When Rolling Stone last talked with folk-rock songwriter Medium Build, he admitted to being worried about all he’s accomplished suddenly disappearing.
“There’s a huge fear of: If I stopped working, will it all go away?” he said last year.
While those concerns
didn’t come true, the pressure to keep his foot on the gas nearly destroyed him.
Nick Carpenter starting releasing music under the name Medium Build with the 2016 album Falling Apart. By 2023, he was turning red-hot: A collab with X Ambassadors, “Friend for Life,” was on the charts, he played Coachella, and then toured with Tyler Childers. Onstage, Carpenter was ready for the spotlight. Away from it, though, he struggled with fame, with attention, and with alcohol.
“I said ‘Yes’ to every support slot. We’re opening for pop bands, country bands, rock bands, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Then we got our first headline run. Halfway through that, the drinking caught up with me,” he says. “I was getting blacked out during the shows — chasing my heroes, right?”
According to Carpenter, being known, and even having his songs known, messed with his head. He wanted listeners to commune with the music of course, but all that went along with it caught him off-guard. “I wanted people to sing, but people always found me, even if I was hanging out by the van, just to yell, ‘Hey Nick!’ was a little too much. I think I was coping with it by just getting as fucked up as humanly possible,” he says.
By the end of 2024, Carpenter found himself in Australia opening for Role Model. He was in his mid-30s and viewed himself as a folk artist, one heavily influenced by Sean McConnell, a Nashville mainstay whose intensely personal songwriting helped Carpenter shape his own art. Carpenter was writing and recording music about alcohol and depression, but here he was playing for an Australian crowd made up predominantly of teenagers. Combine that with “throwing money at a kid who had never had money,” and he hit an infleection point. Carpenter texted his manager: “If I don’t change something, and if we don’t start saying no to some shit, I’m gonna fucking die.”
It’s to Carpenter’s credit that he recognized where he was headed, and to his manager for listening. Three months into recovery, Carpenter wrote the bulk of King of Having Fun, which dropped this week via Slowplay and Island records. It’s his sixth studio album and first since 2024’s Country, which landed Medium Build a featured place in Rolling Stone’s Future of Music a year later.
The 15-track King of Having Fun is a stark departure from the rest of the Medium Build catalog, which was largely created by Carpenter in makeshift studios, playing multiple instruments and cutting songs efficiently at little cost. Even songs that elevated his profile — like 2024’s “Yoke,” featuring Carpenter’s college classmate, Julien Baker — came from such a process. This time around, Carpenter wanted to make a record that reflected the experience of seeing Medium Build live. He brought in producer Paul Rogers to direct the project and took his entire touring band into the studio with him.
“It was two big things,” Carpenter tells Rolling Stone. “One, I’m gonna take a break, and I’m gonna get sober. And I’m gonna make a record that sounds like what we sound like live.”
What he ultimately made in King of Having Fun is the most complete Medium Build album yet. The elements of rock, country, and blues that influence Carpenter are all over the record, but it’s a folk album at heart, and recovery is ever-present. In the title track, he laments, “Since when do I need other shit to fall asleep? I used to be the king of having fun.”
Even the most adventurous entry on the record, “In My Gut,” stays firmly in a folk lane. It’s a tune Carpenter wrote with his partner, the singer-songwriter Annika Bennett, in the throes of his struggles with fame and alcohol. A month later, they broke up, and processing the relationship became another pillar of King of Having Fun. The penultimate track, “Thank You Cook,” came directly from their split.
“I kind of got my shit together, and ‘Cook’ is my nickname for her,” Carpenter says of Bennett. “I just wanted her to know that, if we never talked again, I’m gonna get better, and thanks for loving a guy that was on a path of self-destruction.”
Carpenter and Bennett have since reconciled. They’re back together, have a new puppy, and frequently travel. “She’s incredible,” Carpenter raves.
Whether Medium Build has actually slowed down since Carpenter’s 2024 epiphany is a matter of opinion. Already this summer, he’s been on an extensive arena run opening for Mumford & Sons, including three nights at Madison Square Garden. In and around the tour and releasing singles off King of Having Fun, he found time to collaborate with Evan Honer on the song “Pull Me Out,” for Honer’s 4 songs EP. In October, he’ll kick off a coast-to-coast headlining tour hitting venues like the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey, Metro in Chicago, and Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville.
Carpenter says he’s determined to learn from this trek, however. When he hits the road with Mumford & Sons, he wants to understand how they approach touring. When he’s headlining, his eyes are on the venue management and how they interact with his team. His inquisitiveness is a trait inherited from his father, who still grills Carpenter during breaks in tours. If touring is Carpenter’s future, he wants to be armed with the most knowledge possible to navigate it.
“Every manager will tell you there’s a blueprint, and then you see 20 different camps and realize, ‘There’s no fucking blueprint.’ Everyone’s lying,” he says. “Everyone’s telling you they know what the answer is, and there’s not one.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose upcoming book, Sonoran Sounds, is set for release in March 2027 via Back Lounge Publishing.
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