On the evening of Sept. 7, severe storms rolled through Central Virginia, knocking out power to more than 80,000 homes and stopping that night’s Richmond Flying Squirrels game in its tracks. But a short walk away from the Diamond, at the Virago Spirits distillery, the festivities were just getting started. In spite of the weather — “It was like a wind tunnel,” says bassist Brian Roy — eclectic jam band Kendall Street Company hosted a hybrid rum release and listening party, both in celebration of its new album, “Separation95.”

The set of eight songs was primarily recorded in late 2020 and early 2021 at White Star Sound, the sylvan-set Louisa County studio. A post from the band’s Instagram account describes the album’s sound as “dystopian rock-fusion,” a subgenre that couldn’t be more fitting for the sudden severe weather that threatened to derail the listening event. They’d planned to share and discuss “Separation95” with their Richmond audience while projecting vibe-setting vintage film footage.

“We all had to run inside and start holding down the inflatable projector screen,” Roy recalls. “We got the door closed and it was all OK, but that was quite the storm.”

Bringing the “Separation95” material to life visually has been an adventure all its own. Roy looked to the public domain for images that would bring the climate crisis to life in the video for “Tightrope,” and the band communed with nature in a whole other way by filming two aesthetically linked clips at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden’s Conservatory: a visualizer for the album’s third single, “Excusezmoi,” and a live version of the first single, “Eyes of the World.”

The band’s uptempo take on the Grateful Dead classic, “Eye of the World,” was filmed in conjunction with Richmond video production outfit Hourglass Sessions — just one inroad the Charlottesville band has made an hour’s drive east. Their signature “Separation95” Virago rum is another, as is the fact that they made it onto the Richmond-centric bill for Daydream Fest, held at Main Line Brewery over Memorial Day weekend. They were even joined during their set by one of Richmond’s most prominent musical figures, Butcher Brown keyboardist Devonne Harris, also known as DJ Harrison.

Rain or shine, Kendall Street Company’s future in Richmond looks bright. Style Weekly spoke with Brian Roy, who edited the “Tightrope video,” keyboardist-saxophonist Jake Vanaman, who moved to Richmond not long before Daydream Fest, and guitarist Ben Laderberg, who dreamed up the possibility of shooting video at Lewis Ginter.

Style Weekly: How did the opportunity to film at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden come about?

Ben Laderberg: At one point we were thinking about an arcade. I think I threw out Lewis Ginter, but we were like, “No, we’re not going to be able to pull that off.” But we sent them an email, and as it turns out, one of their event coordinators was a big fan and had booked us at a festival in West Virginia like three or four years ago, so he was able to convince the board to let us film there in exchange for one public event.

Brian Roy: We said, “OK, we’ll exchange a show for being able to use your space for this,” and it was absolutely worth it. Flowers After Five … It was a really fun, beautiful, afternoon-evening kind of deal.

What inspired the rework of “Eyes of the World”?

Jake Vanaman: There’s this song on YouTube by Adam Neely called “Clarity,” which is a cover of the Zedd song “Clarity,” but it’s a really cool reharmonization of it … I was fascinated at how he had manipulated the chords, and how beautiful it sounded, but still you could tell it was the original song … I came across a TikTok of somebody doing sign language to “Eyes of the World,” and I was like, “Oh that’s a really cool way of interpreting the Grateful Dead. I wonder how they choose what signs to make and whatnot.” So that got me thinking about the Grateful Dead in general, and what songs to do…

I wanted it to sound like Hiatus Kaiyote, and I wanted it to sound like Crumb, and I wanted to access that New Wave-y, modern, slick — not smooth, but slick — and very parallel [sound]. There’s a lot of parallel motion in there that harkens to that. There’s a lot of parallel motion on the entire record because of the same intent.

Is “dystopian rock-fusion” something you were aiming for during the recording process?

Roy: We hadn’t said those words. I think it was kind of in our minds, but it was also a retrospective, “What genre did we just do?” sort of thing.

Laderberg: This was in the pandemic. We didn’t have as many gigs, so we were just, for lack of a better word, f—king around in the studio a lot. We were [simultaneously] recording [“Untitled California Project”], which is just a bunch of goofy songs about a Midwesterner who moves out to California… After we did all the recording, then the curating process comes.

Vanaman: Yeah, there was a really long curation process, and some songs got struck from the end of [“Separation95”]. It was originally going to be 10 songs, and now it’s eight … “Disintegration” got added separately. I wrote “Excusezmoi” after the rest of them. Originally “Excusezmoi” was just going to be an interlude thing, and then it became its own song. As we were writing them, they began to attach themselves to each other.

Laderberg: I think the cool note for the last two songs, “Trapeze” and “Tightrope” — they came out of a practice session where [drummer] Ryan [Wood] couldn’t make it, so everybody was on a different instrument. I was on drums, Jake was on synthesizer, because he was just getting into that, Brian was on guitar and vocals and [guitarist and singer] Louis [Smith] was on bass, so those two songs came out of us just messing around on instruments we weren’t totally comfortable with.

Where did the footage for the transfixing “Tightrope” video come from?

Roy: It’s from this documentary — the kind of thing they’d play at a school when the teacher’s hungover and doesn’t want to teach a class. “Here’s some education for you.” It’s a short, episode-length documentary, maybe 25 minutes or something like that, called “The Garbage Explosion” that the Encyclopedia Britannica Education Corporation, which no longer exists but was part of the Encyclopedia Britannica, had put out. I was looking for public domain footage. In many ways the lyrics [express] anger about climate crisis, or at least related to that.

Speaking of climate extremes, how did the listening party at Virago Spirits go, given the storm that evening?

Roy: It was a perfectly nice day, I was outside smoking a cigarette, and then I feel a drop of rain, then a huge gust of wind, and then there’s dust in my face… It meant a lot that, still, we filled the room out. A lot of people came out to see us even though it was a pretty miserable evening.

Vanaman: We were projecting [animated 1973 French film] “Fantastic Planet” — “Planète sauvage” — onto the projector while we listened to the album. It’s like video inspiration for it … A lot of the colors are the same as the record album cover, and the music is very inspirational, and there’s a lot of themes that are similar.

Roy: It’s really a magnificent film that I totally recommend to anybody.

Vanaman: “Separation95” is very inspired by that. That’s where a lot of the French comes from in the record. It doesn’t come from the movie; it is inspired by the movie being in French.

What prompted the guest appearance from [Richmonder] Devonne Harris on “Le Shaque” during Daydream Fest?

Vanaman: We know of Butcher Brown, and some of us know members of Butcher Brown.

Roy: Devonne Harris sometimes will play drums with Thursday night jazz at Miller’s in downtown Charlottesville, which is this legendary jazz scene where John D’earth, who’s a trumpeter and also the trumpet professor at UVA, plays jazz there every Thursday night, and it’s packed … Devonne is a really dirty drummer and plays there, and we’ve met him a few times there.

Vanaman: And we knew how great they were.

Laderberg: And [bassist Andrew] Randazzo has actually led one of our practices before, giving us advice on things to do during jams and whatnot. Louis and him are buddies.

Roy: We improvise with each other onstage all the time, but you get to know each other’s habits and plays in your playbook, and sometimes you go off playbook and you’re in a totally new place, so we’re always a little on our toes. But whenever you have a guest, there is a sense of wonder, like “Ooh, I wonder what’s going to happen next. It’s probably going to be awesome.” Then you go with it, and you can learn new things about yourself as a musician.

To hear and purchase “Separation95,” and to find the latest on Kendall Street Company’s upcoming performances, visit kendallstreetcompany.com. To purchase the signature “Separation95” rum, visit viragospirits.com. Also, Kendall Street Company performs their Turkey Jam at the Broadberry on Nov. 25. $20. Doors at 7 p.m.