Bayside's latest album, "The Walking Wounded" has been out for a little over a year, and your last chance to see the band in the area, at least for a few months, is Sunday at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. The Starting Line, Steel Train and Four Year Strong will also perform.

I had a chance to talk to Nick, who grew up in Cumberland, about what is coming up for Bayside.

Yeah, it's awesome. We've had less than 2 months off in the past year and we've probably done about 300 shows in that time. We've been really busy. This is our third or fourth time in a lot of these places in the past 12 months, so now it's starting to feel normal to be at them.

When the album came out, we were only doing a couple of those songs and the set was still heavily comprised of stuff from the first few records. Then right after that we did Warped Tour, and we only had time for like 7 songs, so we did 3 new ones, then on the headlining tour after that, we did a bunch of the new stuff and a lot of the old stuff. We even did 2 or 3 songs that we have never played live. These days, it's mostly about 9 songs about half from the first two records and half from the new one. If anyone has seen us a bunch of times, they will know what songs to expect, because some have become pretty much staples of our set. For the most part, we really don't stray from our core group of songs.

This is The Starting Line's last tour for a while. A "farewell...for now" of sorts.

Yeah and we only really ran into them, I want to say only about a year ago. We did a college show with them around the time of The Bamboozle. We also did a Myspace secret show with them and we all realized none of us were assholes, so we decided the first show we had, we'd try to do a tour together. It's cool that it worked out, because so many times you meet other bands and talk to them and say you want to do a tour but nothing ever comes of it. I wouldn't say our musical styles are similar, but we are both like mature punk alternative bands, and it seems like our fans appreciate them and their fans appreciate us.

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because we always talk about what people perceive us as. Either people don't' know a thing about us, musically, personally or otherwise, or they are in love with us. It seems like our time slots are getting better each year at The Bamboozle. We are kind of a smaller bigger band, if that makes sense. We certainly are closer to being ...I don't know like, we've been around so long that I feel like playing the same day as Jimmy Eat World is amazing. It's a good feeling to know that we have done what we wanted and it's taken us this far, and this long to do it. And we've still got places to go, but we do it on our own terms and that's really rewarding.

There is no doubt that that is what we want to do. Any of those bands we would have been out with four or five years ago, I'm sure felt the same way. The industry is changing so much, and the more control you give other people in your formative years, then you are at their mercy. We've been in control of everything we've done. If everything went to hell tomorrow and just the music was out there, we'd be in the same place. The best advice for any band is that you have to know that people might not all be out to take advantage of you, but it might happen. We really don't take too much stock in record labels or any of the industry type stuff. I'd rather success take a long time then all of a sudden be this huge band. I'd rather be Bad Religion than Panic! At The Disco, you know, I'd rather still be playing when I'm 45 than be huge when I'm 20.

No, nothing like that yet. I feel like our kind of numbers, I mean, our touring and our band's success in general far exceeds any industry music industry number. We don't sell the amount of records to what we draw. An industry person would probably look at our numbers and be like "there isn't much going on." But if you go to our shows, you can see we're doing just fine. You know, once we are no longer under contract that might be an issue, but as of now we're still under contract with Victory Records.

It's funny because we kind of found out about the release date from Absolutepunk.net ourselves! Right now it might be true, they are probably right. We've been writing for a couple of months, we just haven't had the time to put it all together in one room. With all of the technology these days, and lap tops we are able to do things and send them to each other. We used a good amount of our earnings on a nice traveling bus, so we have an area that we use for recording on it. Anthony does most of the initial writing. He puts some things together in Garage band and we go from there. We definitely have an album written. Once we are done with this tour, we'll spend the next month and a half or two months putting in all together. We'll hit the studio in the summer, it will be a quick process. This is the first time we are doing this. The songs aren't usually so far advanced before we sit down all together to play them. Usually we take this much time just to get the songs in the practice space and then we hit the studio.

Definitely. All of the old people, the record industry kind of blew up in their faces overnight. They are free falling and grasping at straws. If that Raconteurs thing is true, that's the good way to do it. Release it quick and stop it from hitting the Internet way before you release it. It's the best way really, because people's attention spans are dwindling. There is so much information and music available that you always have to stay fresh. It really takes a toll on peoples' personal lives. We just work hard and deal with it. That's what we all want to do with our lives, is make it happen whichever way. If we have to be on the road 10 out of 12 months and writing for 2 months, then we have to do it.

Yeah...I don't know about nervous, but we are aware that we can't just stop away from the band for too long. There are different ways of staying in people's minds. Eventually we are due for time to step away, but I don't think we'll even think about that for a long time. We just do what we can individually to clear our minds so we don't go crazy. We do think about that though.