Interview

As clouds began to mount on a scorching Atlanta afternoon, any immediate relief from heat was doused with the fear of being completely soaked. Regardless of any fear of rain, the fans waiting to see Bayside perform on the Hurley stage seemed unaware of the change in climate, their eyes fixed on the preparation happening on stage. Some, myself included, a little surprised they weren’t in the center of the festival at one of the main stages, but from the size of the crowd, it didn’t seem to matter much. If someone were to look down from above the festival, they probably couldn’t tell the difference between the three stages.

The recognition from the crowd was certainly well deserved, as the band put out its stunning fifth-record, “The Walking Wounded,” five months prior, which was met with critical praise and the most commercial success of any of the band’s previous efforts. Featuring some of the most haunting and accessible songs the band has written to date, “The Walking Wounded” is a chronicle of being brought down by the weight of tragedy and the long road back to the new status quo, recognizing all the road blocks on the way. Acknowledging the death of their drummer, problems in the music industry, and the everyday struggles everyone deals with, the album struck a chord in the community, generating 13,000 copies sold in the first week, earning them the number 75 spot on the Billboard 200.

A couple hours before the clouds and crowd made their way over to the Hurley stage, I got a chance to sit down and talk with the band about their long road to success, the new album, and the eruption of the different scenes represented at Warped. Sitting at an outdoor table located near dressing rooms at hi-fi buys, the band thankful for a chance to catch a bite to eat and a cigarette, here’s what was said:



The Cast
EP – Myself, Matt McGraw
AR - Anthony Raneri: Lead Vocals/Rhythm Guitar
JO- Jack O’Shea: Lead Guitar/ Backing Vocals
CG - Chris Guglielmo: Drums
NG - Nick Ghanbarian: Bass

EP: I guess I’ll start with your new album. One lyric was kind of interesting to me, it was on “Head on a Plate,” where you call out the “hipster empire of tomorrow” saying that it will fall to the “common kid of today.” Who are you referring to when you say “hipster empire of tomorrow?”

AR: Well, we live in New York, in the Queens-Long Island area, and there is kind of an epidemic of people in Brooklyn and Manhattan who where alligator shoes and snap there fingers a lot, and it’s just a lot of scenester stuff about who’s cool and who’s not. I think New York is kind of turning into a giant cafeteria and if you sit at the Brooklyn table, you’re a lot cooler than the people who sit at the Long Island table. And, it’s more of a personal thing really, talking about where we come from, not necessarily the one that we’re in.

EP: As an aside, was it kind of like the post-punk scene that blew up at the beginning of the millennium with kind of the strokes?

AR: I know some of those bands, and some of them are really legit, like The Strokes, The Strokes are incredible. It’s more so the people that follow that scene, because most of those bands are really good. It’s just a lot of people dressing the way they think they’re supposed to dress and talking the way they think they’re supposed to talk, and it’s just lame.

EP: Being on the Warped Tour, I guess you see a lot of that the way people dress and the way people talk and the way people respond to bands. Do you think that this has been a good thing for the music, because it’s kind of created a culture around it and given something for people to pay attention to?

AR: I’m all for growth, and I think it’s great how mainstream this punk music has become and I think it’s really great and I think it’s a really positive scene because it gives a lot of good music that is finally coming up now and it’s better than all the shit that was on the radio in the 90’s, you know what I mean? It’s really kind of a blessing that all the music is starting to get really big but it’s kind of a shame that with it being that big and that mainstream, you get a lot of conformity. All the kids doing the things they think they’re supposed to be doing and all the kids acting like how they think they’re supposed to be acting. It’s kind of a shame because punk rock is supposed to be kind of your own thoughts and do what you want to do.

JO: One of the cool things about this tour though is that there are so many different styles of bands represented, not just musically, but the way people are dressing and behaving and stuff and it is kind of a melting pot for a lot of groups that have become pigeon holed into what they think is the right thing to do and kind of a community freak show for everybody. [laughs]

AR: I think when hardcore and punk, and when all that stuff, and when it started for me, and probably when it started for all of us, like that’s where we went because when we weren’t accepted by anybody else. I wasn’t in to rap or anything like that when I was a kid. It was kind of my outlet. It was where I could go and be accepted. And for it to be turned into something where you need to look a certain way or be a certain kind of person was what the whole thing was started against.

EP: When the album came out, you guys said that “The Walking Wounded” was the first one you started working on and the last one you finished. It turned out to be the first one you guys released on Myspace. So, why did you pick “Duality” as the single?

AR: “The Walking Wounded” we kind of feel is the street single and for a bayside fan that’s probably the best Bayside song on the record, but as far the single goes “Duality” probably, as far as people who don’t know who Bayside is and have never heard Bayside before, “Duality” is a more accessible song that people can hear for the first time. But as far as putting the song on myspace before the record came out, just to get people’s attention, to let people see what the new record is going to be like. That’s the one we thought the Bayside fans would love the most, but in terms of people who had never heard Bayside we thought duality would probably be a better choice.

EP: You guys kind of had an interesting record before by putting out the Acoustic record/DVD, after you played the acoustic sets at the end of that one tour. Do you think that helped you grow as a band, or did that change the way you viewed the writing “The Walking Wounded?”

AR: We write everything on the acoustic guitar, whether I come up with an idea, or Jack does, or Nick does, or if anybody kind of has a cool idea. The music starts very basic, and when I write a song I write the chord progression and the lyrics and that’s what the song is. So after doing the acoustic record, it took all those songs back to where they started. That’s where they started in my head before they went to studio, so it didn’t really change much of anything. The only thing it did was we were trying to show the fans where the songs got started, also, we wanted to kind of make a statement that we write real songs, that if you take away all of the flashiness and the production and the heaviness, the aggression, there’s still a song there and I think it speaks a lot.

JO: I think that [acoustic record/sets] did a lot to expand our fan base, especially in terms of the older demographic who might not necessarily be into listening to a band that’s louder or heavier. I found, just from talking to people at shows, that people found their parents listening to it and getting into our band just from that record and using that for an older demographic or another demographic that’s not, again, accustomed to listening to louder, or heavier, music. I think [acoustic record/sets] gave us more credibility with that demographic as well, which is awesome, because now we have kids coming to shows with there parents, and we have fans in both the kids and their parents, which is both unique and awesome.

EP: I noticed from the record that there is a lot more production and different instruments coming in, as opposed to before when it just seemed like it was just standard a couple of guitars, bass, and drum. What prompted decision to put that stuff in, like with the tuba on “The Walking Wounded?”
AR: I think our fan base, now that we’re starting to learn how really dedicated our fan base is and that our fans will follow us wherever we go, and we’ve gained a little more trust in our fans, and that’s made us a little more confident and do new things and if we heard another instrument on one of the songs then we used it.

EP: It seems like a growing trend with bands, definitely after the release of Green Day’s “American Idiot,” that the concept record was becoming a lot more popular. What do you think about the concept record? Like the ones that have come out today, for instance My Chemical Romance’s “The Black Parade,” as well as the others coming out from more popular bands like Panic! At the Disco. What do you guys think about those?

AR: I think if it’s done well and there is a message in it somewhere then it’s a good idea.

EP: Well, back to the scene, you guys came out of kind of the Long Island scene. You guys were on the same record label as both Thursday and Taking Back Sunday, and you guys were also around a little before Taking Back Sunday, weren’t you?

AR: We started about the same time.

EP: Have you guys had any jealousy or any bad feelings about their success?

AR: No, definitely not, they’re an incredible band, so I can’t knock them. And, they’re kind of friends of ours and, well, you can’t be in a band and be a jealous person because there is way to much to be jealous about, especially a band like us where our career has been like one small step up at a time, getting bigger very little by little. We get passed by by bands all the time. We’ve begin together for seven years, and we’ve seen bands who have been together for two years start a band, record a demo, sign to a major label and flew right past us, right.

JO: And then we catch them on the way back down and we’re like, “Well, see you later.” [Laughs]

AR: But Taking Back Sunday is an incredible band and when they first came around, when they put out Tell All Your Friends, I feel like it was a groundbreaking record and it started this whole fucking scene. And whether or not bands or fans want to acknowledge it, I feel like that started so much.

CG: We were actually talking about that last night, how they released “Tell All Your Friends,” then you have Taking Back coming up, and like Anthony said, it was groundbreaking, and it may not be like The Beatles, you know, how they were here.

EP: or how “Nevermind” was last decade?

CG: What? Oh, I hate Nirvana [everyone laughs]

AR: It’s almost a shame because bands like Taking Back Sunday and Brand New were before Fall Out Boy and before all that. They came along and really started making the scene something extraordinary, really making people turn their heads. And it’s kind of sad because so many bands have started ripping off of that, you know? And now those bands, and kids like at THOSE bands look at Taking Back Sunday as just another one of those bands. “Yeah, it’s just Taking Back Sunday, they’re the same as those other bands.” They don’t realize that [Taking Back Sunday] had been doing it way before everybody else.

EP: Earlier this year your friends Hawthorne Heights had a little trouble with Victory Records. How has it been being signed to Victory? I notice from bands that there is a lot of negative feedback about the label.

JO: We have a pretty strong relationship with them. Not even stirring up the water or anything, but we have the perspective to know when the label is doing something for us, and it’s easy to get caught up in what your label isn’t doing for you, but it’s really easy to lose sight what the label is doing for you. I think that we have that perspective, to see what that label, Victory, has provided for us. So we have a really amicable relationship with them.

EP: What do you guys think about kind of the shift from last year, Where the warped tour was very political, with bands like Anti-Flag and NOFX using it as kind of a commercial to, not saying that it’s a bad thing, but using their sets as a means to kind of push their issues?

AR: Their always has been a place for politics in punk rock, a lot of it was started around that. I mean, if that’s what’s important to those dudes, then that’s great they can use their band as kind of an outlet to tell kids about these things and preach their cause. I don’t necessarily agree with it, it’s not my thing, you know what I mean? But I definitely think that there’s a place for that in punk rock.

JO: I feel like our band stands more for self-empowerment and giving people the courage to make their own decisions whether we necessarily agree with them or not. I think that’s kind of more important, and going back to what you were talking about a scene, and this sort of lemming mentality of fitting in. I think it’s nice to give people the courage to speak their own minds and make their own decisions.

AR: Some bands choose to sing about God and whatever, but I feel that’s kind of a micromanagement, where as we are kind of more of broad stroke, more like whatever you believe in that’s what you fucking do and don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise.

EP: I guess it just seemed like it was a lot more on the front page on the warped tour last year, but it feels like it has kind of dropped of in the atmosphere this year, yet we still have bands like Bad Religion and The Unseen. Do you think it was just the political climate of last year, where people really started going against the war and the other major issues?
JO: I think NOFX and Anti-Flag are significantly more outspoken about their issues. But bands like, what you were saying with Bad Religion and The Unseen, are a little more under the radar. I mean, it’s there but it’s not quite the same as someone being on stage and talking to them explicitly about the way things are. I think it’s a little more subtle.

AR: Subtlety is key.


The crowd begins cheering, but instead of the boys of Bayside walking on stage, other stars, greeted with another round of cheering upon recognition, have decided to make an appearance on the Hurley stage. Michael Cera of “Arrested Development” and Jonah Hill, who was in both “Accepted” and “Knocked Up,” (both of which are now starring in the film “Superbad”) walk on to introduce the band. I can think of no better people to introduce a band that has little by little, taking everything they could get, has climbed up the music industry ladder. Like the actors, who are background players about to get their shot, Bayside has existed for seven years, watching bands they know and bands they have just met walk right past them. But after the band rips through its first song and launches into “Duality,” it doesn’t look like that’s on their minds right now.