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Carbon Leaf
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This year, Richmond-based indie rock band Carbon Leaf is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its debut album, “Meander.” Vocalist Barry Privett and company are returning to their local roots for a Music at Maymont concert on Aug. 2 to close out their summer tour.
The quintet has produced 15 studio albums and several shorter music releases. The band’s newest record, “Time Is the Playground,” dropped in September 2024.
Privett says of performing at Maymont, “For us, it’s magical. You start playing as the sun’s going down, you’re in your hometown, and it looks and feels good.”
Carbon Leaf’s five-member setup formed while they were attending Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, soon landing more gigs at colleges and bars in Richmond after graduation.
“Things grew from there,” Privett says. “We had a couple of good strokes of luck and increased our touring base. Before long, we were putting together a national tour and got some songs on the radio.”
For Carbon Leaf’s latest album, “Time Is the Playground,” the band organized a Kickstarter campaign.
“Whenever we’ve done the ‘fan-funded’ thing, it’s never, ‘We need this amount of money,’” Privett says. “We know what things are going to cost. It’s about offering fun, connection things with fans, to try to involve them in the process a little bit.”
The pandemic put a tour on hold and extended the album’s turnaround, but that “melted time” became the album’s theme — from new concepts to using old, abandoned song ideas.
“Time became this strange meeting of the old and the new,” he says. “I pulled an old Post-it note out of my folder that I had written down, like 15 years ago, and it said, ‘time is the playground.’ I knew, immediately, that that was going to be the title of the album. It gave me my true North Star of the record’s theme: Time is the playground; this is what we have — and what are you going to do with it?”
As such, Privett points out that each song deals with time. Following their Maymont stop, the band will kick off their “I Want to Be Leaf Tour,” the name inspired by “The X-Files,” in late September.
“It’ll be exciting because fans have had time to live with the record and mark their favorite songs,” Privett says. “I encourage people to [listen while taking] a 50-minute drive or walk and see how it strikes you, because that’s how it was designed. It has this throughline. I refer to time as this line that moves into and out of you, and it keeps going. And this is your moment in time. I treated the album like that.”
He says the band’s style is a mix of rock, indie folk and other influences, but that it’s hard to pin down.
“We named an album ‘Ether-Electrified Porch Music,’” he says. “We were like, ‘Oh, well, that’s as close as we’ll get to a descriptor.’”
As for Carbon Leaf’s Richmond roots, the band continues to see the music scene evolve each time they play in the region.
“That’s the beauty of a local culture,” Privett says. “It’s always changing. It’s exciting to see the next class of artists breaking out of the local bubble.”
Pointing to the large number of venues available to musicians in the area, Privett says, “You’d be surprised at some places across the country that don’t even have that. So, support your local music.”
Carbon Leaf performs as part of the “Music at Maymont” series on Aug. 2 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $30. For more information, visit musicatmaymont.com.
