INTERVIEW: Rome lives a Sublime life

Rome, guitarist and lead singer of Sublime With Rome, is living his dream. Few people have such a unique life story: He grew up loving the music of the original Sublime trio (with their classics like “Santeria” and “What I Got”) and was asked to join a new reincarnation of the rock-reggae band a few years ago. Today, the rechristened Sublime With Rome tours the world, and this summer has found success with a new album (Sirens) and a headlining tour with Rebelution, Pepper and Mickey Avalon.

“Yeah, the tour has been going crazy good so far,” Rome said recently during a phone interview. “It’s just real energetic out there. The fans are really receptive to the whole touring package it seems. … Choosing this lineup, it really does feel like a festival, you know.”

Rome said the setlist varies but usually includes some classic Sublime, new tracks off Sirens and some dubs/covers. The Sirens songs seem extra special for the band. “We’ve been on the road for a couple of years, and we’ve been talking about getting in to do a studio session and start writing some tracks,” Rome said. “And we’d just gotten back from a show. We were like, you know what dude? Let’s f***ing go make an album for real, so we held off on a tour for a couple of months.”

The band worked in El Paso, Texas, and eventually the tracks started coming together. The process of recording moved “really fast.” The trio, which now includes original Sublime bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Josh Freese, completed 19 songs and needed to whittle down the results to make the album.

“As far as technology goes, we’ve still been in an Internet boom,” Rome said of releasing the music. “I mean still the same websites are in place since we were just putting together Yours Truly [the last album]. You had YouTube, and Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. So it’s still predominantly that. Maybe Soundcloud is a little different. I still feel that the traditional way to spread your music is by the masses. … The number one way people hear music is through the radio still.”

At a recent Sublime With Rome concert on a pier in New York City, Rome took the stage and supplied simultaneous thrills and memories for the thousands of fans who were rocking out on a seasonably warm night in the Big Apple. That moment, when the singer looked out behind his shades at the throng of humanity, must have felt like the culmination of a life devoted to music.

“When I was like younger, the very first band I loved was Sublime, but then I started listening to other stuff, too,” Rome said of his musical beginnings. “I liked Nirvana a lot. I liked Primus a lot, but then as I got older I started to listen to the bands that kind of made those guys who they were. … I kind of have a really eclectic taste in music as far as that goes. I listen to a lot of rap as well.”

The singer started playing guitar for the first time at age 12. By 13 he knew this was the life for him. When he listened to Sublime growing up, it was complete devotion. He said he “religiously listened” in an “unhealthy manner.”

The lead singer Rome was listening to at the time was Bradley Nowell, who tragically died in the 1990s. There was some nervousness on Rome’s part when joining the band, but those nerves came from being thrust on stage to packed houses. “Well, the nervousness came from playing for 20,000 people over night,” he said. “That was really scary. I kind of had to get used to that. … I was at such a low point in my life. I had nothing, so it’s like what do I have to lose? You know what I mean? I saw a massive opportunity, and they came to me.”

He added: “It was the opportunity of a lifetime — still is.”

Today, after enjoying success for several years, he can be realistic about the music business and what it takes to put on a good show. “There’s so much sh** that has to be done to get to that hour and a half of music every night,” he said. “So that literally is — I’m sure it sounds really cheesy, especially if you read it on paper — but that is the f***ing funnest part of the entire night … that hour and a half when we get to be on stage, and jam and actually play our instruments. That’s fun, man. You get to look out in the crowd, and they’re moving and sh**. Everything else that leads to it, that’s part of the job. That’s the job we signed up for. But that hour and a half is everything for all of us. We love it up there. I think that that radiates to the fans, and they reciprocate it back to us.”

After the current tour, the band will take a small break, but this fall, they plan to head out again and are looking at the possibility of booking dates in Europe, South America and maybe Asia.

“Dude, it’s crazy,” Rome said. “You would think it would get routine and monotonous after a while, but it doesn’t. The music is like youthful. It keeps you going. … All this can disappear in an hour. That’s how it goes. Rock ‘n’ roll is crazy. Everybody wants the lifestyle, but they’re not down with the commitment. People complain about their desk jobs, but they love that security. … Well, in rock ‘n’ roll, you just ride it out and see how long it lasts. So you got to be smart. You got to be diligent.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Sublime With Rome has tour dates coming up in Chicago, Salt Lake City and Albuquerque, among other cities. Click here for more information.