Medium Build’s Nick Carpenter looks back on a career-defining 2025 as both an arrival and a collapse – a “violent upheaval of self” where sobriety, mania, burnout, touring, and survival all collided at full speed. Tracing the whiplash between public momentum and private consequence, he opens up about turning the machine down without abandoning the dream, reclaiming honesty over performance, and channeling the year’s aftershocks into a beautifully raw collection of songs – including the darker new record he says is coming next.
Stream: “Balance” – Medium Build
I can play it so cool, but there’s a storm raging in my mind…
* * *
2025 didn’t arrive gently for Nick Carpenter.
After years of building momentum piece by piece, Medium Build entered the year riding the release of his fifth album, Country – his first for a major label, and the clearest sign yet that the thing he’d been chasing was finally here. From the outside, it looked like arrival. From the inside, it felt like everything catching up with him.
The distance between those two perspectives would define everything that followed.
For nearly a decade, Medium Build had been moving toward something – independently releasing albums, playing to steadily larger rooms, paying out of pocket for studio time, tours, and everything else that comes with being a working artist. Each step forward brought him closer to the life he’d imagined. And then, suddenly, he was living it.
“Last year,” he reflects, “it felt like I caught the car… and then had no clue what to do with it.” What followed wasn’t celebration so much as consequence – the moment when desire meets reality, and the dream doesn’t slow down just because the person inside it is struggling to survive.
If 2024 was about arrival, 2025 has been about reckoning.
When Carpenter talks about this past year, he doesn’t frame it as growth or success. He calls it “a violent upheaval of self.” The phrase lands with weight – not metaphorical, not romanticized. There was burnout. There was mania. There was a body and mind pushed well past their limits. “I just kind of broke,” he admits, describing the moment he realized that if something didn’t change, he might not make it through at all.
What followed wasn’t a grand reset, but a series of deeply human decisions – getting sober, starting medication, stepping back from social media, and asking for help in ways that felt unfamiliar and frightening. By February, the breaking point had become impossible to ignore. Carpenter remembers sitting with his phone and sending a message to his manager and a few close friends – a text that felt less like a confession than a lifeline. “If I don’t change, I’m going to die,” he told them. It wasn’t framed as drama or despair. It was a statement of fact.
And still, the machine kept moving.
There were tours already booked, expectations already set, a version of himself the world had learned to recognize and rely on. Healing didn’t arrive in a vacuum. It happened on the road – in dressing rooms, on late-night drives, and in conversations held under stage lights. Carpenter got sober and kept showing up, learning in real time that survival doesn’t always come with stillness.
One of the most meaningful stretches of the year unfolded alongside Petey USA, where the usual performer–audience divide quietly dissolved. Night after night, the shows became something looser and more vulnerable – part performance, part conversation, part shared reckoning. They took questions. They told their stories. “It felt like there was no veil,” Carpenter says. In those rooms, the connection he’d spent years building finally shifted – no longer something to lean on for validation or fuel, but something mutual, human, and grounding.
That distinction matters to him now. Again and again, Carpenter returns to the danger of mistaking connection for salvation – of relying on being seen to feel alive. “I believe in that connection between me and the world,” he says carefully. “But I also know it will never satisfy me. It will never fulfill me.” The realization isn’t bitter. It’s clarifying. “I serve me. I take care of me. I am my keeper.” After years of giving everything outward, the work has become quieter and far more difficult: Learning how to stay.
That internal tension finds one of its clearest expressions on “Balance,” a song Carpenter has described as a snapshot of trying to locate stillness inside chaos. “Always been a hider, push it deep inside / I can play it so cool, but there’s a storm raging in my mind.” The song opens by naming the split he’s lived with for years – outward composure, inward volatility – before widening into something more searching. “Guess I’m tryna find a balance / Between the things I want and the things I need / Between who I was and who I’m tryna be.”
Open up to someone,
tell ’em why you’re sad
Tell ’em why trying hurts so bad,
hurts so damn bad
Guess I’m tryna find a balance
Between the things I want and the things I need
Between who I was and who I’m tryna be
I guess I’m tryna find a balance
Between the things I kill and the things I grow
Getting way too high, but coming down so low
I guess I’m tryna find a balance in me
I’ve been faking for so long in my real life that I can’t make a living off faking. That’s the really toxic trap. If I’m going to be real with Nick the person, then Medium Build has to be real, too.
* * *
“Balance” arrived this November as part of takeaways, a short, reflective EP that has since expanded into something looser and more open-ended – an ongoing playlist of new music Carpenter has described as a place he can keep returning to. Released via Slowplay / Island Records, Takeaways now encompasses both newly written songs and older ones revisited, reshaped, and reintroduced, less as a finished statement than as a living, breathing collection.
If Country captured the scale of arrival, takeaways feels intentionally smaller and more inward-facing – a space to take stock, to sit with what remained once the noise quieted. Its songs don’t rush toward resolution. They document the in-between: the recalibration, the aftershocks, the attempt to live more deliberately inside the life he’d worked so long to build.
“That’s what I love about takeaways,” Carpenter smiles. “It’s old tunes, new tunes, demos, day-of, not overcooked. Just raw fun. It’s a lighthearted place. It’s really a thin line between me and the crowd. That’s going to be a great outlet for me for the rest of my career.”
In that sense, takeaways reads less like a traditional release and more like a clearing – a place to sort through what still mattered, what needed to be left behind, and what could be carried forward. Shaped by reflection rather than momentum, by listening rather than pushing, it offers a revealing window into where Carpenter’s head and heart have been throughout this year – and into the slower, more sustainable way he’s learning to move forward.
Beyond takeaways, Carpenter released two standalone singles that trace the emotional extremes of that same period. Where “Balance” wrestles with steadiness, “Last Time” and “Drug Dealer” lean into rupture and longing – two songs that feel inseparable from the year that produced them.
“Last Time” is a song about presence turning into loss in real time – about realizing too late that the moment you’re in might already be slipping away. Carpenter doesn’t speak about it with distance or nostalgia. He’s honest about the cost. Writing it, recording it, releasing it – all of it came with consequences. “That song is a f**ing clusterf**k in my life,” he admits. “It got me in a lot of trouble.”
“Last Time” arrived quickly, cut close to the moment it was lived – its rawness preserved rather than polished away. Even now, he admits it still hurts to sing. Still, he doesn’t disown it. “In the business of me being honest, that song is right on,” he says. “I was being completely honest that day.” It isn’t a highlight. It’s a document.
But it might be the last time that we kiss
You always take for granted
what you have until it’s missed
Don’t you take for granted
what you have until it’s missed
If “Last Time” is about endings, “Drug Dealer” is about longing – the quieter, more insidious kind that sends you searching for rescue in strangers, routines, and fleeting moments of kindness. Carpenter has described it as “the song I’ve been trying to write for like 20 years,” a reflection on how easily simplicity can be mistaken for intimacy, attention for connection.
“Every time I go through a coffee shop or order a beer,” he says, “I’m just like, this person’s the most perfect person I’ve ever met.” The fantasy, he explains, lives in the absence – “They’re not complicated. You don’t know their story. And they’re perfect in that moment.”
“We go on, and on, and on lookin’ for someone.” At its core, the song lands on a truth he’s had to learn the hard way: “I’ve spent my whole life looking for someone who could save me. But really, we all know ain’t nobody gonna fill that void but ourselves.” The realization isn’t despairing. It’s grounding. “Drug Dealer” doesn’t offer a solution so much as permission to stop outsourcing survival.
I think I got a crush on my drug dealer
He’s so cute when he gets high
And he don’t mind if I stay too long
And always lets me try before I buy
I think I got it bad for my bartender
She’s so cool when she makes drinks
And I don’t know if it shows
That sittin’ with her is the best I’ve felt all day
We go on, and on, and on
lookin’ for someone
Taken together – takeaways, “Last Time,” and “Drug Dealer” – these releases form a map of a year spent confronting the distance between wanting and needing, between being seen and being sustained.
It was a year of extremes, with public momentum and private reckoning unfolding side by side. While Carpenter was navigating burnout, sobriety, and the work of staying alive, he was also stepping onto some of the biggest stages of his career – earning a nomination for Emerging Act of the Year at the Americana Honors & Awards, joining Alex Warren, Tyler Childers, and Rainbow Kitten Surprise on tour, and playing rooms that once felt unimaginable, from Forest Hills Stadium to Red Rocks Amphitheatre. These songs aren’t milestones so much as mile markers, tracing an artist learning how to live inside the thing he worked so long to build, without losing himself in the process.
As 2025 draws to a close, Nick Carpenter speaks with a clarity that feels hard-won. He isn’t chasing the next escalation or romanticizing the struggle that brought him here. Instead, he’s focused on maintenance – on protecting the steadier ground he’s begun to find, and on carrying that intention forward. The work now is quieter, more internal, but no less urgent.
“I serve me. I take care of me. I am my keeper.”
As 2026 comes into view, that clarity isn’t static. It’s active. Carpenter speaks about what’s ahead with a mix of steadiness and excitement – not in the language of reinvention, but of continuation. There is new music taking shape, an album already in motion, songs that feel less reactive and more assured. He talks about writing from a place that’s grounded rather than grasping, about letting the work unfold without abandoning himself in the process. In the lines he shares from what’s coming next, there’s a sense of openness – a widening rather than a push – as if the goal now is not to outrun the feeling, but to stay with it. After a year defined by reckoning, the future he’s sketching isn’t about escalation so much as sustainability and endurance: About finding a way to keep making songs, stay connected, and keep himself intact in the process.
Asked what he’s hoping for as the year ahead comes into focus, Carpenter doesn’t hesitate. “Man, just healing, health, peace, less work,” he says. “Connecting with my family, connecting with my friends. I’m trying to go on like a big through-hike or do like an ultra marathon – lean into my body, lean into some alone time, be outside. I mean, I’m touch grass as hell. I’ve got a hernia that I’m trying to get repaired. I’m literally… I’m in the shop. I’m decommissioned. I’m not on the track. I’m in the goddamn garage getting worked on.”
What follows is a candid, unguarded conversation with Nick Carpenter about burnout, sobriety, connection, and the ongoing work of becoming his own keeper – both as a person and as Medium Build.
— —
:: stream/purchase takeaways here ::
:: connect with Medium Build here ::
— —
A CONVERSATION WITH MEDIUM BUILD
Atwood Magazine: Nick, I’m excited to catch up. It’s been a minute, and I’ve always loved our talks. It’s been a year in the life. In 2025, you toured with Petey USA, opened for Tyler Childers on some really special dates, released not one but two takeaways EPs, and put out a scattering of singles, among so much more. So let’s go there – what has 2025 been for you?
Medium Build: 2025 has been, honestly Mitch, such a violent upheaval of self. I feel like 2024 was – I don’t know if I said it like this to you last year – but it felt like I caught the car. I was like a stray dog. I caught the car and then had no clue what to do with it. And then this year was kind of the breaking of the jaw. It’s like, how do you get gum out of your hair? You cut the lock.
And that’s a crazy way of saying it, but it feels really real. I just got everything I wanted, got all my dreams, and then this year I got to decide who I want to be. And that’s a really big, vague overview. But the truest version of it is this: By February, I was on tour in Australia, and I was just so broken. Cooked. Burning the candle from both ends. Thinking I had to say yes to everything and that that’s how you make it big. I uprooted my life in a really f*ed up way – heavy drinking, burning bridges, taking really bad care of myself – and I got to a place where I just kind of broke. I sent a letter to my manager and a couple friends and said, “If I don’t change, I’m going to die, and I need y’all’s help to change because I can’t.”
Whatever this “Nicki C Party” thing I created was, it wasn’t real. It was a façade. An inflation of something that’s actually in me – which is a joyful, connective, social kid – but I was wringing myself out like a dirty towel and thinking that counted as life. So in February, I got sober. I got on meds for mania. I got off Instagram. Those three things – in between a breakup and trying to make some amends in my life, going back and shaking trees where I knew I hadn’t shown up great – that’s really been the big story of this year.
The hard part was that when I hit the alarm in February, I still had six months of tour booked. I told my manager, “I need to get off this ride. I don’t want to kill myself, and I don’t want us to ruin this thing, but I need your help turning the machine off.” That meant saying no to a couple really cool-looking dates – I didn’t need to add more – and then honoring the rest of what I’d already committed to. The PD tour ended up being really healing. There were a couple other sober guys on the tour, and Peter decided not to drink for the tour just to match me, which was really awesome.
Then I went and made a new Medium Build album in June with my bandmates, and I’ve spent the last couple months finishing it. So there’s been a lot of connection in all of this – and also a lot of pain. Waking up in pain and realizing I need to change things. It’s been a really weird year. A really beautiful year. A lot of hard conversations. A lot of emotional processing – grieving and rejoicing. Setting boundaries. Cutting off toxic things that weren’t good for me. And somehow I still did like four months of tour, which is f**king insane. I went to Australia twice. What the f**? February with Role Model, August with Alex Warren, plus Rainbow Kitten Surprise, the Tyler dates, the PD tour. An insane amount of work for a year where I was actively trying to slow everything down.
So now I’m on an actual sabbatical. I’m playing a holiday concert tomorrow – for a lot of money – which I said yes to because of the money, not because I want to do more shows. That sounds grim, but what I mean is: I’m in a healing gear now.
First and foremost, I’m really sorry that the start of the year was that hard for you. That sucks. And it’s the part we don’t usually see or talk about – the stuff that doesn’t show up in polite conversation. You’ve spent a lot of time in the South, so you know what I mean. Even within the industry, we love to talk about how exciting touring is, but we rarely talk about how grueling it can be – how disorienting it is to be away from your home, your bed, and almost everyone you love for long stretches of time.
Are you familiar with Donovan Woods? I had a really intense conversation with him years ago about how difficult touring can be, and how nobody really shines a light on it – the toxicity that can creep in, the ways self-care gets neglected, the lack of space for artists to actually process any of it. That conversation stuck with me, because it feels like something that’s still very much happening.
Medium Build: I think it’s fun to be able to be like, well, it’s just the toughest job in the world. Artists are dramatic, and we love to feel tough. We have soft hands. We literally sing for an hour a day for a living, and then we really lament how hard it is. There’s some of that.
And not that it’s not tough. Anything that you love – when passion and love and mystique and the muse are in you – the line between passion and toxicity is so thin. That can be journalism. It can be animation. It can be anything where you’re like, I really want to be good at this. I really want to show up right. There’s always temptation to mess it up.
It’s the lyric in “White Male Privilege” – my face is glued to my phone, all this information needs a home, babe I’ll be to bed in just a minute. I’m probably reading the best Wikipedia article ever. I’m learning. I’m growing. My brain is growing. But there’s a person in bed that I’m alienating. With Medium Build, or music, or passion – the person I alienate is me. Because I’m selling Nick. I’m selling Nick’s brain. But I’m also using Nick’s vessel.
I’ve never really believed in the disconnect. My ex last year said one of her big criticisms of me was that my head and my heart weren’t connected, that my body and my soul weren’t connected. She was like, you’re telling me you’re tired, and you’re saying yes to more work. You’re telling me you’re lonely, and then you’re spending all night drinking with your boys. That was really hard to hear. But it was really real. Nick is very good at doing for me. He’s effective. I love him for that. I couldn’t play the shows without this big voice. I couldn’t tour without being strong. I couldn’t socialize without being friendly. All these things protect me and save me, but they’re also things I have to rest.
I got really into running this year with sobriety, and I tried to up my mileage too fast. I almost tore my Achilles. My lungs could do it. My legs could kind of do it. But my muscles didn’t know that yet. I’ve just been going really long and really hard for a long time. So yeah, it’s hard. But life is hard. And life is really hard if you don’t take care of yourself. This year has been about learning how to take care of myself.
I’m in a gooey cocoon right now. I’m trying to honor the inner child and still somehow pull this Medium Build thing off without dying. I’m asking myself how I show up in 2026 – honoring the kid, honoring the people in my life, honoring me, taking care of the physical me, and taking care of the spiritual me.
It sounds like the song “Balance” is really the truest to where you are right now than maybe any song has ever been. Just those lines - “trying to find a balance between the things I want and the things I need, between who I am, who I was, and who I'm trying to be.” That's the best synthesis of what you’ve been telling me, that you’re trying to find the balance between the work self and the actual body, the being, and not being ‘on’ all the time because it's draining and it is killing you.
Nick Carpenter: I didn’t think that song would hit so hard. I thought it was kind of corny and maybe too positive. But it’s so refreshing to see how many people f**k with that tune. So that makes me proud. I showed up and wrote that day.
So February hit, but then as you said, you had six more months of touring. What helped you for the rest of this year? What were some of your best bits of advice that you stuck to? Words of wisdom or just good habits?
Medium Build: Running really saved me. Sobriety saved me. I maybe got too into it, like an addict does. I think addicts love quitting a bad thing and then making a healthy thing toxic. That’s addict as f**k. We went and did Coachella in April, and I remember really not wanting to go. But I would wake up, do a big run, stretch, eat a great breakfast, and tell myself, today’s going to be okay. Whether a hundred people show up in that tent or ten thousand doesn’t matter. I get to play music with my friends.
And yeah, my friendships. My brother, honestly. A lot of my exes that have become best friends. People I could talk to and be like, hey, you know me better than I do. Help me grow. Being outside helped, too. I found this park in Nashville that I hadn’t known about last year. Which is crazy – I lived in Nashville for five years in college and never knew about it. I found this place I’d never been, started going there all the time, and it really, really soothed the soul.
That's great. The Gen Zs always joke about touching grass, but damn, it works.
Nick Carpenter: It really does.
You also talked about deciding who you want to be, which is such a heady phrase. What does that mean to you? Who did you decide you wanted to be?
Medium Build: A guy that never drinks again. A guy that never cheats again. A guy that never hides or lies or avoids the hard conversation. I’ve always been a hider. I’m an avoidant kid. I was a really soft kid. When I found out the world wasn’t going to meet me on my Larry the Cucumber, SpongeBob-ass goofy thing, instead of toughening up, I think I just learned how to squirm. I’ve got this bone in me that says, if you meet tension, slide somewhere else. That was a survival tactic as a kid, and it has really not served me as a grown-up.
So who I’m trying to be now is a guy who’s firm, who holds the line, who stands up for himself, and who doesn’t sell himself down the river for a beer, a pack of smokes, and twenty bucks. A guy who knows when to say no.
I caught you at Levon Helm in Woodstock earlier this year on that incredibly intimate tour with Petey USA. You were speaking directly and candidly, not just to, but with audiences every night on the tour. What was that experience like for you? It felt very different than any other show I've seen all year. Thank you for that.
Medium Build: I loved that tour so much, Mitch. Peter and I basically had therapy on stage every night. We took questions, showed up, told our stories, and played our songs. It felt like there was no veil between artist and crowd. It was just, hey, this is us. This is what we’re doing. Thanks for being here. It was intimate. It was exactly what you said. And I needed that deeply, especially before going into three months of support tours where you’re just warming up people who do not care about you.
Playing rooms of a hundred people a night, tiny rooms full of people who are really heavy with us – I remember the first night starting to play “Triple Marathon” and hearing the room singing. I couldn’t stop crying. I was like, holy shit, two hundred people in Richmond f**k with this. And I don’t have to pretend. I don’t have to sell anything. I can just show up.
That’s really what I needed, and what I’m still needing in my life. I’m tired of peddling a product. It doesn’t come naturally to me. There’s no act. I mean, like Sabrina – I love her. I went to her show last month, and it’s so entertaining. It’s beautiful, it’s thought out, but you don’t know her. It’s an act, and there are bits of her in the character.
I’ve been faking for so long in my real life that I can’t make a living off faking. That’s the really toxic trap. If I’m going to be real with Nick the person, then Medium Build has to be real, too. Not that it’s ever been fake, but you know – opening for the country guy, I should look this way. Opening for the queer Southern rockers, I should look that way. Opening for the pop guy, I should get like this. It’s this constant manipulation. Do you like me? Do you like this? Would you like me more if I stood like this? It’s insecurity I’ve carried for so long, and it finally broke me. I was like, I can’t. I literally just can’t do that anymore.
For what it’s worth, thank you for sharing all of that. Even being at that show, it felt like people just wanted to be there for you. They didn’t care what version of yourself you showed up as, because you’ve already created something that’s meant so much to them. Letting people in, even a little, becomes incredibly special. I get this distinct privilege of meeting artists wherever they’re willing to meet me, and I never take that for granted. But I’ve met very few who actually do that with their audiences. Maybe we don’t always know how. Maybe it’s not part of the toolkit.
But I do think it’s why these songs cut as deeply as they do. They carry more weight. And for me, when I go back through your catalog – the songs that came before Country – I don’t just hear the art or the entertainment. I hear more of the person you were. And that makes all of it mean even more.
Nick Carpenter: Yeah. Thank you for saying that. I do believe in that connection between me and the world. I just think I finally know that I can’t lean on it entirely. You know, it’s really odd. It’s a true gift and a privilege to share this connection. But I also know it will never satisfy me. It will never fulfill me. Like the same way sex, booze, whatever. I serve me. I take care of me. I am my keeper.
I went and saw one of my favorite songwriters, Ken Yates, last night. He’s a Canadian songwriter. He’s so good. It was my first time seeing him, and I had never met him. We met yesterday and got to hang out and talk. He doesn’t give much to the crowd. Like, he plays his tunes. His tunes are full of f*ing emotion and lyrics. And then his banter is just, you know, baseball and Canada and “I love my wife and I just had a baby.” He didn’t have to do anything. We were just all there for it. And I think I’m like, ‘oh, yeah.’ Like, I need to take some notes from some of those guys, and just know that I’m good. I’m enough.
There's a balance to that. It's draining to strip yourself down like that every night. So, do you ever think we'll get that studio version of “Two Dudes”?
Nick Carpenter: [laughs] Great Q! Great Q. We got it. It’s sitting around somewhere. I think now that his record’s out and it’s all done, I think maybe we could… Maybe it’s for the next takeaways. It feels very much like a takeaways tune because it’s kind of a shitty demo.
One for the real fans.
Nick Carpenter: Yeah, yeah. That’s what I love about takeaways. It’s like old tunes, new tunes, demos, day-of, like not overcooked. Just raw fun. It’s a lighthearted place. It’s really a thin line between me and the crowd. That’s going to be a great outlet for me for the rest of my career, I think.
This actually feels like a great segue into talking about the music you’ve put out this year. When we spoke last year, there was this funny disconnect where so many people thought Country was your debut – like you’d just shown up fully formed in 2024 – without realizing you’d been doing this for a decade. They don’t know how many albums, EPs, and singles there are to go back to. And that happens all the time. That’s why takeaways feels so special to me. It’s a shortcut, and a really meaningful way to reintroduce people to your older work, to revisit it, and give those songs new life. You just quoted “White Male Privilege,” which is a few years old now, but it still resonates. What it means still resonates. And I think that often gets lost in a culture where new is treated as best, and anything older is dismissed or forgotten. So takeaways feels like this rare bridge – a way to show people what they might’ve missed, to reintroduce those songs, and to let you sing them again in a new light.
Medium Build: It’s really funny getting texts from people being like, yo, “J&L” is so good. And I’m like, bitch, “John and Lydia” has been out for a year. But yeah, sure, my acoustic one-take of it is really good. Like, you know, whatever. People latch onto whatever grabs them. Go off. But it is fun.
It reminds me of this one time in Anchorage when I was coming up. It was 2018, and I could sell out a hundred tickets pretty quick on my solo shit, and I was so cocky. I was on stage one day and I announced this pop-up show, like, tonight, roll through, and the room filled up.
I pulled up Spotify for Artists, flipped the listens, went straight to the bottom, and I was like, this is the stuff y’all don’t know. And I just played the fifteen songs that no one streams because I’m an asshole. I’m petty. I’m jealous for attention because I’m a little f**king insecure chubby boy. I was like, yo, if y’all don’t f**k with this, you don’t f**k with me. Because this is me. So before you get “Be Your Boy” and “Crying Over You,” do your homework.
Your single “Last Time” has quickly become one of my favorite songs, not just of the year, but across your entire catalog. And when I listen to that song, I feel nostalgia for the here and now and just want to take my partner and hold her close. What does that song mean to you?
Medium Build: Oh, Mitch, that song is a f**king clusterf**k in my life, brother. I hope it doesn’t change anything for you, but yeah, that song got me in a lot of trouble. That song was grieving an old flame. When I got sober, I was in a relationship that was falling apart, and I realized part of the reason was that I hadn’t fully grieved something older. I hadn’t done that work. That song was me grieving that thing. And it hurt. It hurt to do it. It hurt to write it. It hurts to sing it. I don’t really like singing it.
I wanted it to feel like how life moves on really fast and you don’t realize it until you’re already past the moment. It’s a nostalgia for a certain feeling, and I just had to let it ride.
It’s been strange because I’ve been trying to make amends and clean my life up, and I don’t talk to the person that song is about anymore. And that’s good. That’s really good for me. But that’s also the person “Knowing You Exist” is about, and “Crying Over You,” and “Triple Marathon.” There’s a long story there, and that song brought a lot of stuff back up. I’ve had to work through that.
Songwriting is a grieving tool. It’s journaling. But it’s also business. And in the business of me being honest, that song is right on. I was being completely honest that day. I love how I showed up. I love the lyrics. I said exactly what I wanted to say.
That vocal was cut ten minutes after I wrote it. The drums, the bass, the guitar – all of that was recorded right then. It’s close to the gut. It’s a really personal one. And now it’s doing well. It’s on adult radio, which is wild to think about.
Your song “Drug Dealer” is all about connection and longing, and maybe projecting our emotions onto the wrong people at the wrong time. Can you share a little bit about that song?
Medium Build: “Drug Dealer” is the song I’ve been trying to write for 20 years. It’s just this feeling I have every time I go through a coffee shop or order a beer where I’m just like, this person’s the most perfect person I’ve ever met. And it’s because it’s service, right? Someone’s serving you. They’re not complicated. You don’t know their story, and they’re perfect in that moment. And I just think we all felt it. I think it’s part of that magical thinking that I’m definitely prone to, and why I’m medicated. But it’s just that real cringey. It’s projecting, you know?
I feel like you're really, really good at capturing those emotions that we often bottle up in songs. The music you’ve put out this year has been all excavatory in different ways – and really cathartic.
Nick Carpenter: Wait ‘til you hear the new record. It’s f**king dark, buddy.
Can you give fans a taste of what's in store?
Nick Carpenter: Oh, man. You know, such powerful hooks as “Even in my wildest dreams, I’m working on a problem,” or “When the love I learn from you becomes the love I give myself. And the tree that’s grown out of my chest is holding me.” There’s a lot of songs about healing. There’s a lot of songs about grieving. The first song on the record is called “Do Something Productive,” and the lyric is like, “wake up, go on a run, coffee with a friend, go home, make some lunch, do something productive, clean the house, write a song.” And the chorus is, “but you know, it won’t be long until I got to get f**ked up, ruin everything, let the demons out, eat a bunch of drugs, and be bad to myself.” This is an excavatory record and I’m really proud of it. But yeah, there’s pain and there’s truth and it’s going to be really fun to sing live, honestly.
I'm excited to hear it.
Nick Carpenter: Oh, brother. It’s going to f**k you up so hard. As a Medium Build fan myself, it’s top tier. It’s crème de la crème. Nick doing his shit.
What are you most excited about on the horizon? 2025 has clearly been a rollercoaster. What do we hope for 2026?
Nick Carpenter: Man, just healing, health, peace, less work. Connecting with my family, connecting with my friends. I’m trying to go on a big through-hike or do an ultra-marathon or lean into my body, lean into some alone time, be outside. I mean, I’m gonna touch grass as hell. I’ve got a hernia that I’m trying to get repaired. I’m literally in the shop. I’m decommissioned. I’m not on the track. I’m in the goddamn garage getting worked on.
— —
:: stream/purchase takeaways here ::
:: connect with Medium Build here ::
— —
— — — —
Connect to Medium Build on
Facebook, 𝕏, TikTok, Instagram
Discover new music on Atwood Magazine
© Tyler Krippeahne
© Tyler Krippeahne:: Stream Medium Build ::
