Bayside

Don’t be misled by the title of Bayside’s new album, The Walking Wounded. The overall theme of this Long Island band’s fourth release on Victory Records is not one of cynicism, pessimism and negativity. Rather, it’s about overcoming the emotional and physical scars in life. “What we mean by ‘Walking Wounded’ is to reflect on all kinds of survivors, not necessarily what we survived,” singer guitarist Anthony Raneri explains. “Everybody gets wounded at some point or another as they go through life. Most of this record is about keeping your head up and getting through tough situations. Everybody has to get over being wounded.”

Tell me about the Walking Wounded.
Chris: We wrote the record over the summer, we wrote it in like a month, 2 months?

Jack: Yeah, like a month and 1/2 of writing and then a month of pre-production and then the recording.

Chris: The whole process was pretty quick.

It was produced by Shep and Kenny, right?
Chris: yeah, the same ones that worked on the self titled record.

BTW, great job on Conan O'Brien! What was the experience like behind the scenes?
Jack: Thanks! It was surreal actually, my favorite part about Conan O'Brien was they let us into the prop room at NBC and I got to play with the Triumph The Insult Comic Dog puppet for about an hour and 1/2.

Chris: Once you get into the building you can pretty much, apparently do whatever you want!

Jack: Yeah, once you get through security, its like "argh!" Some people were running around in the Saturday Night Live stage, but its like a really professional production. Like everything was taken care of instantly!

Chris: And everyone's so nice and just really accommodating.

Jack: It was about as positive of an experience as you could have hoped for, for something like that.

Did you get a chance to hang out with him a bit?
Chris: Yeah we met him when he comes up at the end, cause he was just rehearsing the whole time and they don't really let you go meet him. So he came up afterwards and he was just talking to us about music and stuff. He's a really down to earth dude, He's really cool!

Did you get to watching taping later that day?
Chris: Yeah we watched it on the bus, but we kept losing signal while we were going through Manhattan. But it was definitely a total mind fuck, if I can say that?

Say whatever you want.
Jack: fuckfuckfuck! fuckfuckfuckfuck!

Any more thoughts?
Jack: and fuck... (laughs)

Any bands you looking forward to seeing on Warped Tour?
Chris: Anberline

Jack: Yeah like Anberline is some of our best friends in the world. We just got off a headline tour with them about a couple months ago. We just met The Almost a little while ago. We did a one off show with them and became close with them real quick. I know Hawthorn Heights is gonna be on the tour, those guys are some long term friends of ours as well. Meg and Dia, we just got off tour with on the Anberline tour...

Chris: Its all just a bunch of friends that I actually only met within this year, but its just really exciting to get to be able to hang out with your friends.

Jack: He doesn't know this yet, but Brian Baker is my friend and I'm gonna make him understand that. I'm gonna find him and I'm gonna be like "dude, we're fucking tight, you don't even know it!" I really would like to meet him. I will have a geek out moment, just cause I'm a huge Dag Nasty and Minor Threat fan and Bad Religion as well, obviously.

Did you get a chance to catch the Circle Jerks set?
Jack: No! I didn't even know they were on until they were playing during our signing and I was like "NO!" I'm kinda bummed that I didn't get to see them. I heard them and I was like "who's covering the Circle Jerks?"

Chris: Oh, on file, don't wear black shoes, my feet are on fire right now!

Jack: Wear these beautiful Nike Zoom Air Elites courtesy of Nike, who we are sponsored by!

PLUG! PLUG!
Jack: Actually these shoes are bad ass! They're like super comfortable and they're light!

Chris: and if I chase you, you'll probably get away even faster.

He'll take off like a fucking gazelle!
Jack: Dude, I can run so much faster in these shoes, you don't even know! (laughs)

Any crazy stories from the road?
Jack: Ok, so get this! We leave New York and we're routing out to California. So we have 5 shows planned. We were playing in Greensboro, North Carolina, Nashville, Littlerock, we had 2 days off in Texas and then we were gonna be playing in Albuquerque and then Tucson coming out to here. Nick had to fly home after the Littlerock show. He was gonna go back to his sisters high school graduation and then come back. On the flight back he got a really bad sinus infection that plugged up his ears and he almost ruptured his ear drums. When he got back and saw a doctor it turns out he couldn't fly for at least 14 days. So we had 2 shows coming up and Nick still had to try to figure out how to get to Warped Tour. So Nick got in a car in New York on Tuesday night at 9pm and drove 48 hours straight to get here to meet us yesterday. In the meantime our guitar tech Kyle had to learn all of the set on bass in like a day to play those 2 shows, so that was pretty crazy! And then at the Tucson show someone apparently got their skull fractured which is weird and I'm gonna go on record and say this. I don't know why we have so many fights at our shows, we are not a violent band and everything that we talk about in our music is about being accepting and just good to other people and for some reason people love to come to our shows and beat the shit out of each other and I don't get that! But if the guy from Tucson with the fractured skull is reading this, I am SOOO sorry! I hope you feel better!

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For more info, show updates and music
check out Bayside on Myspace.com
www.myspace.com/bayside