Anthony Raneri
A 42-year-old native of Queens, New York, Raneri may be best known as the frontman of Bayside, a tenured punk rock outfit that chronicles life’s down-but-never-out moments with down-tuned riffs and sticky-sharp phrases. He founded the band in 2000 when he was still a teenager. The scrappy DIY four-piece cut their teeth in sweaty VFW halls, but grew over the past two decades to become one of the most reliable rock groups to fill concert halls and festival fields.
Now living in Middle Tennessee, Raneri has set his sights on a new challenge: releasing a collection of solo songs that include folk storytelling, moments of country influence and touches of road-worn balladeering. Friday, his seven-song solo EP Everyday Royalty hits streaming services and record store shelves.
Working in Nashville songwriting circles? Releasing a collection of songs with a new label and backed by a new team? For Raneri, it feels like being a kid again, jumping in the back of a van to find out what may be waiting in the next city.
“I’m really treating this like [I’m] a new artist,” Raneri says. “It reminds me of the excitement of the early years of my career.”
The solo record is his first proper release with a backing of Nashville co-writers and collaborators. He relocated from New York to Franklin about a decade ago, but didn’t properly dip his toes into the waters of local songwriting circles until work for Everyday Royalty began in earnest about a year ago. With Bayside, Raneri can spend months workshopping an album with bandmates before decamping for an extended stay at a studio with a trusted producer. As a solo artist, he adopted a pattern familiar to Music City: wake up, write, record, repeat. For Everyday Royalty, Raneri co-wrote with alt-rocker Sam Tinnesz and country songwriter Joey Hyde, among others. Austin Bianco was in the producer’s chair for the lead single “Bones.”
“Me and Sam and Austin, our kids were in school, and we had a few hours before we had to pick them up to go back to Sam’s house and work on something,” Raneri says. “We wrote and recorded ‘Bones’ in those few hours. That process is very fun. … That’s not how I’ve ever worked before.”
Raneri’s origin story isn’t what you might expect from someone who came to Nashville and started making music. As a kid, he didn’t spend afternoons in Queens stalking the FM dial for country radio hits, although he did fall for the songwriting charm of Tim McGraw’s hits in the ’90s. He wasn’t a traditional student of Americana forebears, either. But Raneri was raised on Simon & Garfunkel and Billy Joel, plus storytelling of a different kind: showtunes. This bold, emphatic influence — mixed with an appreciation for the likes of Kacey Musgraves, Elliott Smith and Roy Orbison — soaks into Everyday Royalty.
In addition to the ground-shaking Tinnesz collaboration “Bones,” the EP includes the riffy, country-tinged love tune “Boston” and indie-folk road song “Cleveland.” The pensive old-school ballad “Fall Out of Favor” closes the record, and it comes with touches of sobering steel guitar. But no song stands out quite like “Over Time,” a shuffling, banjo-featuring story about changing seasons that offers the perfect addition to a late-autumn soundtrack. With most songs, Raneri hopes to capture life’s hardships, but not without a bit of hope.
Anthony Raneri
“If I’m writing a song about the world, or life, or a relationship — anything being hard — I always want there to be a ‘but …,’” he says, noting that the story doesn’t need to end at its bleakest moment.
Next year, Bayside celebrates its 25th anniversary, but that doesn’t mean the singer-songwriter wants to put Everyday Royalty on a shelf. Between planned events marking the anticipated anniversary, Raneri hopes to squeeze in short runs of solo dates — not unlike the weekend jaunts a new band makes when feeling out the road for the first time.
Or in his words: “I made a record I love, and I don’t want it to be a hobby.”
