Medium Build Talks Opening for Lewis Capaldi and FINNEAS, Wanting to Work With Charli XCX & More

Nick Carpenter is feeling really, really lucky these days. The 32-year-old alternative artist better known as Medium Build has spent the last year touring and performing with Briston Maroney, Lewis Capaldi and FINNEAS, and is now gearing up for the next phase of his music career. On Friday (June 23), his collaboration with X Ambassadors arrived: the ground-shaking “Friend for Life,” an honest single centered on nostalgia and gratitude.

Growing up in Georgia, Medium Build would join his missionary parents at church. It was there, watching his mom cry, that he realized how communal and transcendent music could be. But at 20, having become a “bitter Atheist kid,” he left and went to study music at Middle Tennessee State. About five years later, he moved to Alaska — where he’s still based, for now — and officially launched Medium Build. He has since released four albums and one EP.

Now, fresh off a major label deal with Slowplay / Island Records, Medium Build reveals what’s still to come — and how he’s staying grounded as his career finally takes off. 

You studied commercial songwriting in college. How did that experience shape you as an artist today?

I left with my middle fingers up. I was a very snobbish, chip-on-my-shoulder punk kid who was like, “It should be art, it shouldn’t be commerce.” But I did go to school for four and a half years. Now, I’ll be sitting in co-writes and know this song needs a lick, or this melody needs to go to this place. I get to go [in] with more agency and more autonomy.

I just have a lot of s–t I’m trying to work out, so I constantly want songs to reflect my own humanity. We can make it hurt more and say something that feels deeper and truer, not just pain for pain’s sake — but pain for freedom, pain for growth, pain like the way that stretching hurts. 

You’re featured on the new X Ambassadors song “Friend for Life,” which you co-wrote with the band’s Sam Harris. How did you two meet?

He reached out on TikTok or Instagram, and within a week of him finding [my single “comeonback”] and being moved by it, we were texting. That was September 2022. When we met [in December], we just felt like friends. We wrote that tune in probably an hour. My manager was like, “I just want you to make friends that you can commiserate with.” And that was exactly it. Both of us had been in bands with childhood friends, both of us have had really weird falling outs. It was like, “Let’s write a song about being teenagers, being idiots, playing in basements never thinking it’s going to go anywhere and thinking about these people that shaped us.” And again, just being thankful, being observant. 

That’s a theme for where I am now – I’m not so angry and I’m not so cross, you know. Happy to just look around and be appreciative. Half of the times I played it on tour, I just started crying. That whole feeling of knowing that somebody out there – that maybe you don’t even talk to – knows you better than people you spend most of your life with.

You once said, “Every phase I’ve been through, I can go back and hear it. I’m ripping off Mumford and Sons, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney … [I’m] going to keep singing until it sounds like me.” Do you feel like you are at that point yet?

I think you have eras of paying homage, being influenced, and then you kind of get into your groove of what you’re doing well. I came up on Radiohead, Manchester [Orchestra], Mumford [and Sons], Paul Simon, Paul McCartney. Now I’m super into Dolly Parton or George Jones. Old country is really inspiring to me. Simultaneously, I’ve had a large Nine Inch Nails phase this year. I’m really into textures — like, “How can you make a drum texture out of smacking some wood or something?”

You kind of realize that everyone doesn’t know everything. We’re all making a three-minute song. Like, if you’re making a house, everyone’s house still has to have a bathroom, an entryway, an exit and a kitchen. All songs have these pieces and you use these same tools. So me borrowing tools from Randy Newman, Tobias Jesso Jr. or Lewis Capaldi… it’s still gonna be my version of it. And that’s fun. 

You have opened shows for Briston Maroney, Lewis Capaldi and most recently FINNEAS. How has it felt to finally perform your music?

I am stoked to open up for people that genuinely like my stuff and want to have me around. Going from our Alaskan crowds that are all of our friends – everyone’s rowdy and they all know the songs – to all these college kids who’ve never heard of us and we have to win them over … it was totally earth-shattering. It was like we get to be the underdogs again, which is amazing. It helps, it checks your ego, it helps you grow.

I’m just excited. I love playing music. Every night’s different. And I keep saying it, but I just feel lucky — to be a part of someone else’s evening, someone else’s story, and I’m endlessly thankful for these people for giving me opportunities. And I hope that I get to use my platform for something like that one day like when I have fanatic fans.

How do you honor your Alaskan roots in your music?

I wrote “Say Hi” in L.A. with an L.A. producer, but I put an Alaska bar in there. The Time Out Lounge is very Alaskan. Or in “comeonback,” there’s the Buckaroo. Or “Especially Me,” the old Seward Highway, Asia Garden, all these bars and streets. To me, Alaska will always be the pinnacle of inspiration and I will, if I can, put as many Easter eggs throughout [my songs], and then bring Alaskans out on the road with me. Really not forget where I came from.

So far this year, what are you most proud of?

I was really scared about [the Lewis Capaldi] tour and if we could handle it, if we could do it, if I could rise to the occasion. And now that we’ve done that, I feel overall just a bit more confident that it’s going to work out. I feel more at peace. Picking a place to move to, picking a label — it’s been really important for us since our team has been so small, just me and my manager for three years. And we’re about to have a publisher. I’m really ready to just be f–king a musician again and not some professional lunch-meeting person. 

How do you stay grounded during so much change?

I’ve decided to take a break from alcohol again, which I think will help. I use alcohol to self-medicate my own anxiety, and I’ve never been more anxious than I have been this year, just with all of the stuff going on, success and opportunities. Last week I was in L.A. playing that FINNEAS show and the night before I was freaking out. I made a list of people that I could be super-honest with, people that know me. Knowing that there’s at least five people I can call and they can be like, “Go do this.” It’s little things, but they add up. 

As so much falls into place, what do you want to tackle ahead?

I want in on a Charli XCX tune. I want to be in some weird pockets … I wanna make a bachata tune in the Dominican Republic. I deeply want to get into acting. I did acting as a kid in theater, but music was always something I was kind of better at, or was easier.

For a while, your motto was, “Keep it s–tty.” Is it still?

“S–tty” is always still around, but I think honest, chaotic and joyful are my new benchmarks. Chaotic joy.