Submitted photo / Brittany Diliberto Indie rock band Carbon Leaf performs Sunday at Westside Bowl in Youngstown.

Carbon Leaf’s latest release, 2024’s “Time Is the Playground,” was its first studio album in a decade.

The long layoff wasn’t planned, frontman Barry Privett said, and it’s not like they weren’t busy. The indie rock band re-recorded the three albums it released between 2004 and 2009 on Vanguard Records to regain the publishing rights to its whole catalog. It released a 27-song live album and video, and recorded two EPs of predominantly acoustic songs.

And Carbon Leaf toured, something Privett (who also plays acoustic guitar, tin whistle and bagpipes in addition to lead vocals), Terry Clark (electric and acoustic guitar) and Carter Gravatt (guitars, mandolin, lap steel and just about anything with strings) have done for almost all of the 34 years since starting the band. The lineup is rounded out by Jon Markel, bass, and Jesse Humphrey, drums, and Carbon Leaf’s current tour includes a show Sunday at Westside Bowl in Youngstown.

To finance “Time Is the Playground,” the band launched a Kickstarter campaign right around the time the COVID-19 pandemic started. In addition to dealing with the headaches and disruptions everyone faced, the band members also lost their main source of income — touring. Those factors didn’t make Carbon Leaf rush to finish the record.

“We’ve learned you can’t take outside pressures into your decisions to call something done,” Privett said. “You should push for deadlines, but we blew up our deadlines many times over where we could have pushed through and just called it good enough, but we didn’t want to do that. If you’re writing and making something, it’s kind of forever. You want to get it right.”

It’s a lesson the band learned 20 years ago when it was signed by Vanguard Records. The “Indian Summer” album in 2004 gave the band its first radio hit with “Life Less Ordinary,” which was a top 5 song on the Adult Album Alternative chart and top 30 on the Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart. The album’s follow-up single, “What About Everything,” was top 25 at AAA stations.

“‘Indian Summer’ was a very personal record, and we got some good radio success,” Privett said. “Then we were rushed to get the next album out to, quote, unquote capitalize on the momentum. It was an admirable effort when we released ‘Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat,’ but the recording felt like it was just a first-stage demo, as opposed to this complete thing, and we were just working off of a deadline. And the writing, I think, was affected by that.”

After the acoustic bent of the EPs, the band knew it wanted its next album to be more of a rock record, and Privett started going through some of his demos of half-finished ideas that, for one reason or another, he hadn’t completed. One of those became the title track of “Time Is the Playground,” which was finished during the pandemic.

“There would be times where you looked up and there was just, there were no airplanes in the sky, there was no one on the road. It was just a crazy sensation,” Privett said. “I just got to thinking of the concept of time and how circular it is with our traditions and seasons and the clock on the wall, but everybody’s also racing towards this same finality. We’re all going to expire from this plane, and who knows what’s beyond that. I was getting a little trippy with that, and in doing so, kind of looking back at my life and looking forward. Looking at where you are right now, that’s where the idea of ‘Time Is the Playground’ kind of came up. It’s like that well-worn adage, ‘Now is the time.’ This is what we have. This is the playground, you know.

“Once I had those footholds, I knew the kind of songs that I wanted to include and committed to getting those other songs that stuck around for years finished once I knew where their home should have been.”

Privett drew on his childhood memories for “Backmask 1983.” The title refers to the fears of hidden satanic messages in certain heavy metal albums that only could be heard when played backwards. It namechecks well-known people (Farah Fawcett) and events (the Challenger explosion), but it also includes details that are unique to Privett’s childhood.

“I’m at this phase of my career where I really want to be super into a song,” Privett said. “I don’t want to invest in it if it’s not going to really make me excited to share it or to perform it. I’m not saying that everything we’re going to write is going to be good or great, but you have to be really convinced.

“Whether it resonates with someone else, there’s a whole other story. ‘Backmask 1983’ is so super niche. There’s some cultural references, but there’s also a lot of just very super specific things to me and growing up. I didn’t want to broaden it so that anybody could relate. I wanted to just relate to me and then see who picks it up.”

Sunday’s show is in the middle of a quick but grueling tour — 11 shows in 11 days in six states. Privett can’t complain about the schedule; he’s the one who booked the tour.

“There’s very little margin for error, for mechanical error or for biological error,” he said. “I think your body responds if you just tell it, ‘This is what’s happening.’ I’ve been sick on the road before, and I’ve had to carve around the melody, find the notes that work and kind of improvise on the fly. And it’s really stressful. You can’t really predict when things are going to go wrong on the road, so why take days off? You know, it costs money to take days off.”

Carbon Leaf has played more than 3,500 gigs since the band was formed in Richmond, Va., in 1992. With that kind of history, there aren’t many firsts on the band’s itinerary. The Kent Stage, where Carbon Leaf plays on Saturday, is a frequent stop for the band, and the group played Warren in 2021 when The Kent Stage was closed for renovations. Sunday’s performance at Westside Bowl will be its first time in Youngstown.

Privett said he’s picked up some information about the city and the venue from friends and fellow road warriors Red Wanting Blue. Markel has been friends with RWB singer Scott Terry since they were in grade school together in New Jersey, and the bands have played shows together and performed on the annual Rock Boat cruise at various times over the years.

“I knew Dean (Anshutz, RWB drummer) had a record store, but when I took the gig, I didn’t know it was part of the building, so that was pretty funny to find out,” Privett said during a telephone interview. “I’m looking forward to it. It looks really funky.”

If you go …

WHO: Carbon Leaf

WHEN: 7 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Westside Bowl, 2617 Mahoning Ave, Youngstown

HOW MUCH: Tickets are $25 in advance through Eventbrite and $30 day of show.