Fifteen years ago, Anthony Raneri and his band were stuck in South Carolina without enough money to continue tour nor get back home. After putting on their own show at VFW Music Hall and only making enough to pay the venue back for renting it out, he and one other bandmate who was 18 worked in the Charleston docks fumigating shipping containers for four days to make enough gas money to drive home. 

“You know what’s funny?” Raneri asks. “You couldn’t convince me that sucked. No one in the world could convince me that was uncomfortable. I was having the time of my life.” All these years later and his sentiment has not changed. The Bayside frontman now plays Warped Tour with the luxury of a tour bus and crew; owns two houses in New York and Nashville; has a beautiful wife and daughter and the comfort of six successful albums under his belt. “It’s been a really long road and a really gradual climb, and I think because of that we’ve built a really strong house for ourselves,” he admits. “Nobody could ever say that Bayside haven’t earned anything or that we’re a flash in the pan.”

While on a break at his home in Nashville before embarking on a European tour, Raneri took the time to chat with Myspace about the first 15 years of Bayside.

Bayside is 15, holy crap! How does it feel?

Anthony Raneri: It’s super weird. It’s such a gradual process and you work so hard to fight each step, so by the time you stop to look around you don’t realize how many steps you’ve taken. Until we built this last year as the 15th Anniversary Tour—until I was saying it every night onstage—it didn’t completely register.

Fifteen years is a long time, and what’s great is you’re still moving forward. 

What’s crazy is that this last tour was the most successful tour we’ve ever done—the biggest tour we’ve ever had. Our last record charted the highest we’ve ever had a record chart. It’s still moving in a good direction, which is what I’m most proud of.

We’re not doing the 10-year anniversary of a record that was big for us 10 years ago. We’re just doing another tour and are going to celebrate that it’s been 15 years since we all met.

I did think it was interesting that you weren’t touring on an album but rather a band anniversary.

It’s a slippery slope, but we’re trying really hard not to sell nostalgia. We don’t want to get everybody out once to celebrate that time when they were in high school and they loved this record that we put out 10 years ago, and then that’s it.

Luckily, we don’t have to say, “We’re only going to play the 10-year-old record” to get people to come out to the show. We want it to be a chance to celebrate with our fan base what we’ve done together. We’re not celebrating the past, we’re celebrating a milestone. 

You’re going to Europe next month, what’s your fan base like over there?

It’s interesting. It’s smaller, for now. We spent a lot of time not focusing on Europe and not really working it that hard, but since Cult came out, this will be our third time there.

So out of the seven times we’ve been there, three have been in the last 18 months. We’re starting to really put more focus on it now. And the fans are so interesting because since we’re starting to pay so much more attention to Europe now, they take the new stuff a lot more.

We were just over there opening for Gaslight Anthem a few months ago, and it was interesting because there were nights when people only sang along to songs off the new record. Songs like “Devotion and Desire” and “Blame It on Bad Luck,” where every show you can always count on the whole room singing those songs, it was weird playing those and not having people sing along. 

Cult is your sixth album. Did you feel the same rush releasing it as your debut?

Yeah, definitely. I’m sort of the anti-rockstar. I hate thinking that there are people talking about me right now somewhere in the world. It drives me insane knowing people are discussing how good or bad our new song or album is, so if it’s a good reaction you’re stoked and if it’s a bad reaction then you’re bummed.

That nervous energy I felt when we put out our first record still exists, maybe even more so. I had nothing to lose when I put out the first record. As far as I was concerned, I had already arrived. I signed a record deal and made an album and was going on tour. If it all went to shit tomorrow, then I won.

Now, it’s like, “Well if nobody likes my new record and if nobody comes to see my next tour, I might have to sell the house.” It’s a whole other layer of nervous energy—but I kind of have a good idea that our fans are going to stick around at this point. So it’s not really a realistic fear, but it’s very much a fear.

Now with your first 15 years behind you, what are you hoping is in store for the next 15? 

At this point, if everything kept going the way it did, I would be satisfied with that. If I could stop and look around and say, “Wow, I make a living being in a band,” I would be happy with that.

We’ve never been a band that have said we need to be on the radio or have massive success or play arenas... I don’t need that. If that happens, then that’s cool, but it’s gonna happen naturally.

We just keep taking our steps and doing what we do. At this point, we focus on our existing fan base, as opposed to when you’re a new band and focusing on creating a fan base. We never talk about making more fans. Everything we do is about how to stoke our fans out and give them what they want.

Bayside kicks off their UK/European tour this May. Click here to view tour dates.