A Conversation with The Guilty Parties

By Diane Schnell

There aren’t many bands that would see a KFC as a potential music venue, but The Guilty Parties are different. When they first started playing shows in the early 2000s, it was just a matter of asking to use the space. James Baylor, lead singer and alto sax, explains that their trombone player’s dad owned the KFC near their high school at the time. “We were like, would your dad be ok if we set up a show here? Tell him people will eat at his restaurant, it’ll be a good thing. So, he agreed and we set up the first KFC show.”

“It was so crazy,” James says. “Because so many people showed up. There were just random bands. We were on the OCSka.com message board and talking about the show and people were like, ‘Hey, can we play?’ So, we’re letting bands on the show, sight unseen. Sixteen years old, we’re like, ‘Yeah, fucking come to the KFC in Woodcrest!” It was awesome. We ended up doing three or four of those KFC shows and they actually got pretty big. We had The Debonairs and La Banda Skalavera perform at our last one. The KFC shows are a little bit legendary in that part of Riverside.”

There was a strong sense of DIY culture for the Guilty Parties, and it showed in their staging. “[We would play] anywhere that would have us. The last [KFC show] that we did, we even made a stage out of pallets that we stole from behind a bunch of businesses. We had the best production value on that one.” James adds, laughing.

When the band first formed in 2003, many of the members had gone to high school together. “The original people are myself, our sax player John [Martinez], and our guitar player Jeff [Pap]. Anthony [Rondina] was the first bass player in the Guilty Parties that actually mattered, that really did stuff, so you could say he was there from the get go. We knew Anthony from the OCSka message board. He was a moderator, a ska superhero on there. I don’t know how it happened. I think we posted we were looking for a bass player and somebody told us he was good. So, yeah, we met a stranger from the internet.” James laughs. Most of the band had been in marching band, but James is quick to say they had eclectic tastes as teenagers. Their exploration with different musical styles, and learning different songs to entertain each other, was the basis of their playing together. However, their emergence as a ska band was influenced by the Warped Tour that summer.

“I think they saw the Bosstones and Reel Big Fish, and a bunch of really cool screamo and hardcore bands, too. They were singing the praises of this festival and had all these demos and things. I think that was when we got re-immersed in it because we were like, “oh, remember ska? This is still going on. Let’s get back into it… When I was very young, my church took us to an O.C Supertones and Audio Adrenaline [show] at UC Irvine. That’s when my eyes got opened up for the first time to ska. It was awesome, I fell in love with it then. As I went on, I got more into metal and rap, things like that, but that summer when they went to the Warped Tour we all took more of a deep dive into ska punk.”

In 2005, the band released their first full length album, You’re Out of the Band. “There was a re-release in 2008,” James says. “Because the original CD has 15 or 16 tracks and a bunch of skits. The 2005 is the full director’s cut, the 2008 one is just the songs and none of the horrible comedy.”

After this initial release, the band started writing and recording what would have been their second. Things were put on hold in 2008/2009, however, and band members went their own ways to pursue relationships and careers. After regrouping in 2020, James and the band chose to revisit their previously unreleased work and started making them available as singles. “It’s About Time” was released in November 2020, followed by “Guilty Skankin” in November 2021, and “The Last Stand” in September 2024. As The Guilty Parties started re-recording and working on these unreleased tracks, they found ways to breathe fresh air into songs nearly 17 years old. I was pleased to see Tami DeMaree given credit on their song “Guilty Skankin” and asked how that connection had been made.

“Anthony had been in contact with the Goodwin Club through Instagram when we were recording “Guilty Skankin.” We were recording other stuff during the whole lockdown thing. He was bouncing our songs off of other people as we were making them to get critiques. I told him we need as many people as we can get to scream out the chorus on the record. So, the Goodwin Club were able to help us out.”

James talked a little bit about the process of taking these songs and making them new again. “We used to have two singers, myself and another person. We used to write the lyrics. Now, it’s mostly me and Anthony, but we also have a sax player named John [Martinez] who is really funny. He’s written a couple of songs. He wrote “Guilty Skankin,” then me and Anthony punched it up from there and made it what it is now.”

“The Last Stand” is their most current release and it’s a topical take on the struggles millennials and Gen Xers feel about raising families, owning homes, and the failure we feel as we attempt to follow in the footsteps of our parents. “This is another one of those songs that got punched up,” James says. “It started out with another idea completely. I think it was more about, because we were younger, whether we had the means to continue making music. It was almost like we had more going out musically than we had coming in. But when we decided to revisit it all these years later, and all the shit that has happened – the fucking hellscape that we all live in– we decided to start re-imagnining it.”

“Before, the lyrics were “trying to touch the sky,” and then me and Anthony were like, “trying to get by can no longer justify…” We were like that kind of hits the nail on the head, that’s the way a lot of people feel.”

The Guilty Parties are split between Southern California and Texas, so recording happens in stages. James uses “The Last Stand” as an example. “The first portion we recorded was in Garden Grove. We were able to knock out the entire rhythm section there and then. When we heard it all these years later, we decided to punch some things up at Anthony’s studio, relay the bass and things like that. Our buddy Jared, from [the band] Knockout, has got a studio here in Riverside. He’s been awesome and helped us out a lot with letting us record there. So, thankfully, we were able to do it in blocks like that, where we already had the rhythm and then we could do horns and vocals. It wasn’t too messy.”

James mentioned the new E.P. the band has been working on, and how there are several songs from pre-2008 they’re still refreshing, but there are plenty of new, original songs as well. “When we practice, we do have a couple more songs that are new that we want to put on our new project. One of them is one of the ones we played at that Chain Reaction show with the Littlest Man Band. We’re excited about them. It’s a lot more pop-punk than before.”

James admits that incorporating different musical styles has always been a part of their vision. He explained that singing for the band was an easy decision, as he first started singing when he was very young. “My mom’s a gospel singer,” he says. “My house is a very musical household. I was in choir up through middle school, and I was singing in church. It was just something I did, so when it came to this I just jumped in. Also, we were playing a lot of funk and soul covers when we first started, so that was fun.”

“I try to incorporate different vocal stylings into Guilty Parties when I can. I’m always open to everything. I’d like to do some more straight forward Reggae songs, too. Give me something to croon to.”

James shared the music he’s listened to lately has mostly been nineties hip hop, “before gangster rap when it was all about dancing and having fun, just being cool.” There’s funk, soul, Prince and Morris Day and the Time as well. “I was watching this documentary about Prince,” James says. “It was the late seventies, early eighties, and this guy from a record label was saying they were trying to find out what the next big thing with young people would be here in the states. He was like, the whole two-tone thing didn’t happen in the states like it did in England. I thought that was interesting he brought up ska.”

“He’s like, the two-tone thing didn’t happen, but the kids liked britpop. They liked Bananarama, things like that. That’s when they started courting Prince. These American kids don’t like ska, but they might go for this little guy.” James laughs, and points out there has always been an underground contingent of ska fans. Even when The Guilty Parties first appeared in the early 2000s, there was a community ready to receive them. “There is still a sense of community,” James says. “It’s definitely a new era, though. It’s great that people are still getting into it. I think all the social media has made everything attainable to anyone which is awesome. It’s different [from how it was], but that’s ok because when we first got into it, we were different from the O.G.s who came before us. We started our own community and kept it going, so I think the kids are gonna be all right.”

“Did you hear the Ska is for Nerds compilation?” James asks me. “It’s got the Goodwin Club and Chase Long Beach, a bunch of really cool bands. Their whole mission was to set out to make an old school compilation of up and coming bands like the ones we used to get. Like Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Ska or Press Samplers. I think it’s cool. It’s gonna give a lot of people a lot of exposure. And it’s a CD, so that’s cool.”

The Guilty Parties put on a great ska show, with a full brass section, and band members dancing as hard as the audience at times. James says he would characterize their sound as “high energy.” Some of this is due to the bands he found particularly inspiring when they started. “As far as being in a ska band, I thought Voodoo Glow Skulls were the shit. Their whole energy, the Mexican wrestler mask, and repping Riverside so hard. I thought they were really cool. I thought Mighty Mighty Bosstones were very sharp. And Rage Against the Machine and Wu-Tang Clan, and some of the crazy rap music that was coming out at around the same time. To me, it was like if you’re gonna be in a band or a performer, you gotta [bring the energy].”

The plan according to James is to have the new E.P ready for release by summer 2025. Along with the music, James says he’d like to have a record release show to promote it. He admits they don’t tour often, and usually have three to four shows a year. Yet, going to shows remains as important to James as performing.

“All of us in the band loved going to shows before we were ever on stage. Every show we get to play is like a show that we get to go to, also.” That’s what makes the Guilty Parties such a fun band to see. They’re having as much fun playing as they do in the audience, bridging that gap between fan and performer and proving how melding the two is the best of both worlds.

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