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Friendsgiving 2024

A Conversation with

November 15, 2024 by Traci Turner

Spending the holidays with your family after this election year is going to be a hot mess. A much better plan is Friendsgiving with Dirty Heads, Sublime with Rome, The Interrupters and ALT 98.7. Next Friday at the Kia Forum, you can experience the positive vibes that emanate from a Dirty Heads / Rome Ramirez event – without family drama!

All of the above is reason enough to attend, but the night will have one more special touch: this will be one of the final Sublime with Rome performance. After 15 years of honoring Sublime’s past – and injecting new music along the way – the new chapter of ROME will move forward.

Rome Ramirez checked in to get us psyched about next week and what’s ahead.

R O M E

Traci: Rome! I saw you with Dirty Heads about two months ago and that was my first time seeing you perform acoustic. I think it was the third song and it was one of your originals. You stopped me in my tracks. I texted your rep with just, “Holy shit!” You were just phenomenal. Live shows with a full band, artists can hide stuff. But acoustic, it’s all out there and you were just amazing.

Rome: Thank you so much! That’s where I come from. I know a lot of artists will tend to stay away from the acoustic vocal thing just because it can be under this magnifying glass, but that’s how I cut my teeth. So for me, joining Sublime and getting into the band situation, that took a little bit longer for me to get my feel. If you listen to the first videos of me playing with Sublime, I was definitely getting my feet wet. But just me and my guitar; I’ve had that since I was 12. In a really weird way, I just feel so comfortable with that.

Traci: Next week’s show at the Forum will be one of the final Sublime with Rome shows. How are you feeling about that?

Rome: It’s so crazy to say that! This journey has been going on for so long now, and for it to come to an end, and especially it being in Los Angeles, and the Forum at that – it’s crazy! This year on this farewell run was, in terms of numbers-wise, just big, if not bigger, than the first year we started the band, which is so crazy for me because I was there for both. I don’t know; it’s filled with a lot of emotion and a lot of optimism and just a lot of gratitude. What a great journey it’s been.

Traci: You mention optimism and gratitude. You have always been so gracious and positive – in my previous interview with you, in others I have read, and at shows. At that recent show, you made a comment that has become one of my new mottos: “I just want to do things with people I like and have fun.”

Rome: Well, thank you for saying that. Honestly, I totally live by that. Once I started having kids – I have three children – and once I started having children, it forces you to start to really look at your time and the output of it. When you’re younger, you don’t really think about it because time is just of an abundance. But when you get older and you start to make certain commitments to people and you make yourself available for them emotionally and physically, it really makes you look at your time and who you’re spending it with and what you’re doing with it. Now, with where I’m at in my life, I just really want to do the things that I love to do the most, stay away from the things that I don’t like to do, and do those things with the people that I love the most. And in there is happiness for me, honestly.

Traci: That positivity also radiates at your shows, and – sorry to keep harping on that one show – but there was so much happiness there. Not only from the crowd, which was probably the most positive crowd I had been around all year at a show, but you with Dirty Heads. You guys have such a good time together, it just looks like it’s not work.

Rome: We definitely came up together. Every time we’re together, it always just feels like a family reunion.

Traci: Hence, Friendsgiving! (laughing)

Rome: Yeah, exactly!

Traci: It’s you, Dirty Heads, and The Interrupters, so I assume there will be at least one or two crossovers that night then?

Rome: Yeah, we’re trying to make something happen to get everybody in on… We’re all there in one night, and it never really works like that, so we’ve definitely got some things up our sleeve!

Traci: What’s ahead for you now that you can focus on ROME?

Rome: Well, it’s really freaking exciting because for the first time in my life, I’m making music without really any pretenses from where I’ve got to fit it in. With Sublime, it was always just trying to keep the respect and integrity of the band, of the legacy with what Bradley had started. But with this, I’ve really been able to take some of my inspirations. Obviously, it’ll always sound like where I come from because I’m just heavily inspired by rhythmic music, reggae, and R&B things. But I’m able to channel some of these other loves that I have for music, soul music, and Motown and really fuse that in with where I come from, but tell a story and speak on things that I want to put out into the world.

Rome continued: Now that I have a family, they incessantly go through all of my lyrics, everything. They read and listen to all my music, music that I never thought would be intended to listen to back from family or children. It really taught me what I’m saying can have an effect on somebody on a real grand scale. I want to make sure that what I’m saying and putting out into the world is something that not only A, I fully stand by and believe, but also, B, it could possibly help people. That’s really where I take a lot of my inspiration lyrically. It’s just sharing my truth and my experience, and then explain to everybody that it’s going to be all right.

Traci: Are you open to sharing the inspiration and meaning in your songs? Or do you prefer fans interpret it in their own way?

Rome: All songs for me are written out of a place of something or somewhere, so I could tell you exactly what every single song is written for because that’s just how I am. I don’t write a bunch of songs all the time. There are some people who fill up their notepad and I just can write five songs a week. But I’m the person who will write maybe 15 songs a year, 20 songs a year, but I’ll be working on those. Then of those, 15, only seven will come out. I guess to me, I just look at it as more trying to really dial in what it is that I want to put out into the world versus just like, “Okay, I wrote it. Next. Put it out.”

Traci: Now, I do love me some Taylor Swift, but there’s artists that put 30 songs on an album and then another album with 30 more songs a few months later… it’s a lot! I’d rather have 15 songs and a good chunk of time to absorb them.

Rome: That feels really good to hear that because from a fan’s perspective, I’m the same way. I’d rather my favorite artist give me their 12 best and then save those other 30 songs for a box set in a couple of years.

Traci: I love to hear what songs are about because it makes me love a song more when I know the story of how it came to be and what it’s about; it makes me more invested in it.

Rome: Yeah, agreed.

Traci: After the Forum show, you have some December shows. Anything else you’re allowed to tell me about?

Rome: Well, I’ll be putting out a new single in February, and I go to record some of these songs that I’ve been writing in the middle of December, which I’m really excited. Living here in Nashville, I’ll be able to record here in town, which is the greatest thing about Nashville, is the greatest studios. I’m just out of a stone’s throw. I’m really excited about that. I have a batch of new songs. Right now, I have 35 songs that I’ve already recorded and been writing. I’m going in to record a handful of those. I’m working with Dan Huff on the record, which I’m really excited about because Dan’s the man. All these awesome things are just falling into place, and I’m just taking my time with everything, not trying to rush things and just feel them out and listen to the world. I’m excited to drop some new music, and I’ve got some festivals that I’m excited to announce soon, and a bunch of other good stuff.

Traci: What is the first thing you’re going to eat when you get back to California next week?

Rome: Honestly, I always eat Asian food. I really miss Asian food the most. Because even Mexican food out here, we have like, Nolensville Pike, and I can get my rocks off down there. But I really miss dumplings and Korean barbecue, and that stuff is really absent out here. So, yeah, that’s what I like whenever I leave Nashville and I’m on tour; all I eat is Asian food.

Traci: In the past month I have talked to two other transplants; AJay from Lit and Leigh from Sixpence None the Richer both live in Nashville now, too. I am going to ask you what I asked them: If you were forced to take a party vehicle on Broadway, which one would you take?

Rome: Oh, man, if I had to go on one, I’d probably do the tractor because I just think it would look like such a cool video just driving down Broadway in a tractor. There’s a lot of really cool ones, though, so it’s hard to choose, but probably that one.

Traci: Neither of them picked the hot tub. Nobody wants the hot tub party vehicle! (laughing)

Rome: Yeah, I don’t know. That one is a little creepy. (laughing)

Thank you to Rome Ramirez and we look forward to the future with ROME – from what we have heard so far, it is going to be incredible!

Check out one of the final Sublime with Rome shows at Friendsgiving at the Forum along with Dirty Heads and The Interrupters. We can sing/scream “Doin’ Time,” “What I Got,” and “Wrong Way” with 17,000 of our closest friends and soak in all the positivity the evening is sure to radiate.

TO FOLLOW

SID 241118 | JIMMY ALVAREZ | EDITOR