Barry Privett has fired up the diesel engine of his band’s bus and is letting it warm up. 

It was the final step toward getting Carbon Leaf back on the road for a tour. And it gave him time for a phone interview with a reporter.

Privett and company pulled out from their homes in the Richmond, Va., area Tuesday for the 11-city run, which will make a stop at Westside Bowl in Youngstown on Sunday, April 12, for a 7 p.m. concert.

It will be the first trip to the city for the long-lived act, which has given more than 2,500 performances since it was founded over three decades ago. 

Carbon Leaf doesn’t tour as much these days but is hitting the road to promote its latest album, “Time Is the Playground” (2024).

The release was acclaimed for its melodic and warm songs, with critics hailing it as a return to Carbon Leaf’s heyday sound. It’s the band’s 15th album – and its first full-length release in a decade.

Privett discussed it, and the tour, during that phone interview.

“‘Time Is the Playground’ is a rumination on time,” he said. “Each song references time in some way or the other.”

The songs have a long lifespan, with some completed decades after they were started.

“There were songs that I had kept trying to write and couldn’t. I couldn’t get to the finish line for one reason or the other,” Privett said. “And usually they were songs that I love, but for some reason, I couldn’t figure out the story, and  I shelved them and would come back to them time and time again.”

He spent a lot of time in remote places during the pandemic, working on new material but also revisiting those unfinished songs.

It was the rediscovery of a line he wrote in his original notes on the songs that finally stirred his creativity. The line brought him back to where he was when the songs first emerged and spurred him to finally complete them.

“I had scribbled, like 15 years ago, the phrase ‘time is the playground’ in my notebook, and I kind of rediscovered it,” he said. “And once I saw that, I was like, OK, now I know what the theme is and just started hitting the ground from there.”

The oldest songs on the new album got their first breath of life around 2006, placing them in the era of the band’s landmark “Indian Summer” album (2004).

“It takes some of the sound from that time, which I think is cool,” Previtt said. “You have these stories that kind of spanned across time,

but the story didn’t reveal itself [until later]. Or it’s like we caught this thing musically in one decade, and then the story kind of reveals itself later down the road.”

Carbon Leaf – whose members also include co-founder Terry Clark, Carter Gravatt, Jon Markel and Jesse Humphrey – was formed in 1992. 

It reached new heights with its 2001 album, “Echo Echo,” which received airplay, and followed it with “Indian Summer.”

“Those were the two turning point albums for us,” Privett said. The band remained in a period of intense touring and musical output for a decade afterward, playing 250 shows a year and releasing an album roughly every eight months.

The act had been signed to Vanguard Records but left the label in 2010, choosing to record at its own studio and release its music independently. But it maintained its hectic pace – to the point where it became too much.

“We were keeping that clip of a project every eight months, and it culminated in 2013 when we released two full-length albums,” Privett said. “It almost killed me. You get ambitious and want to flood your fans with music, and if it’s good and it’s coming at you, that’s cool. But it’s not just the writing and recording. It’s the mixing and mastering and packaging and art and merchandise. It’s nonstop.”

Carbon Leaf eased up at that point and spent the ensuing years rerecording its three Vanguard albums to retain the rights to the songs. It also released several EPs and live albums.

Then came 2024’s “Time Is the Playground,” which rekindled attention for the band.

Its music seemed both old and new. “We’ve always kind of rode this line between

melancholy and introspective and kind of bright and hopeful,” Privett said.

Putting Youngstown on its current tour was partially motivated by a desire to hit cities that it never played before.

“You’re looking at your route, and say, ‘Where have we not been?’ And Youngstown is a place that we’ve never played before. We’ve been to Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland and Kent. So it was like, ‘Hey, let’s do Youngstown.’”

Another factor motivated the decision: a recommendation from Red Wanting Blue, the Ohio-based band that has long called Youngstown a stronghold.  

“We are good buddies with Red Wanting Blue, and they said Westside Bowl is cool,” Privett said.

Doors will open at 6 p.m. for the show. Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 at the door.

Pictured at top: Barry Privett, center, and Carbon Leaf will perform at Westside Bowl in Youngstown on Sunday. (Photo by Brittany Diliberto)