During “Catching Windmill,” one of a dozen songs released in 2024 on Carbon Leaf’s first full-length album in a decade, “Time Is the Playground,” co-founder and lead vocalist Barry Privett sings: “Everything that spins begins and ends/ Everything that ends begins again/ In some new way, place and time.”
If you’ve been making music long enough — say 30 years, as is the case with Richmond-based rock group Carbon Leaf — time can get a little bendy, if not outright circular. Outmoded sounds return to the zeitgeist. Faces in the crowd resemble younger versions of those you saw from the stage decades ago. Bygone bands you looked up to reconstitute for special reunion shows.
Carbon Leaf will be playing in Richmond on Saturday, Aug. 2 as part of the Music at Maymont series, but one thing’s for certain: It’s not a reunion show. “It’s not a one-off, or a couple shows a year just for fun,” says founding member and guitarist Terry Clark. “It’s still what we do.”
“Someone once said that one of the keys is just not quitting, not giving up,” Clark adds. “Eventually it pays off, if you stick with it long enough.”
Carbon Leaf hasn’t just stuck with it; the quintet, which got its start in the early 1990s playing covers in Virginia’s thriving alternative scene, has grown into a touring juggernaut with thousands of gigs in the rearview mirror, a multi-generational fanbase and original music that’s received national airplay. The group broke through near the end of its first decade, earning an invitation to perform “The Boxer,” a track from the 2001 album, “Echo Echo,” at the American Music Awards. That made Carbon Leaf the first unsigned band to perform at the AMAs.
Despite the success that followed, including the charting single “A Life Less Ordinary” and a deal with Vanguard Records that resulted in three albums over the course of the 2000s, the group’s drive to operate independently — to cultivate fan support directly and to record whenever and however inspiration strikes — has proven even more enduring and defining. “Time Is the Playground,” released via the band’s own Constant Ivy label, looks back on that journey from Randolph-Macon College party band to hot commodity to well-oiled touring machine with an enviable capacity for reinvention.
A record of sonic experimentation
Like much of Carbon Leaf’s recent discography, which includes two volumes in a series of organic-sounding EPs titled “The Gathering,” “Time Is the Playground” was recorded in the detached garage studio at Terry Clark’s home in Richmond’s West End. Clark’s first “real job,” as he puts it, after college was at In Your Ear Studios — answering phones and sweeping floors by day, recording his own music by night. “That’s how young engineers figured out how to work [and] how to record things and not screw them up for paying clients,” Clark jokes. “You screw up on [your own music] at night.”
In 2009, when the garage was merely a practice space, the group’s self-recording capabilities took a curious leap forward. Clark transformed his living room — relocated furniture here, a makeshift isolation booth there — and the soundtrack for “Curious George 2: Follow That Monkey!” was born. “We hung moving blankets and stuff all around,” he remembers. “It was really primitive, but it was pretty cool. We recorded an actual movie soundtrack for Universal Pictures in my dining room.”
Seeing the film on the big screen on Universal’s Hollywood backlot, Clark marveled at what they were able to accomplish with a minimal setup. “This sounds good,” he remembers thinking. “I cannot believe that we pulled this off.” Another thought struck him: “We should do this more.”
The recording setup may have moved to the garage, and the equipment and environs may have gotten upgrades to boost sound quality, but the initial trial-and-error ethos remains. In fact, it’s bolder than ever, thanks to the freedom afforded by setting one’s own studio schedule. For example, while working on “Time Is the Playground,” drummer Jesse Humphrey decided to track “City by the Sea” without cymbals to better replicate the drum loop that co-founding multi-instrumentalist Carter Gravatt wrote to, and to create sonic space for other elements. “It gives us the time to relax a little bit and experiment,” Clark says, “not be looking at the clock like, ‘Okay, let’s bang these drums out. We gotta go, go, go.’”
Privett describes a concerted effort for “Time Is the Playground” to be more sonically ranging. “I look back and feel like maybe we were a little conservative on certain things, and we should just kind of go for it,” Privett says. “We did a lot more of that on this record.”
Keys are one shimmering example. The group has included the instrument for background depth and texture in the past, but in “Backmask 1983,” period-appropriate synth sits in the front of the mix, complementing lyrical throwbacks to that era: velcro wallets, Time Life books, the famous Farrah Fawcett poster. “We were like, ‘Let’s turn them up twice as much as we normally would,’” Privett says of guest keyboardist Ty Baile’s contributions. “Let’s just live with it and see if it’s cool.”
Time and space to create is especially handy for a band known for its eclecticism. Carbon Leaf has proved it can gain airplay via radio-friendly choruses, but just as foundational are the folk and Celtic elements that add breadth to the band’s sound. “I think we confused a lot of people at a certain point early on,” Privett says. “We would write ‘The Boxer,’ and then the follow up song was ‘A Life Less Ordinary,’ which was a completely different vibe… But once [fans] kind of realized that, I think that was our strength. We want to be artists and we want to do what feels right.”
The band’s fans are “super-supportive of us creatively,” says member Terry Clark. “People, by and large, seem really excited to hear what are we going to do next.”
Know thy fans
Being independent does tend to up the ante on keeping a finger on the pulse of your fanbase. Barry Privett admits that forgoing label backing means accepting limitations when it comes to marketing and distribution. But staying nimble amid a changing marketplace can also be an advantage. “We’ve played with a lot of models,” he says. “Doing live streams, fan Q&As and things, or doing the pre-show meet-and-greets. A couple years back, we were doing these fan-funded projects where you could go hiking with me, or skating with Carter or take a guitar lesson from one of the guys. Just trying different stuff, and that was a fun era.”
With “Time Is the Playground,” the band engaged fans from the start, announcing the yet-to-be-made album via a Kickstarter campaign in 2020. At that point, the plan was to release the album the following year. The COVID-19 pandemic knocked things off track to some degree, but the timeline was also impacted by the band’s own high standards. “It was important to me that it we get it right,” Privett says, “and that everybody was on board with the idea of not just a whole album of new stuff but [also] some some old stuff in there.”
At the same time that band members were sending the lead singer and primary lyricist their demos and snippets of potential new songs, Privett was sifting through his own trove of unreleased material. The timing — coinciding with COVID quarantining — lent an uncanny lens to the exercise. It’s one reason time emerged as the album’s central theme. “Everybody’s schedule is different. There’s nobody around. There’s no air traffic. It was this weird sense of timelessness.”
Privett estimates that the riff for the title track was written nearly two decades ago, around the same time “Monday Night in Germantown” and “City by the Sea” were first worked on. “Neon Signs,” “Love for Sale” and “You and Me” are among the album’s more recent compositions. That range is made possible by a remote songwriting workflow that’s conveniently fragmented and highly organized. “Music generally comes first,” Clark says, “and then [musical ideas] go to Barry, and he does all the lyrics and vocal melodies.”
Band members send Privett their ideas — iPhone voice memos, full-band dry runs, whatever they have — for safe keeping and archiving. “I think Voice Memos is one of the greatest apps in modern history,” drummer Jesse Humphrey says.
“Maybe they are sitting there for 18 years,” Clark says, “and then they’ll come back out and he’ll say, ‘I’ve got an idea for lyrics.’ And then sometimes it’s the next day he’s got ideas.”
Getting road ready
The routine works in reverse when it comes to tour prep. With 90 years of combined onstage chemistry among the founding members — plus another 25 between Jon Markel and Jesse Humphrey — clicking back into an instrumental groove is easy. “Generally, rehearsal time is just everybody dialing in their vocals,” Carter Gravatt says.
That practice is helped along by the fact that Privett sends out recordings of each individual part. “Barry went through and isolated backup vocal parts on the studio recordings, and we’d send them to each person and say, ‘Carter, you get to sing these lines on this song. Jesse, you’re singing these lines…’ Everybody’s pretty good about doing their homework and coming in prepared.”
Asynchronous collaboration may be routine in the 2020s, both for the band and society more broadly, but connection is still at the core of Carbon Leaf. Early on [early to mid-’90s] the band lived together in the Fan on Floyd Avenue, and aimed to be either gigging or practicing five nights a week. Other up-and-coming groups — Fighting Gravity, the Pat McGee Band and Agents of Good Roots, to name a few — lived footsteps away. “It definitely had a community vibe,” Clark remembers. “All the clubs had something going on a lot of nights of the week, and people went downtown. It was just a different era”
“When I joined the band, it was like 2008, and I was coming from Seattle, where I played in a thousand bands, and I went out literally every single night,” bassist Jon Markel says. “Then I got here, and I was cresting the old man hill and it was just completely different. An older guy getting in on the young, cool music scene was not as easy to do.”
“When responsibilities start creeping in, you’ve got to get a little more surgical about it,” Privett confesses.
These days, the members of Carbon leaf are spread out across the West End, Westover Hills, Goochland and Rhode Island. While the quintet may not be living together and making music five nights a week, its collective motor is no less awe-inspiring. To make the most of the time they do have together, the band strings together densely packed tours, like the one that will start in September and continue for nearly 30 nights with just two days off. Privett likens runs like this one to a “contact sport.”
“It’s so physical,” he says. “You’re in motion all the time. You’re in tight quarters with seven people. There’s always noise and motion. And then, of course, you’re on your feet 10 hours a day, and in there is a two-hour cardio performance.”
“Monday Night in Germantown” turns those touring rituals into a sepia-toned photograph of life on the road: “Every day goes by, every night sneaks up behind / Like a London fog without a shroud of mystery.”
For Clark, short tours can be tougher, especially when it comes time to return to the rhythms of fatherhood. “You don’t get into the groove,” he says. “When you do a longer tour, you get into the cycle… that noon to 2 a.m. schedule. Then I come home, and it’s like, ‘Oh, you gotta get kids to the bus stop at 7:30.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, what happened to noon to 2 a.m., babe?’”
Then again, the onset of parenthood does have its upsides. The most successful art finds a way to transcend its own generation and connect with future ones. For Richmond-based bands, there may be no better vantage point from which to see that cyclical momentum than onstage at Maymont, whose 100 acres of green space double as a uniquely inviting concert atmosphere.
Coming home
The band has a tradition of playing a homecoming show late in each calendar year the National, but periodic gigs at Maymont set the stage for even more of a full-circle experience. “My favorite part is that it’s such a family-centric, Richmond-centric show,” Clark says. “My kids are there. Carter’s kids are there. They’re all running around with glow-in-the-dark soccer balls and frisbees and having the best time.”
Clark can see that generational cycle playing out among listeners. “People that are now in their 20s and 30s that are starting to have kids are like, ‘We grew up on Carbon Leaf. Now our kids are growing up on Carbon Leaf, and we’re all here.’”
“It feels more like a relaxing hang than the high-stakes, high-pressure, showtime kind of atmosphere, which can happen on tour in venues,” Privett says. “It’s special when the sun is going down and the whole mood changes from being dusk and getting dark. It’s fun.”
Fans know that when the sun rises again, the members of Carbon Leaf will still be sending each other song ideas, working on vocal harmonies, or setting off from one city so they can play somewhere else the next night. For many musicians, even those with 30 years of experience, the process of writing, learning and performing is never finished.
Privett puts it this way in the title track of “Time Is the Playground”: “You can’t go back and start again / You just start again from wherever you end.”
Carbon Leaf will perform at Maymont on Saturday, Aug. 2. Doors open at 6 p.m. and music starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are $30 and can be purchased at musicatmaymont.com. To hear and purchase “Time Is the Playground,” visit carbonleaf.com.
