Bayside Has A Wonderful Problem: Longevity

In early 2003, Jack O’Shea was asked to head from Boston to New York to jam and play a few gigs with a band that showed promise. The Queens/Long Island emo trio—arbitrarily and geographically tagged as Bayside—was generating buzz and on the verge of a record deal.

At the time, the lineup consisted of vocalist and guitarist Anthony Raneri, drummer Jim Mitchell and bassist Andrew Elderbaum. Mitchell, who felt the band could benefit from an additional member and knew O’Shea from the New England music scene, spoke to Raneri and vouched for the guitarist’s chops.

Sitting at a burger joint in Franklin, Tennessee, O’Shea recalls arriving on Long Island to practice with Bayside for the first time. It was in the street outside where the two first met face-to-face.

“You pulled up in s***ty white Dodge van that had Bayside written in AC/DC font in big red sticker letters on the side,” 46-year-old O’Shea tells Raneri, milkshake in hand.

Wincing in self-defense, 40-year-old Raneri explains himself: “It’s because—I knew this girl—her brother—he owned a decal place! She wanted to make one for me!”

Despite the cringy heavy metal marketing, O’Shea was still intent on joining the band. He felt stagnant and wanted to play some music. There wasn’t much more to it.

“I figured, let me sell my car and quit my job,” O’Shea says flippantly. “It would be a couple-year thing. We’d do a few tours. It would be a nice sabbatical from corporate marketing. And yeah, here we are now.”

Twenty years later, O’Shea is still doing exactly what he signed up for. Bayside is currently trekking across the country on the Just Like Home tour with their old friends in I Am the AvalancheAVAX
and up-and-coming Long Island darlings, Koyo. In the following weeks, the crew will traverse from Seattle to New Jersey.

And on March 17, Bayside will drop its newest release on vinyl, a three-song record entitled the Blue EP (a follow-up to late 2022’s Red EP). The wax features the new singles “How To Ruin Everything (Patience)” and “Go To Hell.”

“People are really psyched about them,” Raneri says. “It’s so crazy that people are celebrating our catalog this late [in our career]. It’s incredible.”

Afterwards, the band plans to record some more music, ultimately combining music from the EPs and new songs into their next full-length album. In the streaming era, it’s a strategy to give every song an opportunity to be experienced without distraction or getting lost at the bottom of a playlist.

Keeping their audience in mind, the band sees it as a way to release material continuously, rather than going dormant or off-the-grid between full album releases.

“We were like, ‘What if every single track was a single?’” Raneri explains. “Then every song gets a chance.”

In the band’s early years, no one could have imagined the changes the music industry would undergo. Bayside never expected that rolling out an album gradually would make most sense logistically—or that physical copies of music would primarily be consumed by vinyl collectors. Realistically, O’Shea had other things to worry about, like where he was going to live as the band strived to get on its feet.

Upon his arrival to New York in 2003, O’Shea crashed at bassist Elderbaum’s parents’ house in Suffolk County, while Raneri lived in a two-bedroom apartment with his mother and brother in Queens. O’Shea quickly became a permanent fixture of the band —a much more exciting employer than a software development company—cementing Bayside as a quartet.

Next, they played as many shows as possible. In May of 2003, they toured with The Goodwill and Junction 18. In July and August, they hit the road with Miami band Glasseater. They played shows anywhere: ice (and roller) skating rinks, bowling alleys, recreation centers, indoor soccer fields, a batting cage, and even a library lobby.

In a video posted to YouTube by archivist hate5six, Bayside performs as what they consider to be the “original” lineup, even if others guys had played in the band’s earlier “local” versions. The salvaged tape features Raneri and O’Shea performing in front of a skate rental booth in a New Jersey ice rink.

“By the time when Jim and Jack joined the band—that skating rink video—we were in it,” Raneri says. “We were like, ‘We’re doing this!’ We had just gotten our first record deal.”

A few months later, in January of 2004, Bayside released its first full-length album with Victory Records, Sirens and Condolences, propelling the band into a decades-long journey through the world of punk, emo, and alternative rock.

However, it wasn’t until another arrangement took hold that O’Shea felt Bayside really developed a trajectory. When he first joined the band, the group collaborated to write classic tracks like “Masterpiece” and “Phone Call From Poland,” however, they were still using pre-existing material from demos and earlier independent label EPs.

After the band’s debut, Bayside underwent lineup changes. They enlisted Nick Ghanbarian—who’d played in legendary Long Island bands like Silent Majority and The Movielife—on bass. On drums, they recruited John “Beatz” Holohan.

O’Shea remembers Beatz’s first show fondly. The gig was at The Downtown in Farmingdale, NY. Bayside was opening for New Jersey ska band Catch 22, who were filming a DVD.

The bill also featured Punchline, and High School Football Heroes, who performed to a sold-out crowd on a blisteringly hot August night.

“That was his first show,” O’Shea says laughing. “I remember, he had written out notation for the songs on his snare. He was like, ‘It’s my first show. I can’t f*** this up!’ He was super intense.”

“He was so nervous,” Raneri adds cackling. “I remember, we did weird s***—we wrote notes on the back of our guitars. We would turn around and flip the guitar to show him something to relax him. Just stupid s*** to make him laugh. Throughout that show, we had all these gags hidden that the audience wouldn’t even have known about. Oh my god. It was just to chill him out on stage cuz he was so stressed out!”

The following year, the group released its second album, eponymously titled Bayside, a no-filler record which found the band’s distinctive voice.

“It was probably around self-titled,” O’Shea says. “Once Nick and Beatz were in the band, that was the first record where the four of us were like, ‘We’re going to a room and we’re gonna write a record together.’”

After the release of the album, Bayside went out on tour with Silverstein, Hawthorne Heights and Aiden. In a tragic turn of events, the band got into a car accident in Wyoming while traveling between shows. Sadly, Holohan passed away and several others were hospitalized.

Weeks later, Raneri and O’Shea rejoined the tour with acoustic guitars. Beatz’s legacy lives on through the 2005 record, which is still one of fans’ most beloved. Raneri and O’Shea also wrote a tribute to their friend, “Winter,” which they’ve only recently regained the strength to perform live.

In 2007, the band released its third album, The Walking Wounded, which brought in Chris Guglielmo on percussion. He still sits behind the drums today.

By 2023, Bayside released a total of eight albums, plus two live records: one acoustic and one electric. They recorded a few cover EPs and Raneri even created a handful of solo releases. Along the way, above all else, the band cultivated the community that encompasses its universe.

In a recent video posted to the band’s Instagram account, a concertgoer explains that she’s enjoyed their music for over 20 years. Standing by her family, she introduces her sons, whom she says have been listening since they were in the womb. For fans, Bayside has become an intergenerational family institution.

And for the members of the band, their home lives and music careers are their two main priorities. But they’ve learned how to structure their journey to allocate time at home with their wives and kids.

The band primarily writes and records in Orange County, CA and practices for tours out of Nashville, TN. As highlighted in Forbes’ 2018 feature, Raneri and O’Shea both live in the Nashville area, whereas Gugliemo and Ghanbarian reside on the West Coast. Because of this separation, they’ve made a deliberate effort to compartmentalize their family and punk-rock lifestyles.

When Bayside isn’t on tour—they usually play about three months a year—they’re spending time with family or pursuing other passion projects. The typical “grind” for abundant commercial success doesn’t seem appealing anymore. They’ve found their lane, and they’re sticking to it.

“I have a neighbor who’s like, ‘Wouldn’t you love to have like 16 number one hits right now?’” O’Shea says. “But then I wouldn’t be home for years. That would be real weird!”

“That sounds exhausting,” Raneri chimes in with a smile.

But that doesn’t mean the band has lost inspiration. On the contrary, Raneri says their time together is more productive than ever. Rather than dragged out months of practice and writing, the guys regroup feeling rested and motivated to work.

“It’s very focused,” Raneri explains. “It makes the time that we’re together very special. Then when we go home, it’s like I don’t have a job.”

That’s when dad-mode kicks in. On Raneri’s Instagram, his feed is filled with photos of him and his family: taking his daughter to a monster truck show, dressing up as a unicorn for Halloween, and building a snowman.

“Having kids does that to you,” Raneri says of his unicorn suit. “You lose a lot of humility, I’ll do anything to make my daughter laugh. It does not matter how f***ing stupid it makes me look. I love it.”

O’Shea’s feed is similar. Between shots of him rocking out on stage, you’ll see photos from his kids’ first day at school, a messy baby digging into a birthday cake, or O’Shea on a hike with his wife.

“I was at soccer practice literally two hours ago,” laughs O’Shea, who arrived for the interview in a jam-packed minivan.

“I remember when we did Louder Than Life Festival,” Raneri recalls. “I was at my daughter’s softball game in the afternoon. I was like, ‘I gotta be on stage in seven hours!’”

While the band is grateful for the work-life balance, they aren’t entirely “off the clock” during stretches at home. They still utilize their downtime to further hone their technical abilities in both songwriting and performance. Nashville—aka “Music City”—offers a tremendous pool of resources to do so.

Both have found niches and contacts in Middle Tennessee’s bustling music scene.

O’Shea spends time playing with a wide variety of musicians. A few nights prior, he teamed up for a blind-date style Grunge Night concert, where he performed some Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden songs—completely unrehearsed and with musicians he’d never met—in front of a live crowd. He sees opportunities like this as a chance to network and step out of his comfort zone.

“Everything in Nashville is so music-centric that regardless of what type you’re playing, people have valuable input,” O’Shea says. “Everyone here is good. To be active in music here, regardless of your genre, it’s an accomplishment just to be included. Nashville is great. I’ve never felt more out of depth as a musician just because the quality is so high and the music industry is so prevalent. It’s really exciting.”

Raneri finds himself working in writing sessions, opening his own horizons with a thirst to learn from new people. While he’s more drawn to studio sessions, he does sometimes perform at Writers’ Rounds sessions: mini-concerts where songwriters sit side-by-side and take turns showcasing tracks for an audience.

Some “rounds” could take place at intimate spaces such as coffee shops, bars, or Raneri’s favorite, the Commodore Grille near Vanderbilt University. At this rendition, you can catch first-time songwriters sitting next to professionals who’ve written for country stars like Garth Brooks.

“I don’t do the rounds very often, but I do a lot of [studio] writing,” Raneri explains. “Writers’ Rounds, it’s mostly singer-songwriters who are there for exposure. Then there are rounds where it’s more professional songwriters. They’ll be like, ‘I wrote this yesterday!’ Those are cool.”

He continues: “The scene that I come from, it’s hard for me to transition into a studio-only environment. The live show is important to what we do. It’s cool to take songs that I might be working on and be like, ‘I need to look at people’s faces while they hear this. I need to see their body language, their faces.’”

As for the studio sessions, Raneri has enjoyed collaborating with artists he admires and exercising his ability to construct songs. Not every song he writes is a perfect fit for Bayside, so he’s linked up with a publisher to see what future each track may hold.

Raneri has had a number of his songs picked up, however, he has a catalog he hopes will receive further interest. Regardless, every hour spent in the studio strengthens his skillset.

“The writing world is weird,” Raneri explains. “You write 200 songs a year and if one pops, then you had a good year! It’s a really weird game.”

While nothing seems more nuanced than the writing and publishing industry, re-emerging to the road in a post-pandemic world proved to be unchartered territory. In 2019, when Bayside released its eighth full-length record, Interrobang, the band barely had the opportunity to promote the album. They played a few gigs, but were holding out for their next massive tour.

When the world shut down, their 20-year anniversary tour became a 21-year anniversary tour. In an effort to do right by their fans, they technically canceled it, issued refunds, and later re-booked from scratch. Raneri says that when they did finally hit the road, it was the band’s biggest tour to date.

These days, the band isn’t only focused on becoming better songwriters. In preparation for their current tour, the guys spent time honing the energy that encompasses Bayside to the stage. They looked at larger rock acts for inspiration.

Take, for example, My Chemical Romance, the wildly popular New Jersey emo band that Bayside came up with. After MCR’s massive arena comeback tour, Raneri was in awe of their power and presence, presented with no gimmick.

“It’s been really inspiring to see a band with no bells and whistles,” Raneri explains. “There’s no costumes, pyro or crazy laser light show. There’s not a bunch of people on stage. You just watch it and you’re like, ‘This is a punk show!’ They sound unbelievable. We’ve been using them as an example of something to strive for. We’re more motivated right now than we have been in a long time.”

Raneri cites other artists they’ve played with at festivals, like Muse and Shinedown. The bands certainly don’t resemble Bayside’s genre or aesthetic, but they draw ideas from their live shows. O’Shea says they’ve worked on isolating elements of others’ recipes: cherry-picking and applying techniques to bolster the precision of what Bayside does on stage.

“Popularity is a whole other ball game; that’s a roll of the dice,” Raneri says. “But we can be on that level of performance.”

On this current tour, the goal is to take that big rock energy and apply it to the smaller venues they’re playing. As O’Shea likes to put it, they consider the band a chameleon, which can play large and small venues, simply based on what energy or level of intimacy they’re craving. This go-around, they wanted to play smaller venues like The Metro in Chicago.

“It provides a meaningful experience to our fan base,” O’Shea says. “It’s really rewarding to be in a band that can blow out a club tour with our buddies and have that still be incredibly profound. It’s nice to be able to tailor the experience.”

“It’s not lost on us that we can go into The Paradise or The Metro and those are quick sellout shows,” Raneri adds. “When we were kids, we grew up imagining what it would be like to play there. It’s cool to go and relive that. I think that mindset is a big part of how we’re still doing this 23 years later.”

In a zeitgeist obsessed with nostalgia, Bayside has never fallen into the “schticky-early-2000s-Hot Topic-revival-cash-grab” category. Continually releasing new albums while performing classic music—and touring with veterans and newcomers—has uniquely positioned the band for sustainability.

Last year, they went out on a large venue co-headlining tour with scene-favorites Thrice. Even now, they’re playing with I Am the Avalanche, a band whose debut record dropped in 2005. But performing with up-and-coming bands like Koyo, Anxious, Save Face, and Pinkshift, has kept things young and fresh in the most sincere way.

“The nostalgia thing is dangerous because you wanna ride that wave, right?” Raneri asks rhetorically. “You want all that attention and all those people to come to shows who don’t normally come to your shows. But, you don’t want to be a novelty, either.”

O’Shea agrees: “Nostalgia will sell one ticket to one show. Being an active band that’s still meaningful to people is the difference between that guy coming to one show or somebody who’s gonna come see you every time.”

The fan reception of the band’s newest EPs is a good indication of that longevity. And even for Bayside’s last full-length, Interrobang—which for some was lost in the chaos of the world—it still made a lasting impact on the band’s setlist.

“There are songs that have become staples,” Raneri says. “Fans really connected with it. It was a big record for us to have in our third decade. It’s crazy to us that people still listen to the new music. Not a lot of bands could say that. We’re really lucky that we get to play new music on tour. A lot of bands just can’t. Even, like, Metallica! They’re gonna play one song on the new record, then everything else is 40 years old.”

Within a 90 minute set, it’s impossible to get to every era.At this stage, the guys estimate that every record adds two songs they’ll need to perform for the rest of their career.

“We’re having to retire stuff that we’ve played for 20 years now,” O’Shea says laughing. “Well, I guess we can’t play this anymore!”

What a wonderful problem to have.

Catch Bayside on tour and pre-order The Blue EP.