How Bayside Continues to Embody Devotion and Desire

Bayside quietly became one of the biggest alternative bands of the past 25 years, with seven straight albums landing on the Billboard 200 over the last two decades. After kicking off 2005 with its seminal self-titled sophomore record, the New York City emo-leaning punk-rockers have become a model of consistency, or as founding vocalist-guitarist Anthony Raneri sees it, a freight train fueled by fans that refuses to run out of steam.

“It just keeps going, and sometimes people get off and new people get on, and that’s fine. But it’s not like a rocket ship; it’s more of a train – there’s a steadiness to it,” he explains.

“If you listen to our first record and our ninth record, you’ll hear a difference. But if you listen to our first record and our second record and our second record and our third record, and so on, it always sounds like Bayside, and that’s important.”

Bayside, which formed in 2000 but didn’t sign with a major label until 2003, broke at a time when emo and pop punk were experiencing a spike in pop-culture acceptance and underground popularity. Striking while the iron was hot, the quartet put out its debut, Sirens and Condolences, and Bayside within sixteen months of one another. From a fan’s perspective, the rest is history, because Bayside cemented itself as a household name after such songs as “Masterpiece,” “Devotion and Desire,” “Blame It on Bad Luck” and “Montauk” entered the emo lexicon.

But from Raneri’s point of view, he and longtime bandmates Jack O’Shea (guitar), Nick Ghanbarian (bass) and Chris Guglielmo (drums) weren’t too worried about making the grade after receiving advice from their peers along the way. “I think I spent such a huge portion of my career chasing that and then having conversations with people who were on such higher levels. I remember talking to Amy [Lee] from Evanescence and Pete Wentz [of Fall Out Boy] about this. They’ve had such an incredible level of success and still don’t feel like they’ve arrived,” Raneri shares, adding that he’s just happy that music’s been able to pay the bills for so long.

“It’s a really cool fucking job. I once heard your record was a success if you get to make another one,” he continues. “That’s how I try to view it now. I never felt like I made it, but I stopped trying to.”

If Raneri won’t say it, we will – Bayside is emo royalty. The fact that the group is embarking on a three-leg, 25-year anniversary tour celebrating its whole discography with two sets per city is evidence that its legion of fans agree.

The Errors Tour lands in Denver on Friday, June 6, and Saturday, June 7, at the Summit. Chicago’s Smoking Popes are opening each night. Friday will showcase songs from Sirens and Condolences, the self-titled, The Walking Wounded and Shudder, while Saturday will be for Killing Time, Cult, Vacancy, Interrobang and There Are Worse Things Than Being Alive.

Looking back now, Raneri admits it’s been a wild ride. The name happened by chance after the young musicians passed the Bayside train station in the band’s native neighborhood while on the way to Long Island’s Drive-Thru Records, where New Found Glory was playing. The group hoped to pass NFG a demo CD, and the moniker ended up sticking.

“It’s crazy, but it’s awesome because when we started the band, I just thought it would be the third band I was starting that year,” Raneri recalls of his mindset as a seventeen-year-old.

Then, after landing on Victory Records, Bayside went legit.

“Once it started getting real and we were touring then we got signed and started making records, we had very blunt conversations about what we wanted to do with this,” he continues. “It was always, ‘I want to be like Bad Religion or Dropkick Murphys. I want to be one of those bands that stick around.’ Like, ‘I want to be doing this in my forties and fifties.’ And now here we are in our forties doing it.”

To commemorate the quarter-century mark, and the self-titled turning twenty, this year, the four-piece rerecorded “Devotion and Desire” – a song Raneri, 42, guesstimates he’s performed “thousands of times.” The new version is certainly more professional and polished but mostly serves as a refresher for younger fans who have hopped on the Bayside train since the original was released.

In staying the course, Raneri points to a simple question he and his bandmates ask themselves: “Are we going to be embarrassed about this in ten years?”

“That’s a conversation we have all the time. That’s why we avoided a lot of the trends that have come and gone throughout our career. We’ve seen other bands pick up steam faster, get bigger, come after us and pass us by, and then we’ve seen those bands go away,” he says.

“We never do that merch design or make that album cover or write that song or say that thing in an interview or do that interview, for that matter, because it’s going to make us bigger today,” Raneri concludes. “That’s never been a part of the plan. It’s always been like, ‘What do we think is cool? What do our fans think is cool? How do we keep feeding the fanbase?'”

Now that’s devotion and desire.

Bayside, with Smoking Popes, 7 p.m. Friday, June 6, and Saturday, June 7, Summit, 1902 Blake Street. Tickets are $84-$96.