Bayside’s Anthony Raneri Wants You to Listen to the Old Stuff
The New York punk band has been one of the most consistent acts of the last quarter-century
In the years since Bayside formed in 2000, a seemingly endless amount of artists have made a big splash, taken the music world by storm, and broken up with the same expediency.
All the while, the New York punk band has just continued to carry on as one of the most consistent projects of the last quarter-century. They’ve never had the mega-hit, but they landed seven straight albums on the Billboard charts. They’ve never sold out stadiums, but they’ve consistently toured medium-to-large venues and festivals at their own pace without taking any extended breaks (outside of the COVID pandemic, obviously).
And even after everything they’ve done, Bayside has no plans of slowing down. With a new album and multiple headlining tours around the world planned for next year, the band figures to make 2027 one for the record books.
We caught up with Bayside singer Anthony Raneri backstage at Riot Fest in Chicago. Our conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.
Tar: Bayside’s been putting out some EPs curated of older material this year. What made you guys want to revisit some of those songs now?
Anthony Raneri: Honestly, we’ve been working on a new record for the last year. We've been writing and recording for like a year straight, on and off, and we just didn't want to go away for that long. We were trying to think of what we could give the fans while we were focused on that, and there are so many songs throughout our career — especially because we don't come from the streaming era — that wound up on comps and stuff like that, they never made it to streaming. We were like, Oh, this is a good opportunity to get some of that old stuff that technically is out there in the world, but just not streaming.
Craig Cummins
Everyone in the band has their own side hustles and projects outside of Bayside, so how do you coordinate everyone’s schedules for the band?
We're an industrious bunch, but the only thing we really have to coordinate around is our personal lives. Marriages, kids, trying to be home for birthdays and anniversaries, school plays and baseball games, that's the hardest to schedule. As far as our side hustles and the companies that we own and stuff like that, it's all stuff that we can do, regardless of the schedule.
Bayside has such a following when it comes to the merch. What's it like to pull designs out of the vault and have people go crazy over it online?
It's awesome. There are merch bands, and there are not merch bands. We're very fortunate to be a merch band. It's no secret that bands these days don't make a lot of money. Touring is not as lucrative as it once was. Selling records is really just for free. We really just make records for free at this point, but merch is the lifeline of everybody. To be a band who sells a lot of merch is a massive blessing for us.
The music industry has changed in so many ways while Bayside has been a band, how do you roll with the punches and grow year after year?
We try to stay up on what's happening. Like I said, we don't come from the streaming age, so it's important for us to learn how to operate within it. We don't even come from the social media age — Myspace came out on our third record, but we tried to learn. At the core of it, I've always been a big believer that if you make good music, people will find it.
How different is it working on an album now as opposed to the early days?
It’s completely different. We used to get in a room together — our rehearsal space in a warehouse — and just jam until stuff came out. Then we'd get in a studio for 10 days and try to record it as quickly and cheaply as possible so we can get back on the road.
Now, we spend a whole year writing. We fly back and forth since we all live around the country now. We get together a few times a year and go into studios. We write, we record, then we go home. Then we come up with new ideas, get back together, write and go home again. It's a long process now, which I love because it's not just the best ideas that we can come up with in a couple of days. We can just keep going until we're in love with every single part.
