When headliners Eric Wilson, Bud Gaugh and Jakob Nowell took the stage shortly before midnight at the Teragram Ballroom on Dec. 11 in Los Angeles for a benefit concert for Bad Brains frontman H.R., they didn’t officially have a band name. It wasn’t until the second song during the rousing set that Nowell announced he was now leading the band his late father, Bradley Nowell, first launched with Wilson and Gaugh in 1998 — the beloved Long Beach alternative, rock and reggae group Sublime.
One week later, on Monday (Dec. 18), Rome Ramirez, lead singer of the group Sublime with Rome — the Sublime spinoff that has performed classic Sublime songs and Ramirez’s original material since 2009 — announced he was ending his run performing with the group. The announcement followed news that the Nowell family, along with Wilson and Gaugh, had effectively laid the groundwork for the younger Nowell to take over his father’s role and lead the band into a new era.
