ROME

As a kid growing up in Northern California, Rome Ramirez, known professionally as ROME, taught himself to play guitar in his family’s garage and soon began penning songs with a warm and potent honesty. By the time he’d reached his late teens, he’d moved to Los Angeles and quickly landed his dream job: serving as frontman for a revived iteration of iconic ska-punk act Sublime, his all-time favorite band. Since co-founding Sublime with Rome in 2009, Ramirez has released three albums with the trio and toured with the likes of 311, The Offspring, Cypress Hill, and Incubus, all while continuing to craft his own deeply confessional songs. As he gears up to share his solo work with the world, Ramirez hopes that his songs might leave listeners with the same joy and solace he finds in creating music. “Especially during lockdown, the feeling of connection I got from playing songs for people on live streams gave me a whole new sense of purpose,” he says. “With the music I’m putting out now, one of the main goals is to build a community of people who want to lift each other up and really celebrate the moment. Life’s been so good to me, so now I want to pay it forward and bring that energy to everybody else.”