Medium Build — aka Nick Carpenter — grew up in Georgia and went to college at Middle Tennessee State University near Nashville. Carpenter studied songwriting at MTSU, a venerable music institution that counts among its alumni artists including Alicia Bognanno of Bully, Sharon Van Etten, and Julien Baker. But went Carpenter graduated, he departed for Anchorage, Alaska, to pursue his music career. The perhaps unorthodox move worked well for Carpenter, however; known artistically as Medium Build, he is signed to Island Records and is set to release a new album, King of Having Fun, on September 4.

Ahead of the album’s release, Medium Build visited The Current studio to play a solo acoustic set of songs, including a couple from the forthcoming album. He also had a conversation with The Current’s Jill Riley, where he explained the significance and symbolism of the character Steve from his song, “Home Depot.”

Watch and listen to the session above, and find a transcript of Medium Build’s interview with Jill Riley below.

Interview Transcript

Jill Riley: Nick Carpenter, Medium Build. Welcome to The Current.

Medium Build: Thanks for having me, Jill. I'm so stoked.

Jill Riley: The new record is called King of Having Fun. I want to talk specifically about one song in particular on the album. The song title did catch my eye because it kind of made me chuckle, because when you read a song title like "Home Depot," I'm like, "OK, tell me more." But really, the song is centered around this character named Steve. And Nick, I will tell you, I know Steve. Steve to me is like that typical tough guy, like somebody taught Steve “how to be a man.” And if my sarcasm isn't coming through well enough, it's there. But I think there's more to Steve's story. So, I wonder if you could talk about, like, developing this song, and what experiences did you have that you put into this, into the lyrics?

Medium Build: Well, I'm endlessly fascinated by masculinity, because I grew up — my dad was a workaholic, he was not around a lot, he was, you know, he came from really meager means, and his dream was to class climb from, you know, working class, like, uneducated, to middle class. So, I grew up with a a dad who was, you know, coming home tired and turning the TV on, and it was like, "Hey, get out of Dad's way, he's decompressing now. And everything you have is because he works real hard." We would come into money, and then we would lose money. And there was, it was always this.

So, anyway, I spent all my time with my mom, and I would go to the ladies' brunch, and I would just be the kid, like, singing and flirting all all the old ladies, and I feel so comfortable in women's spaces. And then in college, I was like, "Oh, like I really just don't really want to hang out with guys ever. I'm terrified of men. They're scary and weird to me. I don't know how to connect with them." But I realized, I look like a guy that I would be scared of, right? I'm like 6'1, 200 lbs, and I'm like, "Who am I? How do I make peace with this?"

And so when I started really trying to inspect these guys, I realized how much of the qualities I have: Avoidant, doesn't want to talk about the hard thing. This song came out of a conversation with a friend of mine. She was talking about her mom's on-and-off-again boyfriend, Steve, and he has this property upstate. He's always going up to work on the house. The house, he's been up there for 20 years. Where is the house?

Jill Riley: And what's left to work on at this point?

Medium Build: Yeah. Right. Right. He's just up there just twisting fixtures, you know? And I just think I had to humanize him, the Steve character, because we're all a little Steve, and we all have Steves.

Jill Riley: Mm-hmm.

Medium Build: It's not just men. It's all of us are sort of trained to shove it down, bottle it up. My mom's from the Midwest. We grew up just, it's sort of a, "Everything's good, yeah! How you doing? Good. Great! Good. Nice! Good. OK, cool," you know? Or in the South, it's like, "God's got it," right?

Jill Riley: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Medium Build: It's very ... It's just "push it down, push it down." Maybe it's our parents' generation, or maybe it's just we don't — nobody wants to be awkward or be weird and talk about hard stuff.

Jill Riley: I think a lot of it is learned. I mean, we only know what we know.

Medium Build: Right.

Jill Riley: We demonstrate what we've learned, but breaking those expectations, I mean that's maybe where the generational part can come in. I think as far as like the journey of Steve in your song "Home Depot," Steve contains multitudes that we haven't explored.

Medium Build: Of course!

Jill Riley: Yeah.

Medium Build: All those Steves you know have a special interest, and a special interest is signs of a soul, right? A Steve will know every kind of bird on the Upper Peninsula; or a Steve will know, you know, every lyric from a certain Bob Dylan record; a Steve will know — like, there's a soul in there, right? So the last lyric being, the joke is, he's at Home Depot buying all the stuff to build a house, but now realizing he doesn't have the tools to work on his inner world. And so he does point to film and music or a car or a memory of his mom, right? Like, men are working through stuff in ways that they have learned to. So I had the tools of being, you know, my mom's sidekick, so I was always talking, and that's why I'm the songwriter, right? I'm just like sharing my feelings with the entire world at all times.

Jill Riley: Mm-hmm.

Medium Build: And then you have my brother, who's kind of a Steve, right? And he was, like, more Dad's boy, and so he's like, "I built you a shed," you know, and it's like, "Bro, all I wanted you to do was, like, come to my show and like tell me you love me." But he's like done a chore for me. He wants to serve, and that's how he wants to show love. He's like, "You can use my truck for a thing," and that's him being like—

Jill Riley: That's his love language!

Medium Build: Yes! And I'm like, "I don't need your truck. I can rent a truck. I have help." I want someone to like sit on the couch and cry. I want someone to, let's go for a drive. Let's go get some ice cream and listen to music, right? I'm like wanting that like direct-eye contact. My friend calls them "forward-facing friends," right? A person you're never looking at. You're always, you're both doing a project, so you're looking ahead. Like golf or hunting or...

Jill Riley: Or just saying "yep."

Medium Build: Yep.

Jill Riley: As you "yep." Exactly.

Medium Build: Right, or fishing. We're talking maybe intimately, but I'm not looking into your eyes because that would be too intense.

Jill Riley: Well, I hope Steve figures it out because, you know, he's going to have to go back to that Home Depot at least two more times that day. Maybe by the third time he'll have figured out, like, maybe just how to put the right screw in his heart.

Medium Build studio session at The Current

Fullscreen SlideshowPrevious Slide

10 of 10

1 of 10

2 of 10

Next Slide

Video Segments

00:00:25 Armor
00:03:55 Crying Over U
00:07:06 Interview with host Jill Riley
00:12:45 Home Depot

Musician

Medium Build – vocals, guitar

Credits

Guest – Medium Build
Host – Jill Riley
Radio Producer – Derrick Stevens
Video Producer – John Kueppers
Camera Operators – Maurizio D’Errico, Aaron Ankrum
Audio Engineer – Evan Clark
Graphics – Natalia Toledo
Digital Producers – Reed Fischer, Luke Taylor

External Link

Medium Build – official site