because it's a different time, it is a different era. So I think that we have to go in with all the tools at our disposal, but at the same time, it's like you learn the whole rule book and then you burn the rule book absolutely-

Hanuman: Yeah. You got to know the rules before you break them.

Jakob Nowell: Exactly, right. Yeah. And so once we have that and we know what sounds we can use and stuff and we know what is the bones of a song, it's really... We realized that I think what made a Sublime song a Sublime song was that collaborative nature.

Nowell About Collaborating With Stick Figure On New Song "Feel Like That"...: That was the first thing that gave me the concept of wanting to do all this, because it was this old bootleg song that never got a really clear, proper recording and Stick made his version of it with my dad's vocals on it. Then we got Bud and Eric involved in the instrumentation and then me on the vocals. And then I realized through the process of all doing this, it was like a healing thing. They got to reconnect with a lost loved one. And on Stick side, he got to connect with artists that inspired him to follow his dreams and his music career. And for me, it gave me the family that I had always desperately wished that I had around me and that sense of belonging.

And I realized that if I could just do this and show other people how to do this and continue this onwards, making it as big as possible, then that feeling would proliferate into the future generations and to every face that I see at these shows, it's always families. It's never one demographic. It's, "I'm here with my father, my mother and my son and my daughter."

Jakob Shares Who He Would Love To Collaborate With In The Future...: We would love to work with Turnstile. We got to play No Values with them. I'm hoping they're down to maybe do a track together. It'd be so much fun. And in the hip hop spirit, be really cool to work with Vince Staples, Long Beach rapper. I think that's so cool. Someone I grew up listening to. So awesome to think about that. One of my favorite groups of all time is 100 gecs. And I'm pretty sure they're Sublime Fans in some real way.

Hanuman: The last 100 gecs album was a ska record.

Jakob Nowell: Yeah. And "Most Wanted Person in the United States" definitely has that Sublime-y baseline. Yep. And no one would think like, "Oh, those three artists I just mentioned might've been influenced by Sublime in some way." Well, it's true. And those aren't reggae artists I mentioned. So I think that's a great starting place. People like them or at that level or in that range, in that sphere, it would be so cool to just show them what we're working on with these remix songs, have them into [the studio], and just have a blast.

Hanuman: I'm going to throw one more thing out there, just a wishlist. Get Gwen Stefani. Do a "I Saw Red" redux 2024 Edition. Just throwing it out there. That's a freebie.

Jakob Nowell: Everybody, at Gwen. We want the Gwen feature. We want it.

Jakob About Performing At Coachella...:

Hanuman: How did you guys prepare for that knowing that expectations would be high, as well as the haters out there were fully expecting you guys to fall on your face?

Jakob: Oh, I know, man. It is tough because it's such a long-standing legacy. I've been in out of bands for 12 years, but I've never wanted to step into this role because it's a lot. It's emotionally challenging. It doesn't feel right. And there's no way you can live up to a moment. You can be as good as you can be in whatever your specialty is, but having that moment in time of being these incredible innovators is timeless and it's something I don't want to f*** with . So I think doing it, I had to come to a point where I realized that it's bigger than me. It's about bringing my family together and the families of many fans who want to see me up there doing it because that is a thing that is there. And I'm never going to sound... When people are like, "Well, he doesn't sound enough like Bradley in this instance or this other instance," and it's like, "Well, it's almost like I'm not him."

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