Carbon Leaf has a bio filled with interesting nuggets.

In 2002, it became the first unsigned act to win an American Music Award and the first to perform live at its ceremony, which was broadcast around the world.

The band released three albums on Vanguard Records, had a top 5 adult album alternative hit with the song “Life Less Ordinary,” performed on “The Dr. Phil Show” and wrote the soundtrack for the animated film “Curious George 2: Follow That Monkey.”

But lead singer Barry Privett said the accomplishment he’s most proud of is still being together 28 years after forming in Virginia. “Staying together and making it work is our biggest source of pride,” he said during a telephone interview. “Having a band, a group of people trying to be creative, is a really hard thing, a really delicate thing. A lot of great artists, great bands don’t make it through.

“We’ve had all these levels of making it. We’ve had a modicum of success here and there, not that our success has been a 45-degree angle straight up … To me being successful is just being able to continue.”

The core of Privett; Terry Clark, guitar and vocals; and Carter Gravatt, guitars, strings and vocals, has been there since the beginning, and Jon Markel, bass and vocals, and Jesse Humphrey, drums and vocals, round out the lineup. In addition to their primary instruments, the musicians also add penny whistle, mandolin, banjo, fiddle and other instruments to create a sound that blends rock, folk, Celtic and bluegrass influences.

The last year added a new set of challenges for Carbon Leaf … and everyone else. The band that has played more than 3,000 gigs only played livestream concerts and a handful of socially distanced shows since March 2020. Its first real tour since the start of the pandemic comes to Warren’ Robins Theatre on June 10, a date originally scheduled at the Kent Stage, which is in the middle of a renovation project.

Privett described the last year as, “Just waking up each day seeing where the goal posts have moved and making the adjustments. It’s been an exercise in patience and endurance and isolation and tedium and monotony … We canceled and rebooked the same set of 100 shows four times over the course of the year.”

Humphrey and his wife had a baby in April 2020, while the other band members navigated the challenges of at-home schooling with their kids.

The pandemic also disrupted the band’s recording plans. “Gathering 2: The Hunting Ground,” the second in a four-EP series, was supposed to be released in 2020, followed by a full-length album this summer. Now “Gathering 2” will arrive this summer and the next album is bumped to 2022.

“We kind of had this dream, ‘Maybe this will be a great time to do this or that,'” Privett said. “The surprising challenge was the lack of time to focus on getting together and doing the demo and writing the stuff we actually had planned.”

Since 2010 Carbon Leaf has released music on its own label, and the band even re-recorded the three albums released on Vanguard Records to regain publishing rights to 100 percent of its catalog. The arrangement allows the band to make more money on each CD or digital album sold and provides more freedom to release music when and how it wants.

“We’re lucky to have the fanbase we have that we can reach just through an email list,” Privett said. “There are certainly some benefits in being on label, but when something does misfire, you have a top-heavy organization, and you’re kind of underneath it. It becomes very difficult to pivot.”

agray@tribtoday.com