Balarama Music

Carbon Leaf Countdown #48: Native America

Jan 18

Doug2010s carbon leaf 1 Comment

Coming up next is what I would deem a surprise entry from the 2010 EP How The West Was Vol. 1. At #48, it’s “Native America!”

I feel there are two very important things to know about Carbon Leaf. One, they are storytellers. Not even with the lyrics, but the music itself sometimes evokes the best part of their stories (i.e. The War Was In Color). Two, they tour. A lot. Like a lot a lot. Like a lot a lot…okay, you get the point. You need to understand both though because in a lot of songs, the traveling really does come into play. The locations, the scenery, the emotions, et cetera; all of these can be found in nearly every Carbon Leaf song of the new decade. It’s easy to see why too. The band travels so much that it must become all they know sometimes. As much as they long for home, it must be weird to be at home for a period of time. Not living on the bus, some hotel room; not waking up to a different sunrise in a different state each day. Yeah, it cannot be easy. Somewhere in the early 2000s, the band penned a song “One Prairie Outpost” that sums this up perfectly. Around that time though, the band also penned several songs evoking the same emotions & imagery. While the latter song would get released on Indian Summer in 2004, these other songs wouldn’t see the light of day for a long time. Sure, they’d get played as early as 2006 (maybe earlier too), but it wasn’t until the band left Vanguard Records in 2010 that they decided to publish these songs finally. We will talk more about that later.

The result was their EP released in the summer of 2010 titled How The West Was Vol. 1. A clear-cut Americana story in each song, the album harkens back to an earlier sound the band had evolved away from in their past few records and really is definitive of their lengthy time on the road. “Native America” opens the seven song EP and almost sounds like it was written with the gang half-asleep all huddled around in the tour bus while riding down I-70 in Kansas just trying to pass the time. It’s road trip music and something to really set the pace on any lengthy drive or trip. “As I went out in the open/I left for awhile/A tired stranger looking to be found/And so I stood there in silence/For someone to hear me.” You can interpret lyrics in any way you deem fit. To me though, that’s the story of a band traveling endlessly across the nation trying to make their name & spread their sound.

That is Carbon Leaf.

Song: Native America
Album: How The West Was Vol. 1 EP
Year: 2010