"I have so many camps on the James River nobody knows about," Tim Barry chuckles. "Just places I can go and read. I can go and read my New York Times. I can read whatever book I'm reading or my daily paper or my weekly paper or whatever it is, and be by myself. When the sun goes down, I can start a fire and sleep and wake up and feel better."

Right now, though, as he chats on the phone about the release of his third album, 28th and Stonewall (review) (Suburban Home), he's not enjoying the solitude of a covert camp-out outside of his Richmond, Va. hometown. He's throwing together everything he'll need the next morning as he leaves on his surely chilly January and February Canadian tour, including a battered set of camouflage pullovers to help ward off the Canuck chill as he leaves the comforts of home behind.

Well, the modest comforts of home: For the past three years, when Barry wasn't on the road, he's called a shed with neither running water nor heat and a mere 30 watts' worth of power. Virginia's recent cold streak made it a little uncomfortable in recent weeks, but, usually, he says, it's not so bad. It gives him the time to be alone, decompress after the mayhem of a tour, and think.

"I really am an inherently solitary person. It doesn't mean I'm not happy," he explains. "I find a lot of happiness in being with my dog at the river, not at the bar with a hundred people. I think modern versions of the definition of the word 'solitary' are very different because if you came up in a different generation, what I do isn't abnormal.

"At home, I'll go days without saying a word other than 'Thank you, ma'am,' or 'Pack of MAL, basic lights in a box,' or something. That's certainly going to resonate in my lyrical content."

Resonate it sure does on Barry's latest. The punk rocker turned barebones folk troubadour's third effort finds him stripping down his music to focus on the solitary themes over most of the album. Writing from a first-person point of view, Barry tackles issues in from his experience as well as fictionalized observations of everyday life. His battery of traditional folk-music characters returns -- drifters and train-jumping hobos join the ranks of disgruntled ex (and soon-to-be-ex) lovers -- with that lyrical perspective that's less about adopting Woody Guthrie's voice as bringing roots music into the present. Along the way, he finds a few new twists, too, be it a lament for a mostly forgotten historical figure ("Gabriel's Prosser") and fictionalized tales of a college kid being dissed by a woman simply because of his education ("Downtown You"). Through it all, his characters are self-reliant, largely self-contained and solitary figures. They're just the sort of thing you'd expect to spring from the mind of a dude who's more interested in peacefully watching the rolling, dirty magnificence of a 15-year flood on the James River with only his dog Emma to keep him company.

Barry isn't some sort of Unabomber creep brandishing an acoustic guitar just because he's fond of his personal time. To survive as a touring musician for the past two decades, he could hardly be an antisocial weirdo. Barry had his first brush with punk rock in the late '80s Washington, D.C. scene, where he helped Avail get off the ground; shortly thereafter, the cheap rent and distance from the beltway would lure Avail to Richmond, where it eventually serve as a cornerstone of a scene that featured such acts as Strike Anywhere and Smoke or Fire. In 1992, the act cut its debut, Satiate, then jumped to Lookout! Records for three studio albums that established its brash and gritty brand of blue-collar punk. The outfit would jump to Fat Wreck Chords for its final pair of albums, culminating in 2002's Front Porch Stories (review) before just sort of puttering out after sessions stalled in 2005.

Barry seemed to take the dissolution of his band in stride, joining the swelling ranks of veteran punks who enjoy a mid-career makeover to reinvent themselves as roots and folk rockers. All clichéd discussions about the similarities between punk and folk aside, Barry's lyrical output perfectly transferred to his new format, with its social conscience and storytelling lyrics mirroring folk's traditions.

Those traditions are quickly being left in the past, though. Indie kids are adopting their folk/acoustic sound as an even more sedate version of pop and leaving a lot of the style's history in the dust. Even the old guard folk traditionalists seem never to have outgrown the scars of the Vietnam era, as Barry's mother pointed out to him shortly after attending a Joan Baez show. For as much as folk's tried to keep its finger on the national pulse -- or should have tried -- many of Barry's peers haven't kept up with the times.

"It struck me: This is kind of crazy," he says. "I'm not judging my peers. I'm one of them, and I'm not one to judge, but what are we all talking about? It seems like folk music used to be more topical. It used to be more radical. It used to be more accessible. There were a lot more melodies that people caught on to. It had a point. It doesn't seem like there is much direction to music these days. Maybe there is and I don't know much about it because I sort of live a socially isolated life and I don't interact with a lot of musicians in the way that musicians interact."

It's more than just the musician-to-musician interaction from which Barry has separation. A world intricately networked and in touch thanks to social networks, mobile Internet technology, text messages and omnipresent cellular reception can be a weird one for anyone born in the analog era who stops to reflect on technology's power over day-to-day interactions. For a dude who respects the head-space and opportunity for thought little solitude affords him, the information age is a noisy place, indeed.

Barry's not exactly a technophobe, maintaining a website, a presence on the social networks and even doing the 140-character blah-blah-blah on Twitter. It's strictly business, though, a way to deliver communiqués to fans, keep the flock in touch with his latest tour dates and as a point of sale for merchandise and music. There are no public diary entries, no photos or videos or back-and-forth banter on friends' digital walls. Barry's more than willing and able to harness technology for his purposes. He's not about to let it play a defining role in his life or identity.

"I've nearly hit multiple kids near Virginia Commonwealth University that are walking or texting in the middle of the road," Barry says, "or the kids who are riding their track bikes with ironic moustaches and fluorescent orange hats and tight jeans who are riding their bikes with no hands and text messaging, I wonder if they ever escape socialization. I think it's just a whole different thing. It's not something I'm going to look down upon. I just wonder where we're all going."

Wherever technology and culture conspire to take us -- and the future-shock that's going to play a role in everyone's lives, no matter how tech-savvy they are -- it's just one more step down the road of history. Now that Barry and his cohort are no longer on culture's cutting edge, he reached the realization that everyone much grapple with one time or another: things change.

"That's all we're talking about, getting older," he says. "Just like our parents couldn't understand the things we were doing and their parents couldn't understand the fucking things they were doing. It's all about growing."

Like everyone else, Barry's growing. And not just in his craft, either: This month, he'll mark his 39th birthday. With the four-decade milestone looming larger and larger in his future, Barry's more than intellectually aware that life in the van -- and hopping boxcars when he's not touring -- is catching up with him. It takes him a few days after he returns home to be ready to ease back into his daily regiment of hour-long walks and weightlifting, and a few more to return to the mindset he needs to get back to work writing new songs. Life on the road might be a tough one, but it's casting longer and longer shadows on his downtime; when you're on the road for 170 days a year, there's a lot of shadow to cast.

"I'm going to be completely honest. I don't know how many good years I have left," he admits. "The lifestyle on the road is pretty intense. If you were completely sober and did it, it would batter you and beat you and tear you up after 20 years. I drank and I smoked cigarettes and I smoked weed. I'll often opt to stay up with great people than sleep for a full eight hours. It tears at you. It's not something I'm ashamed of. It's just the way I've always lived and I love it. No pity, no bullshit. It's a lifestyle choice."

Lifestyle choice or not, an inherently solitary and introspective guy like Barry can't escape self-reflection in his thirties' waning days. And he's not about to flinch away from self-examination.

"It's almost embarrassing. At what point do people, including myself, go 'This is so stupid? This is embarrassing.' It's almost like the 55-year-old punk rocker still playing punk rock," he muses. "Why don't I have kids? Why don't I have a wife and a house? Why am I more worried about how I'm going to get to the next town and get a six-pack? Why am I worried about that? What I should really be worried about is what school is my kid going to go to, or making sure I have enough money put away if my child is taken care of if I'm not around or my wife or my boyfriend or my girlfriend.

"I'm over analyzing things because I'm stressed out (about the upcoming tour). In the end, it's just life. It's just another record. It's just another thing that you're writing. It's all about how we embrace what we are passionate about, and about how we show that we care about the people that we love. It's just fucking life. Just be happy."

Happiness is there to be had. That's Barry's most important message. His characters might be hundreds of miles from home, in the midst of the worst breakup of their lives, stuck serving in Iraq or hopping trains up and down the Atlantic seaboard, but they're all chasing down happiness. Happiness awaits you, and whether you find it tromping around in the wilderness by yourself, raising a family, hanging out with lifelong friends in the local bar or on a social network site, it doesn't matter. Find your happiness. Tim Barry's finally found his.