Bayside Wounded, But Still Walking

Early in the morning of Halloween in 2005, emo quartet Bayside were in a tour van heading out of Boulder, Colo. on their way to the next date of their U.S. tour. At about 3:15 a.m., the van hit a patch of ice, swerved off the road and flipped. Bayside drummer John Holohan was killed in the crash and bassist Nick Ghanbarian was hospitalized along with several of the band's crew members.

Many groups would have thrown in the towel after such a jarring loss, but Bayside didn't even quit the tour. Two weeks later, singer-guitarist Anthony Raneri and guitarist Jack O'Shea were on the road again alongside Silverstein and Hawthorne Heights, finishing the rest of the dates as an acoustic duo.

"That was a big chance to really inspire people and help people," Raneri says of the band's drive to get back on their feet. "We wanted to show people that if we could get through that, then they could get through anything.

"And on a more personal note, ever since I started playing music, or even being into music, I'd go to that when I was upset. If I was sad, I'd play music. If I was happy, I'd play music. That was pretty much the lowest point of my life, and I couldn't think of anything I'd rather have been doing than touring with my band."

For Bayside's latest album, The Walking Wounded, Raneri drew on that same sense of perseverance and hope.

"What we wanted to do is make an inspirational album. We didn't want to make a depressing album because it really doesn't help anybody, you know? And we didn't want to make a bubbly, happy record, because there are legitimate things in the world to be upset about. But we wanted to put our own spin on how to handle that, how to handle depression and how to handle tragedy. We wanted to make a record that showed how strong we are as people."

The album, released by Victory Records in February, features new drummer Chris Guglielmo. It also displays a more ornate, mature approach for the band, as it features occasional orchestral flourishes and some instrumental passages.

"The main thing with this album was that we had more time to work on it," says Raneri. "We took two months to write it, two months to record it, and we did pre-production and demos for the album. Any ideas we had, anything we came up with, we had the means to actually pull off."

Producers Shep Goodman and Kenny Gioia (Mandy Moore, Lee Ann Womack), who manned the boards for Bayside's 2005 self-titled record, returned to do the same.

The new studio effort follows the band's 2006 Acoustic EP that featured the renderings of Bayside songs that Raneri and O'Shea performed on tour after the van crash.

"The fans were actually asking for it," explains Raneri. "We just did it for fun.

"But that's really where our songs start — all our songs. I write on an acoustic guitar in my bedroom, you know? It was kind of cool to strip it all down and sort of show people where the songs came from."

Raneri says Bayside's flock of diehard fans (their website URL, baysideisacult.com, pretty much says it all) have responded well to the new material.

"A lot of people have told us that this record, and everything we've been through, has inspired them. I think it's helped everybody realize that there's important things in life, and there's not important things in life, and you have to work out what's worth getting upset about."

Bayside will embark on the excellently titled They're Not Horses, They're Unicorns tour this month, playing dates across Ontario with Sydney, These Silhouettes and Socialight. Canadians will also be able to catch the band on this year's Warped Tour in July and August.

Catch Bayside here:

May 9 Toronto, ON @ Reverb
May 10 Guelph, ON @ Cowboy Bar
May 11 St. Catharines, ON @ Level 3
May 12 Hamilton, ON @ Underground
May 13 Ottawa, ON @ Mavericks
May 14 London, ON @ Salt Lounge
July 3 Vancouver, BC @ Thunderbird Stadium
July 5 Calgary, AB @ Race City Speedway
August 11 Barrie, ON @ Burl's Creek Park
August 12 Montreal, QC @ Parc Jean-Drapeau