Medium Build Came Back to Seattle, Found the Guy Whose Living Room He Played in 2017, And Turned The Showbox Into a House Show

Nick Carpenter was almost home. The Georgia-born, Alaska-based songwriter behind Medium Build spent much of Wednesday night at The Showbox pointing into the crowd at people he knew, including the guy who hosted his living-room set in Seattle back in
2017. That guy was standing right there. The room, packed with fans who’d lined up for hours, suddenly felt like a house show.

The night’s best moment came in a mid-set solo stretch. Carpenter dusted off “Stupider,” the first song he ever put on Bandcamp. He warned he hadn’t played it in forever and figured nobody knew the words. He was right, and that became a problem as he blanked after the first verse, asked the crowd for help, and got silence. So he sang the bridge, until a crew member sprinted to the soundboard, looked up the lyrics,
and fed them into his in-ear “like a cop.”

Then he played “Rage,” and the whole building knew every word. He stopped mid-song to say so: “You know this one!”

The banter kept coming. Stories about his mom lobbying for a song because Dad gets all the mentions; his first concert, a Georgia parking-lot Warped Tour, watching Gerard Way wear a bulletproof vest in the heat while telling kids not to buy merch. He told Seattle to buy his, then backtracked: “Actually, fuck ICE. If you’re in ICE, don’t buy my merch.”

He closed by asking the crowd to shake their ass for two songs. They did. Nine years after playing to a living room, Carpenter still works a Seattle crowd like he knows everyone’s name.