Jakob Nowell has a broken leg and zero interest in slowing down. When we speak, he’s propped up in a bed somewhere in San Diego, hairless cat Fluffy in tow, joking about needing a Dave Grohl–style stage throne to get through some shows.
“It’s my first time getting injured like this because of music, but I lead an active lifestyle so it’s bound to happen,” he laughs. “I won’t let it slow me down.”
That spirit is exactly what’s propelling Sublime into their next chapter. And that next chapter finally includes Australia: a debut headlining set at Bluesfest 2026, plus the first-ever headline shows in a country that’s been waiting three decades for this moment. Jakob calls it a “family business,” and he’s now the one delivering the goods to the other side of the world.
“It feels so utterly special,” he says. “I wish it was my dad who we got to experience these things, but I’m really happy to get to spread the good word of his music out in new and unfamiliar territories.” Australia, he adds, has been on his bucket list forever.
Sublime’s global “re-introduction” came on the Coachella stage: high stakes, high expectations, and about as public as a first day on the job can get. Jakob was equal parts exhilarated and terrified.
“It was all still so new, so I wasn’t as confident with the material,” Jakob says. “I was still getting used to doing all this and playing the material and figuring out how I was going to portray it.”
And unlike the artists who talk dreamily about stepping offstage wondering where the last hour went, Jakob remembers every second.
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“This one was more like the opposite time dilation… I’d look at the clock and I’d be like, fuck, there’s still 40 minutes of this shit left,” he recalls, laughing. “But we made it happen… and we’ve only gotten better.”
Bradley Nowell’s legacy looms large. Sublime are more than just a band — they’re a West Coast cultural shorthand. For Jakob, that’s never been a weight he’s tried to shrug off.
“Starting from a place of respect and reverence,” he says, “Trying to discover the singers that inspired my dad to sing the way that he did, and become this small part of the great chain of being.”
He talks about legacy like it’s alive, something that grows and mutates and shows up differently in each person who hears those songs. He understands that Australian fans have lived with Sublime far longer than he has. They’ve turned 40oz. to Freedom into a rite of passage from backyard parties to beach bonfires. This tour is finally the moment where all that devotion connects to the source.
But Jakob refuses to let his father’s legacy become a museum exhibit. This band breathes because he does.
“What I think I’m best at is just telling the stories and performing and embodying and singing,” he says, explaining why his best friend Zane Vanderbilt joins them live on guitar, freeing Jakob to fully connect with the audience the way his father Bradley did.
“It’s helped me immensely,” he adds of stepping into the band. “We’ve got to get out of our comfort zone… it’s opened me up to new possibilities… I feel like I’ve unlocked a whole new area of potential in songwriting.”
The first taste of Sublime’s future arrived with “Ensenada”, a single Jakob says was never designed to carry the pressure it does now.
“We didn’t write it to be a leading song. It was more to make us laugh… but it is a good example of the fact that we’re just trying to stick to that original formula,” he says. “I feel like I’ve unlocked a whole new area of potential in songwriting, and since doing this, I’ve never felt more inspired.”
There’s more new music coming, and Jakob hints it’ll feel both familiar and freshly electrifying: songs that would have inspired Sublime — not the other way around. He’s gone back to the blueprint: classic ska, punk, reggae, the LA and Long Beach underground. Not to replicate, but to understand the why.
“We have a unique audience, truly all ages, and I think people are drawn to a certain genuine quality that people find in Sublime,” he says. “So I’m just so eager to share with them the new stuff we’ve been working on… as long as we keep that authenticity.”
He’s writing from a place where heritage and future press together, where fans who built their adolescence around Sublime can grow up with the band without letting go of the energy that drew them in.
Because Sublime shows are wild. They’re messy. They’re emotional. They’re communities forming and reforming in real time.
“Total chaos and irreverent fun, but also a lot of love… the kind where the dysfunctional families can come and just be themselves,” Jakob says. “The kind of warm blanket that maybe has a fucking stain on it.”
It’s the kind of show where strangers become cousins by the second verse, and leave hoarse, sweaty, and transformed.
And for Australians who’ve spent decades blasting those records with the windows down? This is your punchline to a 30-year setup.
Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh — the original rhythm section — are itching to finally step on Australian soil.
“They’re more stoked than anybody,” Jakob says. “The fact that their music is taking us there… fuck, they couldn’t be more happy.”
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Jakob, meanwhile, is hoping to meet actual Australian wildlife… and possibly his future spouse.
“A psychic told me that I might meet my future spouse in Australia,” he says. “Maybe I won’t even leave Australia, maybe I’ll fall in love and stay there forever.”
Behind the irreverence sits a truth that drives everything Jakob does. This tour — this era — is something his father dreamed of.
“What father doesn’t want their family to carry on and their legacy?” he shrugs.
But he’s not defined by loss anymore.
“I truly feel not defined solely by my traumas,” he says. “The tragedy that my family endured and the fans endured — those reverberations are still felt today, but we’re not bound by them. It’s also by our common solution.”
Fans who’ve found comfort, rebellion, or belonging in Sublime’s music for three decades will see that living and breathing onstage next year.
“I want them to take away that generational trauma is a real thing, but so is generational love,” Jakob says. “I’m living proof of that, and so is Fluffy.”
