Bayside - Anthony Raneri

Interview with Anthony Raneri of Bayside
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What brought about the Christmas vibe tonight on stage?rn

Our manager was in the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and I know they used to do it. We’ve heard of a lot of older bands that would do a Christmas thing all the time annually. We loved the idea so we have decided to now start doing Christmas tour with our home town, New York, Boston, Philly, and all those areas around here we love.

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What made you choose these particular bands to open up on this tour?rn

Bombers, for one, have been my best friends since like the first grade. Their bass player is the best man in my wedding next month. They just started a few months ago so we are helping them out a bit. Melee, who we’ve always listened to because we have the same booking agent, are from California so it finally worked out that they would be on the east coast while we were here. The Junior Varsity is one of my favorite bands on Victory. This is the third time we’ve toured with.

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Do you ever have conflicts with Victory wanting you to tour with certain bands, or do you get your tour plans usually just from your agent?rn

There are tour possibilities always opening up all over the place from Victory and from our booking agent. At the end of the day, it’s always our final say. We tour with who we want to tour with. Everyone offers his suggestions and opens up opportunities for us, but we do whatever we want to do with it.

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I hear you have a new album coming out in February. What can we expect compared to what Bayside has put out in the past?rn

We actually just finished tracking on Friday! Well, as far as what to expect…. It’s hard to explain in words without talking for an hour. We’re trying a lot of new things. Vibe wise, I think it is the same. It sounds like a Bayside record. I don’t think anyone is going to listen to it and wonder what we are thinking. We always said that we didn’t want to take a little bit of success and then take a complete left turn. I know a lot of bands do that today, and it has always bummed me out. We’re just trying to get better at what we do instead of reinvent who we are. I think we’ve figured out what we want Bayside to be. There’s a lot of new instrumentation on the new record though: violins, full orchestras, horns, accordions, and a lot of crazy stuff.

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Should we expect any more acoustic stuff from Bayside beyond the EP?rn

The acoustic EP did well, but it was never a marketing tool. It just happened to do well. We would never want to capitalize on that. What that was about for us was a lot of our fans that stood by us and came out for us during those tough times on the Hawthorne Heights tour. The fans kept coming to us and telling us to record the acoustic stuff and have that as a memory. We did that for our fans. The fact that the EP got us a lot of notoriety doesn’t really matter to us. The album was for our fans.

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Tonight you mentioned how all the fans here tonight are the true fans because they are still coming out at the end of a popularity cycle for the band. It was really interesting to think of it that way….rn

Yeah man, it’s true. The people who aren’t in the business side of the music scene don’t realize the cycle. When you put out a record, you’re in all the magazines and on the TV and internet. All over the place. The further away you get from the album, the more things slow down. Our album comes out in less than two months so we are almost as far away from the album as we can be without that boost in the cycle. Last time we were here in Boston, there were a lot more kids. Next time we come, I’m sure there will be a lot more again than tonight. This show is a lot meaningful to us because these are the kids that want Bayside and don’t need us to be on Fuse or MTV or magazines to know that Bayside is around.

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Do you have any immediate tour plans for after the album is released?rn

When the album comes out in February, we’re going to do a bunch of in-store appearances and a record release show back home. Stuff like that in the beginning of the month. At the end of February, we’re going out on a U.S. tour with Anberlin. We’re going to go headline in Europe for a little while. We’ll be back in the summer. We’re not quite sure yet what we’ll be doing.

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Have you considered something like Warped Tour?rn

We did it once or twice here and there before. We’ll see. Warped Tour is a grueling experience. It’s tough. We did it for like two weeks before, and even that was tough. I have to hand it out to the bands that do it for the whole summer, and especially year after year for the whole summer.

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What originally brought you to music and Bayside?rn

When I was nine, I got Nevermind by Nirvana. I was into music before, what my parents played and stuff, but that was the first time I saw music as giving me freedom. Before then, I just listened to whatever my parents had playing. When I heard Nirvana on the radio though, I felt like this rock music was a thing where I could pick what I listen to and be about it. That was the first taste of what music would mean in my life. When I was eleven, I got a guitar. I’ve been playing ever since. When I was in the tenth grade, I dropped out of school and did merch stuff for Brand New on tour for a while. I decided that I needed to start a band so I started Bayside. That has been going for about six years now.

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Between Sirens And Condolences and your self-titled album, there seemed to be a big shift in the sound of the guitars. The self-titled felt more uplifting while Sirens had a heavier sound to it. What caused this difference?rn

Well, the self-titled album was itself a lot more uplifting. The music was supposed to match where the lyrics were going. It stepped up for that album, and our new album steps it up once again. It’s the backdrop for what the songs are about.

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What’s your lyrical inspiration or inspirations?rn

When I write, I seem to write off the top of my head. I don’t consider myself a lyricist or a poet. I don’t really consider myself artistic in my writing. There are a lot of lyricists that I really enjoy though. Of course Morrissey, Josh Caterer from Smoking Popes, and Death Cab For Cutie have some pretty incredible lyrics.

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If you could take some of your closest friends out for a tour, who would be on it?rn

Ah man, we were just talking about this the other day! I have an answer for that. Punchline, I Am The Avalanche, and The Sleeping. That’s the perfect tour for us. That’s what we want to do every day for the rest of our lives.

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Do you guys have an active street team at all?rn

We don’t personally. Victory does, and that sorta acts as ours right now. We tried one before, and we’re going to try one again. We’re trying to find someone who can help us work on it because we’re so busy. When we do it, we want it to be for real and very hands-on. We want the street team members to be a part of the Bayside community. It would have been really easy to hire someone and have them just show up and run our street team, but that’s not how we wanted to do it. When the time is right and we can do it the way we want to run it and be in touch with the team, we will have one.

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Do you have any other words to the readers?rn

Check out the new record February 6th. Try to listen to it with open ears!

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