As a kid growing up in Northern California, Rome Ramirez 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 Cypress Hill and Incubus, all while continuing to craft his own deeply confessional songs. For the latest turn in a career that’s also included lending his songwriting talents to tracks from superstars like Selena Gomez and Enrique Iglesias, the Nashville-based artist is now gearing up to make his solo debut with a body of work spotlighting his soul-soothing voice and straight-from-the-heart storytelling like never before.

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 livestreams 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.