For some bands, the loss of a band member can be a devastating blow. Most famously, Led Zeppelin broke up not long after the sudden death of drummer John Bonham in 1980.
In the case of Bayside, however, tragedy has only made the band stronger.
“You can go home, and you can cry and drink and start killing yourself slowly, or you can just get on with your life,” said Bayside guitarist Jack O’Shea.
The Long Island, N.Y.-based quartet recently released its third album “The Walking Wounded” and continues to tour relentlessly even though drummer John “Beatz” Holohan was killed in a car accident in 2005.
According to O’Shea, the overall theme of “The Walking Wounded” reflects this perseverance in the face of adversity.
“It’s about keeping your chin up and getting through all the stuff that typically brings you down in life and trying to look past that,” he said. “It’s good to put everything in perspective and understand that bad things happen, but it’s up to you to be strong and get through things on your own and not just have a defeatist attitude.”
Then again, lack of certainty and stability isn’t anything new for Bayside.
The band formed in 2000 with a lineup completely different from the one that currently rocks sold-out clubs across the country. Although Bayside quickly developed a following in the burgeoning Long Island music scene and even issued the EP “Long Stories Short” on local indie label Dying Wish Records in the summer of 2001, the band’s lineup changed frequently during the first few years of its existence. Lead singer/guitarist Anthony Raneri was the first of the current members to join Bayside, having joined as a guitarist before taking over lead vocals.
Bayside sent many demos to nationally renowned punk/indie imprint Victory Records during this time. Victory expressed interest in the band, although the label wanted to see the three-piece lineup filled out with another member. In response, then-drummer Jim Mitchell convinced fellow Boston scene veteran O’Shea to join Bayside as a second guitarist.
“That was an interesting thing, to quit my job, sell my car, move out of my apartment and move to New York and be homeless,” he said. “I was homeless for three years.”
After Bayside signed with Victory in the summer of 2003, the band went into the studio to cut its full-length debut “Sirens and Condolences.” The album was released in January 2004, during a time when the band began to develop a larger following through constant touring. Holohan and bassist Nick Ghanbarian also joined the band that same year.
Bayside eventually found time in its hectic schedule to work on its second album, although the time spent making the record wasn’t exactly a relaxing break from the road.
“With the self-titled record, that was the first time we had locked ourselves away. We went away for two months, wrote the record and recorded it in a month-and-a-half,” O’Shea said. “We just shut ourselves away for a little while, not really talking to friends and family, just stuck in a crappy practice room in Long Island for eight hours a day.”
After the self-titled album was released in August 2005, Bayside embarked on the Never Sleep Again Tour with Victory label mates Hawthorne Heights, Silverstein and Aiden.
However, on the morning of Oct. 31, the band’s van hit a patch of ice and flipped over en route to a show in Salt Lake City, killing Holohan and severely injuring Ghanbarian.
Despite these tragic circumstances, though, Raneri and O’Shea did not consider ending Bayside or even going on hiatus. In fact, just a few hours after the accident took place, the guys started talking about when they would go back on the road.
“It goes back to the way you want to cope with things in your life,” he said. “I think that particularly with a lot of lyrical content we had, it would have been hypocritical of us to kind of run and hide when that’s not at all what we preach about. I think we owed it to ourselves and our fans.”
Raneri and O’Shea decided to finish the tour by playing acoustically as a duo. Their final show on the tour was recorded for the DVD/EP combo “Acoustic,” which was released in February 2006. These acoustic sets got an overwhelmingly positive response from fans despite being relatively subdued performances.
“You’re sitting through Aiden’s set, and it’s this crazy rock show, and then we come out and sit on stools and play acoustic guitar for a half-hour. It was nice to see the amount of respect that we got from people who genuinely cared,” he said. “That whole touring experience was really helpful for Anthony and I to get over it, and for Nick as well.”
Ghanbarian also stayed involved with Bayside despite spending six months in the hospital by managing the band’s MySpace page, where fans showed much support for their heroes in their time of need.
“That whole thing made us realize how much of an impact we actually have,” O’Shea said. “We’re not curing cancer necessarily, but what we’re doing definitely has a positive effect on people, and that was helpful for all of us because it was knowing that what we do is important in some way, and we have to keep doing it.”
Following a brief headlining tour and a stint opening for the Smoking Popes on their reunion tour, Bayside brought in Chris Guglielmo to take over the drum kit.
“We were looking for people who were like-minded and experienced and technically proficient, and we got an amazing drummer in Chris,” O’Shea said. “He had a lot of studio experience and had done some touring, so he knew the drill with what it is to be on the road, and we all got along really well.”
With a new album and a drummer permanently in place, it appears that Bayside has finally found stability while getting some national exposure. The band recently played on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and was featured in Rolling Stone.
Although Bayside is finally getting some recognition from mainstream outlets, it isn’t slowing down anytime soon. The guys will embark on a brief Canadian tour before joining this summer’s Vans Warped Tour, and they are already planning when to work on their next record.
“I think that a lot of bands kind of give up on writing music, and that’s what kills them,” O’Shea said. “If you’re not willing to try to keep it fresh or try to keep improving your band or yourself as a musician, you’re doomed to fail.”
According to O’Shea, although he and the rest of the band lost a fellow member and a good friend, the accident ultimately served as a moment of clarity.
“It changed our perspective on a lot of things,” he said. “It definitely makes you realize what the small stuff is and what the big stuff is, and it kind of puts everything in perspective in terms of what’s important in your life rather than just taking things for granted. In that respect, maybe we viewed this record as more of an opportunity to really prove something again to ourselves and to our fans.”
As for what Holohan would have thought of “The Walking Wounded,” O’Shea is sure that he wouldn’t have been disappointed.
“He’d be stoked. He’d definitely be excited,” he said. “If there’s some afterlife where he can haunt us or kill us, he would have definitely done that if we had decided not to play anymore.”
