Medium Build Releases 'Health - Live From RCA Studio A'
& DIRT IN YOUR LUNGS MINI DOCUMENTARY ABOUT HIS COMMUNITY IN ALASKA, OUT NOW
To put a bow on the end of a breakthrough year, Medium Build shares Health— Live From RCA Studio A, a live rendition of the EP that boasts fan-favorite songs like “Never Learned To Dance” and “Rage.” Medium Build, the queer singer-songwriter born Nick Carpenter, says of the release:
“A lot of you have asked me to release something live so we did a really nice little session a few months ago at RCA on music row in Nashville. I play through all of Health and even threw in a bonus for you. Just me and a guitar. I love all the different versions of myself but the solo show is special and now there will be a little slice of that on the streams for y’all.”
Check out the Health— Live From RCA Studio A EP here, out now via slowplay/Island Records.
The beauty of Medium Build’s art is that you can feel the places he’s known and the people he’s loved— the Health— Live From RCA Studio A EP speaks to his return to Nashville to focus on his burgeoning career while nodding to the original recording released when he lived in Alaska. Medium Build spent several years making the frosty Alaskan frontier of Anchorage his home. To honor that chapter of his life and the musical path it set him on, he recently shared Dirt In Your Lungs, a mini-documentary that takes him around the state playing various shows & sharing a glimpse into the fandom and life he built there. Watch the Dirt In Your Lungs documentary here.
To celebrate the release of the Health— Live From RCA Studio A EP, the anniversary of the original recording, and Dirt In Your Lungs, Medium Build announces he’ll perform Health live at the Bear Tooth Theatre in Anchorage, AK. On January 25, 2024, he’ll be performing solo and on January 26 Medium Build will bring out the full band.
The past few months have been busy for Medium Build as he wraps a headlining tour with dates in the US, the UK, and Europe. Earlier this year he opened shows for Lewis Capaldi and FINNEAS, embarked on a solo headlining tour across Alaska, and will kick off 2024 providing tour support for Tyler Childers on a few tour stops. He also shared “Cuz Of U,” a love letter to Alaska that came at a pivotal point— it marks his accomplishments to date, among them the loyal and cherished fanbase he’s built in Alaska and beyond, and the exceptionally bright future rolling quickly out in front of him.
The Medium Build style is open-ended, playing with acoustic and electronic textures in equal measure. Carpenter can inspire you to get down like a dancefloor messiah, with an effortless funkiness underlined by his sensitive falsetto, but the hushed whisper he sometimes sings in makes you feel like you’re the only one in the room. His voice aches with a trembling vulnerability, and there’s intentionality and emotional resonance in every word he sings. Carpenter’s work eagerly draws outside the clear lines of genre binaries, informed by his own personal exploration of queerness and sexual identity, drawing from classic country, ‘80s new wave, and emo in equal measure.
ABOUT MEDIUM BUILD
Growing up in the Bible Belt, the singer-songwriter born Nick Carpenter was steeped in tradition, but he has blazed his own defiant trail, learning and listening to the old ways while doing something boldly new. After relocating to Anchorage, Carpenter became something of an adopted hometown hero, widely recognized and beloved by Alaskans after years of honing his craft on regional tours and local DIY shows. “Cuz Of U” is a passionate tribute to his second hometown, giving back musically to the place that’s come to define his work as he sets out to find what else the world has to offer: “I ain’t leavin’ cuz I don’t love you / Just gotta see it for myself.” You can feel the frigid landscape and endless highways of the Alaskan tundra in his music, but below the surface is a glowing Southern heart that keeps you warm.
The generous and inviting spirit of Nick Carpenter’s personality manifests in his songwriting, which is why he’s developed such a passionate fan base both in Alaska and outside its borders, as he inspires listeners to dig deep and discover themselves alongside his own emotional journey. Medium Build has toured with pop headliners like Lewis Capaldi and Finneas, but beneath it all, there’s an old country soul, who treasures the simple things in life and keeps his family close to his heart. “Never Learned to Dance” is pure cosmic Americana, complete with lush acoustic guitar and twangy steel, but it’s distinctly contemporary too, a modern tale of digital love and missed connections. More than just the sound alone, what Medium Build takes most from country music is a sense of yearning and restlessness, always in search of another experience and another sound in whatever form they may come. In another era, Medium Build might have just as easily been a rhinestone cowboy lonesome out on the range, a blue-eyed crooner on a smooth-sailing yacht, or a leather-clad video star, but in the here and now, he’s no one but himself.
Carpenter’s vision is to take the sense of community his music creates far beyond wherever he calls home. His upcoming tour focuses specifically on the middle of the continental United States, not just cities often overlooked by major touring artists, but places in the most vital need of queer community and spiritual uplift. The response of Medium Build’s devoted following has been overwhelming, with over a dozen dates sold-out across the Midwest and Southeast. Carpenter aims to bring that message of uplift and affirmation not just around the county, but around the world. His 2023 tour will continue in Europe, including a special sold-out solo performance at the revered St. Pancras Old Church in London, one of the oldest historical sites of Christian worship in the world. It’s a fitting setting for an artist with such a spiritual core to his music: not necessarily religious, but still searching for something joyful and sublime. That soulful passion defines the music of Medium Build, as conducive to collective ecstasy as private revelation.
