Marking Santa Barbara Bowl’s 75th anniversary, this summer’s lineup has already been an incredible one, and isn’t letting up anytime soon. The Bowl has already played host to big names like Katy Perry and Incubus this past month, and upcoming highlights include Ray LaMontagne, Fleet Foxes, Journey, and Death Cab For Cutie. As always, incredible acts keep flocking to this gorgeous venue, and any trip there makes it easy to see why.
On their sixth annual Summer Unity Tour, 311 once again returned to sunny Santa Barbara, this time with the newly (re) formed Sublime With Rome along for the ride. Fans, young and old, packed out the Bowl on a beautiful August afternoon last weekend, to hear both bands, and to experience a whole heap of what summer has to offer.
After a short set by Del Mar, a female-fronted surf rock band, which also feature’s Sublime’s drummer Bud Gaugh, Sublime With Rome took the stage and the crowd officially went nuts. After the untimely death of Sublime’s lead singer, Bradley Nowell in 1996, Gaugh and bassist Eric Wilson let the band die off as well, and pursued other side projects throughout the years. Not until 2009, when they met a young Rome Ramirez, did they decide to put the band back together, so to speak, not to try to replace Nowell, but to play on in his honor.
The old familiar sounds of 40oz. to Freedom all rushed back, as the band opened with the same sound clips and samples that peppered their 1992 debut album, and crashed into a non-stop mashup of Sublime’s old hits. It’s incredible how much Ramirez can sound like Nowell when he’s trying, and his youthful energy and punk-rock spirit seemed to uplift Gaugh and Wilson, while breathing new life into the music.
The crowd sang along, moshed in time with, and generally took a trip down memory lane, as the trio, backed by a DJ and a saxophonist, rocked their way through familiar tracks like “Badfish” and “Santeria,” as well as lesser known gems like “Right Back” and their cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Scarlet Begonias.” It’s amazing what an impact Sublime still has to this day, and it’s a huge credit to Nowell’s impressive legacy to see that many fans singing along to just about every song.
Also mixed into the session were a few of the new tracks off of Sublime with Rome’s first official album, Yours Truly. Tunes like “Panic” and “Murdera” held up pretty well against some of the older songs, but you could tell that the classics were what the fans really wanted to hear. SWR returned the favor and closed with an inspired version of “What I Got,” as well as Sublime’s first hit, and subsequent crowd favorite, “Date Rape.” While I can’t say I ever had the privilege of seeing Sublime live in person, I’m pretty sure this is as close as I’ll ever get, and it was a great show.
SWR could have been the headliners, and it still would have been a stellar concert, but thankfully, 311, one of the best live bands out there, still had a few hours left to jam and close out the evening. Boasting the same lineup for almost twenty years now, Nick Hexum (vocals/guitar), Doug “SA” Martinez (backup vocals/programming), Tim Mahoney (lead guitar), P-Nut (bass), and Chad Sexton (Drums) are all incredible masters of their instruments, and have really perfected the art of the live stage show. While they may not be putting out as many hits on the radio as they used to, their fan following has remained enormous, and their concert experience is one of the best out there today.
The minute Mahoney’s guitar started crunching out the intro power chords to “Beautiful Disaster,” the Bowl erupted. The quintet bounced around stage, displayed their musical prowess, and the resulting energy in the crowd was so positive and vibrant. With a style definitely all their own, the best way to describe the band comes off the lyrics from their 1999 hit “Come Original,” where Hexum sings “Funk slap bass mixed with the dance hall, and hip hop beats and punk guitar, and deadly on the mic is the one SA, the name is 311 and you know it ain’t easy.”
Hexum and Martinez traded lyrical licks like some sort of rap leapfrog game, while the rest of the band cranked through hits like “Prisoner” and “All Mixed Up,” and it was hard to ignore the talents of both P-Nut and Sexton. P-Nut got his own chance to shine, as the audience roared in awe of his bass solo, as there are few out there who can “slap da bass” like him, and then the highlight of the evening was when Sexton got his own drum solo. Playing some of the fastest and most ridiculous beats on one of the biggest drum kits I’ve ever seen, everyone was up on their feet cheering him on, for over five minutes. That then led into a 311 concert standard, where the entire band gets on a drum, and bangs along in time impressively, like some kind of crazy Vegas show act.
With ten albums to their names, and such a huge catalog of hits, it was really cool to hear them go deeper into the vaults with live versions of tracks like “Large in the Margin,” “1,2,3,” and “Do You Right.” They truly own their entire collection, and the energy never let up or took a break. Fans even seemed to be digging the new songs off of last month’s release Universal Pulse, especially their new unofficial Unity Tour anthem, “Sunset in July.” As the musical harbingers of the summertime, their lyrics “Sunset in July, rockers by my side, and time is flying by. Watching you dancing and having the time of your life, and it’s getting me high” rang true throughout the Bowl that evening.
I’m pretty sure everyone in the crowd sang along with lighters up to the mellowed out hit “Amber,” but by the time they closed the show with “Down” they were all back on their feet again in happy little mosh pits, and the inevitable encore brought on a few more past hits, including one of my favorites, “Creatures (For A While).” Another incredible showing by the five guys from Omaha, Nebraska, and over twenty years since the band’s birth, they showed absolutely no signs of slowing down.
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