Featuring vocals from Bradley Nowell, Sublime’s “Feel Like That” with Stick Figure has all but blown the lid off the reggae rock world the last 6 weeks. Now charting on the Billboard Top 20, the single was a breath of life for the Long Beach trio recently made whole with the addition of 29 year old Jakob, Bradley’s only son.
as told by Allie Adams
Last night’s set at Levitate Music Festival was the first time “Feel Like That” was performed live with Stick Figure, and today Sublime heads to NYC for an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. The Pier sat down with longtime Sublime collaborator and producer, Mike “Miguel” Happoldt to dive deeper into the songs’ origins, which go all the way back to the 2000’s in Jamaica.
TP: So, can you walk me through the song’s beginnings? Who was the first person that was like “hey, this should get made?” Who got the ball rolling and how did that all come to be?
MH: Well, it really goes back to Half Pint. Half Pint was out in California and he did a song with Jack Maness of the Long Beach Dub All Stars
Jack and Half Pint made this song [“Unity“, 2008] and then Half Pint put it on his record and it went to number one in Jamaica. So, Jack went to Jamaica to perform the song at a thing called Sumfest, big festival. When he was there he got hit up in the lobby. This guy goes, “hey, aren’t you Jack Maness?”
And that was Scott Woodruff from Stick Figure.
Courtesy Mike “Miguel” Happoldt
Jack came back [to the States] and said to me, “hey, I want to give you this CD of this kid, Stick Figure. I met him in Jamaica. He’s doing his thing” and I was like, “oh, okay”. So, that’s how Scott was on my radar. And then we became friends through Stick Figure’s old drummer, Todd Smith.
When I was starting the band Perro Bravo I wanted Todd to play drums. He said, “well, I’ll bring along a bass player I know”. And it was Stick. So, we had a good jam. Then I found out they both were in bands and lived far so it didn’t go too far beyond us jamming together. But I always liked his music, I liked his hustle and he’s just a great guy. So, Stick Figure was always on my radar. As the years rolled by and they kept blowing up. I’m so proud of him and just amazed.
Scott would always say,
“hey, I know there’s songs in the vault.” And I’m like, “you’re the guy to sample a song, if anyone should, it should be you”.
He came by with Johnny Cosmic. I have a lot of stuff on hard drives and in the vault and I pulled out a couple of things from storage for him and we kind of just listened to stuff and got vibes. They took a little piece of the song that you hear now and then they went home and like a week later they sent me pretty much the bare bones of it.
Then I went up there for a weekend and we worked on it a little bit more and we just kept batting it around. And then, we went to the label, Universal Music Group to clear all the samples. This was in 2017. The old management, unfortunately, just didn’t really keep an ear to the ground. So when we presented it to them, they didn’t know who Stick Figure was. They thought I was just like, giving the song to some dude off the street.
So [the song] just sat and it really kind of broke Jakob’s heart cause he thought it was cool. By that point, Jakob knew all the Stick Figure guys too. We always felt like [the song] should have come out. So when we changed management we were able to re-look at everything. We said, “well, let’s try to put this out and see what it’ll take”.
Everybody thought it was a good idea this time around. We worked on it a little more because a lot of time had gone by and we added Jakob on there since he was in the picture now. I thought it was a really amazing tribute. And there was a lot of dedication and tenacity on Scott’s part to see it through and not give up on it.
I’m just glad it’s getting its day in court. And I hope people love it.