Medium Build & Petey USA
May 4 @ 7:00 PM
6 PM Doors | 7 PM Show
THIS IS A STANDING-ROOM SHOW
VIP Upgrade: Petey USA + Medium Build Unplugged
- Invitation to a pre-show experience with Medium Build + Petey USA, including:
- Acoustic performance (2-3 songs)
- Q&A Session
- Group photo
- Commemorative merch gift
- Merchandise shopping prior to doors opening to public
- Early entry into the venue
- ADVANCE PURCHASE: $35
- AT THE DOOR: $45
- All tickets will incur an additional $7.00 surcharge.
- MEMBERS: Please click here to ensure you are logged in so your discount is reflected above and applied at checkout.
- All surcharges and member discounts will be calculated at checkout.
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Medium Build, the queer singer-songwriter born Nick Carpenter, has a generous and inviting spirit that manifests in his songwriting. Medium Build built a cult following in Anchorage, Alaska, where he became a local celebrity and hometown hero, before making the recent move from to Nashville, moving closer to his southern roots and dedicating himself to his musical career. He developed a cult-like, 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, but beneath it, there’s an old country soul, who treasures the simple things in life and keeps his family close to his heart. Songs like “Crying Over U,” embrace vulnerability with Nick’s intricate lyricism and gravelly yet soft voice at the helm while while “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.
Medium Build’s vision is to take the sense of community his music creates far beyond wherever he calls home. Last year was busy for Medium Build, opening shows for Lewis Capaldi, Matt Maeson, and FINNEAS, while selling out his headlining tour across N. America and playing shows in Europe on the heels of his Health EP. 2024 proves to be no different, with a EU / UK tour supporting Holly Humberstone, California dates with Tyler Childers, his biggest US headline tour to date, and a handful of major festivals punctuated by Bonnaroo. All this touring will support a slew of new music following last year’s “In My Room”, which has already won the hearts of peers, and been championed by BBC1, Alt Nation, and Zane Lowe.
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Petey USA:
On his new album USA, Chicago-bred singer/songwriter Petey bares his soul about the endless things that keep him up at night. As he muses on everything from masculinity to anxiety to the very nature of human existence, the Los Angeles-based artist drifts between warmhearted sincerity and delightfully warped humor—a deeply affecting dynamic that also defines the absurdist alt-comedy that’s earned him a massive following on TikTok. Built on his idiosyncratic yet viscerally charged breed of alt-pop/rock, Petey’s Capitol Records debut ultimately brings a gloriously strange convergence of comfort, catharsis, and unrelenting joy.
The follow-up to his 2022 debut Lean Into Life, USA finds Petey working with co-producers John DeBold (Wallows, Remi Wolf) and Aidan Spiro to piece together what he refers to as “an origin story of a typical American male in their 30s.” While the album includes decidedly autobiographical tracks like “Home Alone House”—a real-life account of getting busted smoking weed on the beach in eighth grade—Petey’s songwriting often takes the form of impressionistic vignettes revealing the sheer depth and scope of his inner world.
On “I’ll Wait,” for instance, he delivers an explosive piece of pop-punk whose lyrics offer a candid perspective on mental health. “It’s a song from the mindset of an anxious man who’s acutely aware of the resources available to him, but for whatever reason decides to just wait it out,” Petey explains. “There’s some recognition that doing nothing will make the problem drag out longer, but there’s also an understanding that the uncomfortable moment will eventually end—just like everything else in life.”
Mainly recorded at Gold-Diggers Sound in L.A., USA came to life with equal parts intention and spontaneity. “For me, making music has always been like throwing spaghetti at the wall, and working with John and Aidan allowed me to be reckless and experimental while giving each song the care it deserved,” says Petey, who plays guitar, bass, drums, and synth on the album. “It helped me fulfill the only real goal I had, which was to make sure every single song would be super-fun to play live.”
To that end, “Family of Six” unfolds in dance-ready grooves as Petey shares a fantastically surreal meditation on gender expression. “We hear so much today about toxic masculinity, so the idea behind that song is trying to reclaim masculinity in a way that’s actually positive and helpful,” he says. “Each stanza is imagining a parallel universe where the laws of physics are different, and therefore I’m the best version of a man that I could be.”
On “Did Mention I’m Sorry?,” USA takes on a combustible urgency as Petey captures the kind of all-consuming insecurity that tips into self-indulgence. “It’s about someone who’s so self-conscious that it becomes almost narcissistic because they can’t stop obsessing about their own anxiety,” he says.
And on “I Tried to Draw a Straight Line,” Petey cycles through a whirlwind of existential questions, offsetting the track’s uneasy bewilderment with sweetly lilting rhythms and majestic guitar work. “That song’s an overview of my mental state when I’m over-analyzing everything,” he says. “It ends with wondering if we’re living in a simulation and all the paranoid but also calming thoughts that come with that.”
At turns philosophical, introspective, and wildly playful, the lyrics to USA mostly emerged as Petey hiked the trails surrounding an abandoned gold mine in the San Gabriel Mountains. “Hiking has become a really good creative vessel for me,” he says. “Once you get used to a trail, it becomes second nature, which leaves space for your brain to think in different ways.”
A longtime musician who previously played drums in Chicago-based indie-rock band Young Jesus, Petey first started writing songs at 27 after making his way through a series of dead-end jobs. “I never earned more than minimum wage, and I never felt like I was capable of excelling at anything within the realm of American capitalism,” he says. “But then I wrote a song and put it on Spotify, and that somehow ended up being the thing that worked.”
A bittersweet but exuberant breakup song, Petey’s debut single “Apple TV Remote” soon led to his signing with indie label Terrible Records, which later released Lean Into Life and helped pave the way for his signing with Capitol Records in 2022.
With the release of USA, Petey hopes that exposing his deepest neuroses might have a liberating impact on the listener. “So much of life is out of our control, which is really scary, but hopefully these songs will help people feel a little better and less alone in their struggle,” he says. “I hope everyone can find some kind of solace in recognizing that life is incredibly complicated for everyone—so instead of spending too much time ruminating on a mistake you’ve made or something that went wrong, maybe the best thing is to go easy on yourself and let it go.”
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