Courtesy Jakob Nowell

Jakob Nowell, stepping up to his father’s mic.

“Well, this just took a dark turn — yikes!” That’s Jakob Nowell, the guitarist, singer, songwriter, and frontman for Sublime — and the son of the band’s late, lamented lead singer Bradley Nowell — when I ask him about learning from his mother that his father had died when he was a toddler. But he answers, all the same. “My mom told me that my Dad wasn’t dead, that he was alive in my heart always.”

With his birthday on June 25, Jakob James Marcus Nowell turned 29, meaning he’s seen one year more than his father did. Jakob entered the world back in 1995, courtesy of the Emergency Room at Dignity Health, St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach. He was eleven months old when his father married his mother, Troy Dendekker, in Las Vegas. The couple had dated for roughly six years. One week after their marriage, Bradley James Nowell died of a heroin overdose in San Francisco, while on tour with Sublime. Last year, Jakob was recruited by the surviving Sublime members to take over the guitar/lead singer slot his father had created. On July 20, he’s bringing the act to Bayfest at Waterfront Park.

Nowell grew up with his mother, arriving in San Diego from Hawaii, “because San Diego is where my mom is from. I live in Long Beach now. I moved when I dropped out of high school. Long Beach and San Diego are both my homes, I spent half my time in both as a kid. Pacific Beach is where I grew up. Sort of near Kate Sessions Park. I loved it a lot; man, some of my best memories are playing in that canyon.” He sums up his earliest memories this way: “Mom’s Super Bowl parties, blasting music by the pool, and grilling carne asada.”

He says he listened to a lot of his father’s music, naturally, as a way of remembering him, as well as finding inspiration in other acts. “Tool, Queens of the Stone Age, and Mastodon. Gorillaz, and OutKast too. The music videos for ‘Feel Good Inc.’ and ‘Hey Ya’ unlocked something in me.” Oddly enough, he didn’t start chopping out chords on any of his father’s old instruments. Instead, he learned on “my Grandpa’s acoustic guitar — an old Gibson Dreadnought.”

Though raised in San Diego, he wasn’t plugged into the local music scene. “Didn’t really do a lot of that as a kid, that all came later in adulthood. I will say that San Diego has one of if not the most underrated music scenes in California. So many different genres and sounds to choose from. And everyone who does music down there seems driven and passionate.”

Sublime’s other two founders, bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh, didn’t come around too often, but “I remember them hanging out from time to time when I was little.” Jakob also logged time with Sublime’s mascot, Louie, or Lou Dog, featured on many a record cover and in many a couplet. The band’s manager, Michael Happoldt, took in Lou Dog after his master’s death, and the younger Nowell saw the aging Dalmatian all the time before he passed away. “I was very small at the time, though.”

The son took to the stage with a band called LAW, starting in 2013. Later, he fronted a project called Jakob’s Castle, with producer Jon Joseph and Rancid’s Tim Armstrong. Post-Sublime, Wilson and Gaugh recorded and toured with Rome Ramirez as Sublime with Rome, but they dropped Rome to recruit Jakob. Asked how the decision got made, Jakob waxes coy and cryptic. “Rock, paper, scissors.” The primary challenge of working with his father’s old bandmates? “I suck at guitar.”

Onstage, Jakob doesn’t resemble his father, boasting a handsome, blocky visage and tousled blond waves that plummet over his eyes. He takes the mic shirtless, as his father did, but the twin tattoos over his pecs define his own physicality. But when he opens his mouth, his father’s voice comes out: high, supple, slippery, and hiding scary truths under its cheery veneer. (He’s matter-of-fact when it comes to the older Nowell’s deceptively upbeat-sounding discursions on prostitution, drugs, dissolution, and losing the long battle to bad demons.) He doesn’t suck on guitar nearly as much as he professes, and in fact, seems more naturally born to the role of rock star than his father, who made an endearing trademark out of his own earnest awkwardness.

So how about brand new Sublime songs, maybe to debut at Bayfest or later? “Nothing’s off the table, and the sky is the limit.”