Originally published in Verbicide issue #16

Imagine yourself in this situation: you’re a young guy, the front man of a band rapidly gaining in popularity, traveling with three of your friends and playing music together on a tour for a label that you’re really happy with. Then, in an instant, your world is shattered. En route from one city to another, in the dead of night, your tour van hits a patch of ice and flips off the interstate. Next thing you know, you’ve lost a dear a friend, and your next move skews from the carefully plotted course of the tour schedule to one of complete uncertainty.

Even hypothetically, it is a difficult situation to consider. Sadly, for Anthony Raneri (vocals, guitar), this circumstance became reality during the Victory Records “Never Sleep Again” tour with Hawthorne Heights and Silverstein. On October 31, 2005, en route to Utah after playing a show in Boulder, Colorado, Bayside’s tour van crashed outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Bassist Nick Ghanbarian and drum technician Dan Marino were hospitalized with serious back injuries, and drummer John “Beatz” Holohan lost his life.

How do you cope? What can you do to move on?

For Raneri and Jack O’Shea (guitar), continuing to play music was the answer to those questions. In early December, barely more than a month after the accident, Raneri and O’Shea rejoined the Never Sleep Again tour as an acoustic duo to play a handful of shows, culminating with an emotional homecoming performance in New York on December 4th — with Ghanbarian in attendance, fresh out of the hospital. Raneri and O’Shea then recorded several acoustic tracks in the studio, and those songs — along with a couple live acoustic recordings from the December shows, and two B-sides from their last studio session with Beatz — comprise their new album, simply entitled Acoustic. A comeback, of sorts.

I have to admit, even after publishing Verbicide for seven years now, interviewing a musician like Raneri is a rather new experience. Generally, my old-school musical tastes dictate my interview subjects, and they most often lead me to converse with folks who are more likely to have seen a live performance by MDC than AFI; who have been playing music or putting out records since I was crapping my britches and watching “Sesame Street.” That detail — coupled with the fact that Raneri is slightly, but noticeably, younger than me — put me in a slightly different state of mind while conducting this interview: Good lord, did he just say he was only nine when Nevermind was released? Did he just champion the songwriting skills of the guy who writes for Mandy Moore over J.-fucking-Robbins, the guy who penned “Savory” and “Static” and “Crash”? Quoi?

Okay, so maybe I was stunned and incredulous, but I smacked myself out of it and realized that age disparity and taste in music, no matter how different, isn’t any reason for me to go playing “punk rock police.” I mean, this isn’t MRR, and those kinds of things are fairly superficial anyway. What matters to me is that on the eve of Bayside’s departure for their first tour as a full since the crash, Anthony sounded enthusiastic and upbeat. His attitude is positive, his aspirations are true, and his creative flame has not been snuffed. Despite it all, from the tragedy to their upswing in popularity, playing music remains what is important, for themselves and for their cult-like fan base. Bayside has managed to honor the memory of their friend and band mate, John Beatz, and concurrently move on with their own lives, and their music.

So, you’re doing a lot of interviews today?
Well, this is the only one today, but we’re leaving for tour tomorrow — we’ve been pretty busy, we actually had to buy a new van, a new trailer, I just went to the DMV, etc.

Well, we’ll get right to the questions here. In my research I found that you’ve mentioned that Nirvana — and specifically [their album] Nevermind — has been a huge influence in your life as a musician, and that you might not have started playing guitar if it weren’t for them.
That’s definitely true; I might not have gotten into rock music, you know? I was into Beatles and Stevie Wonder, originally.

Stuff your parents might have been into.
Yeah, and then Nirvana and Weezer got me into the more “modern” rock music — I mean, I was nine at the time! But that’s what got me into wanting to buy my own music.

As a musician, was there anything in particular about that band that you found to be the most compelling, be it lyrics, song structure, ethics…?
I think it was the angst. That was the first band I’d ever heard that was super angry. Like I said, I was listening to lots of Beatles — early Beatles, early Beach Boys — pop music, for the most part.

True, and what I liked about [Nirvana] is that they were able to take elements of pop music and add the anger and hard emotion, and it [was] a good introduction to punk rock for people our age because of its accessibility. I mean, if you’re a kid listening to the Beatles and someone plays Damaged by Black Flag, you’re probably not going to take to it as well as you would if you had that “Nirvana transition.”
Yeah, exactly.

Was it at all due in part to your Nirvana influence that you worked with [producer] J. Robbins of Jawbox — another era-defining band of the early ‘90s — when you recorded Sirens and Condolences?
To be totally honest, at the time we were a really new band, and nobody knew who we were…and I hate to say it, but J. was one of the only people who would [work with us]! I’ve never been a fan of Jawbox or Burning Airlines, or any of the bands that J.’s been in–

Channels is his latest band, and he was in Government Issue.
Yeah, I’ve never been that “into” any of his bands. But I like the Promise Ring, and I liked some of the bands that he was producing.

Yeah, as a producer, he’s work with a ton of really prominent, really cool indie artists. So now, being a few years removed [from recording “Sirens”] when you sit back and compare and contrast, what were the major differences in working with someone like J., who mainly records and produces smaller bands, as opposed to working with Shep Goodman and Kenny Gioia — who are most known for working with larger pop acts — on your self-titled follow-up?
It was a huge difference, huge difference. Wow, I don’t even know where to start! J.’s really raw — he didn’t get too much into song structure; he was more about getting the rawness of [our sound]. With Shep and Kenny — they’re songwriters, they’ve written songs for Mandy Moore and Aaron Carter, so those guys seriously know how to write songs. As a songwriter myself, I really wanted to work with people that I really respect as songwriters and really look up to.

Who did you record your reworked acoustic songs with for the new acoustic album? Did you go back to those two [Shep and Kenny]?
No, we just produced it ourselves. Chris Steinmetz from the Chicago Recording Company engineered the record, but we pretty much produced it ourselves.

What can we expect from this new album, is it entirely you and Jack [O’Shea], or did you bring in any other guest musicians?
Well, we did seven acoustic songs in the studio, and those are just me and Jack playing guitar — and I’m singing — but we also did a Smoking Popes cover, and Josh from the Smoking Popes actually sang on it, which was really nuts! They’re another one of my favorite bands ever.

They just got signed by Victory, too, right?
Yeah, they’re doing a record with Victory. And [performing with Josh] was awesome. And then one song is live from the tour — it’s a live, acoustic [track]. And then we put on two B-sides from when we recorded our last album; two B-sides from the self-titled sessions that we never released.

On the acoustic tour, I would imagine the emotional peak would have been the show you and Jack did at the Nokia Theater in New York, a “homecoming” of sorts. Has the support you’ve received throughout your musical career been particularly strong in New York and Long Island?
It never has been — we’ve never really gotten too much support out of there, actually; that was one of the last places we started to grow a fan base. We were never accepted; totally never accepted into that scene — until recently, and now it’s incredible.

With bands emerging from Long Island in recent years such as Taking Back Sunday and Brand New, that region is putting forth its fair share of popular pop-punk acts. Are there any lesser-known bands from that region that you particularly enjoy, and think that people should look out for?
Yeah, there’s a band called The Sleeping — they just signed to Victory, and they’re in the studio right now recording their Victory debut. They’re really, really close friends of ours. Actually, Sal from The Sleeping introduced me to John Beatz.

It seems that in the wake of the tragedy you all went through last fall, you are doing a great job of both honoring the memory of your friend and band mate John, and also moving forward musically. Can you tell me a bit about Bayside’s new drummer?
Yeah, his name is Gavin [Miller], and he’s standing right next to me! What to say about him… He’s rad! He’s awesome, he’s a good drummer and he’s definitely a good buddy. We’ve been really enjoying spending time together. He’s been living with me.

Well it’s nice that you feel you’ve found someone to fill such big shoes — I read in an interview that when you brought in Beatz [to join Bayside], you basically said, “We don’t want to piss anybody off, but it feels like we’re bringing in new musicians because they bring more energy to the band.” How it’s been practicing and maybe even writing and recording with Gavin?
We haven’t really had time for that yet — we’ve been super swamped. Gavin came in about two weeks ago, and since we’re leaving for tour tomorrow we haven’t had a second.

He’s only been playing with you for two weeks?
Yep! That’s it! Possibly more like only 10 days.

So you’ve been burning the candle at both ends practicing and preparing.
Yeah, Gavin came in and we started practicing right away — we [have been practicing] about 10 hours a day or so.

I noticed you have over 650,000 views on Myspace, and for a band that is known to be dedicated to and communicative with their fans, have you found Myspace to be a great place to keep in touch with fans, or is it becoming overwhelming?
It’s pretty overwhelming, but it’s still incredible and we still answer every message we get. We all take turns, and whenever we have a chance we sit down at the computer, we go to Myspace and answer messages. We get behind — sometimes when we go on tour, we get behind and end up with a thousand messages or so, but we whittle it down. We definitely get really swamped, but we don’t mind.

I read in an interview with AMP magazine where you mentioned that even though your tagline is “Bayside is a Cult,” you would love to have a large — but still very dedicated — following. Do you feel that you are well on your way to gaining the type of success you aspire toward?
I would think so, but I don’t really think about it. In that interview, they asked me, “Would you rather have a dedicated, small fan base, or play arenas?” and we’re like, we want to play arenas filled with dedicated fans! But I didn’t even think about that until he asked — I mean, we don’t really care. We just want to play music! To tell you the truth, I don’t really care what happens — as long as I get by and I never have to do anything but play music, that’s big enough.

We’re pretty much already big enough for me. If it stays like this for a while, I’ll be fine. I mean, when you start worrying about, “how big can we get?” and “how big are we?” and stuff like that then you lose everything — you lose the sense of music’s importance, and you lose touch with fans because fans become dollar signs if you’re just trying to gain as many fans as possible. You know what I mean? We want to have as many fans as possible, but we just want them to get into it! We want them to find out about our band on their own, and dig it, and that’s that! We don’t do things to actively seek out more fans — if they come, they come!

Victory is about as huge as an independent label can get, so you get many perks that you wouldn’t with smaller indies — but you still maintain your indie cred. How has your relationship been working with Victory Records, and do you have any desire to leap to a major?
Well, if I did I wouldn’t tell you! (laughter) No, honestly, I love them, they’re incredible. They have great people working there, and we love working with them. Every time we go there [Victory’s offices] we’ll hang out with the entire staff after hours, just have a party with the entire staff. They operate like a family, there are no outsiders. Bands that got signed to Victory got signed for a reason, people who got hired at Victory got hired for a reason, and you get to choose who you work with. When you work with outside people it becomes [a different situation] and it doesn’t feel like “family” anymore.

More labels should be using Victory as a model. Meanwhile, a lot of people are talking really badly about them, and I think it’s just jealousy. They should be using them as a model, acting more like Victory. Major labels? I’m not sure that couldn’t happen somewhere else, but I’m happy where I am, there’s no sense in looking elsewhere.

So tomorrow you are embarking on a month-long headlining tour, and it will be your first tour as a full band since last fall. What are your feelings right now? Anxious, excited…?
A little bit of everything right now; we’re anxious, we’re excited, we’re nervous — mostly excited, though. We’re a little nervous about the first show, but really excited about everything after that. Once we get the first show out of the way I think we’ll be fine.

What’s next for Bayside? You get back from tour in a month; what are your plans for the coming year?
Well, we do the headline thing, then we go out with the Smoking Popes for a month, which is insane; then we’re going to do a short Northeast headlining [tour] — New York, Long Island, Philly, Boston, around home — then we go to the UK.

And that will be your second time there, right?
Yeah — you’re on the ball! So that takes us into June, and we’ll figure it out from there!