Bonnaroo 2024 Artist Spotlight: Medium Build

Like we’ve been doing for many years now, we’re making it our mission to help you get acquainted with many of our favorite acts from Bonnaroo‘s 2024 lineup. After roaring back to life in 2022, after two years off due to Covid and weather, and feeling fully like its old self again with a great fest last summer, this year marks Bonnaroo’s 21st installment (and 23rd anniversary), boasting not only another great and varied lineup, but also a continuation of some of the big changes and improvements rolled out over the last couple of years, with more flexibility in ticketing and camping, a reimagined “Outeroo” campground area, new activations, and further new ways to Roo. Back once again in its usual June 13-16 timeframe, we’re counting down the days until another great weekend on the farm.

As we dig through the entire schedule, we’ll highlight a spread of performers spanning across genres and stages, big and small, new and old, to bring you some of the most interesting, lesser-known, and most highly-recommended among this year’s crop of artists. And as our time at ‘Roo approaches, we’ll also be bringing you some special features and full list-style daily lineup guides, to help you plan your weekend ahead of the fest. While these previews won’t span every artist, and might omit some more obvious must-see acts, we hope they’ll serve as a way to help you navigate Bonnaroo’s gargantuan lineup, and to make the most of your busy weekend at the fest!

Grab your tickets right here if you haven’t already, and read on for our Bonnaroo Artist Spotlight!

LEARN

Though Anchorage, Alaska is where he has resided for much of his adult life, and where he lived when he first found prominence through his solo musical endeavor Medium Build, Alaska is not where the singer-songwriter- born Nicholas Carpenter- grew up. Hailing originally from the Atlanta area, first getting involved in music- as with many southerners- through church, Carpenter landed near Nashville just over a decade ago to attend college at MTSU. If you were dialed into the DIY scene at that time, you might remember his indie band Little Moses, who ran in the same circles as Julien Baker (also then an MTSU student) and her band The Star Killers (later called Forrister), with the two groups even releasing a split back in 2014 (how’s that for a Nashville indie rock fun fact?). It was upon his move to Alaska, though, that Carpenter found new beginnings and new musical direction, building upon the influence, experience, and emotional nuance of his life and musical endeavors to that point, as well as his newfound artistic community and environment, to create Medium Build, debuting in 2016 with his first LP, Falling Apart. Forging a deeply vulnerable, emotionally resonant, confessional songwriting style and indie rock sound infused with elements of folk and lo-fi pop, Nick remained prolific over the next few years, dropping two separate full-lengths, Softboy and Roughboy, in 2018, and a perfect culmination of that earlier, bedroom pop and lo-fi indie era with fourth album Wild, in 2019, all attracting a passionate online following and helping Medium Build reach a wider audience. Things would quiet down for a little while during the pandemic, but in 2022 Medium Build returned with new single “comeonback,” kicking of something of a second chapter of his career, which has included inking a major label deal with Slowplay / Island Records, beginning 2023 with new EP Heath, and officially moving back to Nashville that same year, recording his latest LP and first major label full-length, Country, here in Music City. Still recognizably Medium Build, Carpenter’s latest is fiery and raw and urgently self-reflective; slick and accessible yet more organic and folky than what came before, and certainly his best and most essential work to date. In recent years, Medium Build has opened for the likes of Lewis Capaldi and FINNEAS, collaborated with X Ambassadors and Holly Humberstone (who he toured with overseas), and has become a must-see live performer as he traverses the world, met with increasingly larger crowds. His Bonnaroo debut feels long overdue (we had to double check that he’s never played the smaller stages before, but it appears not), and Medium Build is without a doubt one of the fest’s most essential performers this year!

WATCH | “In My Room” (Official Video)