Sublime Played Their Most Powerful Song at Their Last Show

Aaron Gilbreath
59 min readApr 3, 2020

“The Ballad of Johnny Butt” is one of the California band’s most moving songs, even if it’s the least-serious sounding

Sublime playing Warped Tour in Asbury Park, NJ 8/18/1995. Getty Images

“Lovin’ is what I got. Said remember that.” –Bradley Nowell

For a perpetually stoned band that took very little seriously, the California band Sublime played some seriously powerful music.

--

--

Aaron Gilbreath

Essayist, Journalist, Burritoist. Longreads Editor. Writing: Harper’s, NYT, Slate, Paris Review, VQR, Oxford American, Kenyon Review. 3 nonfiction books.