Carrie Karpinen Finds Her Place Behind The Song [Interview]

Carrie Karpinen moved to Nashville from South Florida at 17 and began building her career…

Her relationship with music started early in Boca Raton, where she grew up around church music. Violin was her first instrument, but drums became the one that stuck. By fifth or sixth grade, she was spending hours practicing and teaching herself other instruments along the way.

“I would schedule practice sessions for myself, which was insane [laughs],” Karpinen tells MusicRow . “But I was just so in love with it and I wanted to be as good as I could be at it.”

That dedication eventually brought her to Nashville. She began playing whatever gigs she could find, often loading her drum kit into her Honda Accord and showing up wherever she was needed. She was simply focused on making a living by playing music.

Songwriting, however, had been present much earlier. Karpinen remembers her mother telling her about an incident when she was seven years old, when she called through the bathroom door asking for a pen and paper because she had a song idea. Years later in Nashville, she began seeing friends head into writing sessions and realized songwriting could be a career of its own.

“I was way more comfortable at that period in my life in a supporting role. It felt a lot less scary to be playing drums. Songwriting felt much more vulnerable to me.”

That vulnerability eventually became part of what drew her to songwriting. She signed her first publishing deal in 2020, just as the world shut down, giving her unexpected time to focus on developing as a writer and producer. Production became another part of that evolution.

Her early production education came through producer JT Daly , whom she initially worked for as an assistant. What began with showing up to sessions and helping however she could eventually grew into producing alongside him. Karpinen credits that experience with giving her the foundation she needed.

“When I got to the session, I was told I was going to be the producer that day, I was terrified. I barely knew how to use the studio because it was a studio I'd never been in. Somehow I figured it out, and I ended up making a demo that day.”

That willingness to figure things out has become a defining part of Karpinen’s career. Her credits now span multiple genres, including Kahan’s Stick Season and The Great Divide , PVRIS ’ Evergreen , Suki Waterhouse ’s “Tiny Raisin” and Wetzel and Murph’s “High Road,” which reached No. 1 on Country Airplay for five consecutive weeks and is now four-times Platinum.

“High Road” was one of those songs where the feeling in the room confirmed that something special was happening.

“It took a second for the chorus to become what it is now, but the first time the chorus was sung in the way that it ended up, I got full body chills and knew it was going to become really special.”

Her approach to collaboration is similarly flexible. Rather than walking into every session with a fixed process, she focuses on understanding what the artist or writer in the room brings to the table.

That adaptability has also served her while working with Kahan, whose prolific creative process has taught her when to step forward and when to simply make room.

“With Noah, the task is sometimes to not get in the way of his genius. He’s made me a better songwriter, producer and musician.”

Karpinen has also had to navigate assumptions about her role in a largely male-dominated production world. Earlier in her career, she recalls being mistaken for an intern and asked to get coffee for people who entered a session. Rather than letting those moments discourage her, she used them as motivation.

“My whole life, for better or worse, I don't mind being counted out. That particular experience made me want to make an even better song.”

Now, with years of experience as a drummer, songwriter and producer, Karpinen is still interested in finding new ways to challenge herself. Rather than chasing a specific genre, she is drawn to the idea of stripping things back and rediscovering the excitement she had when she was first learning to produce.

“It would be fun to change it up and do something where I'm extremely limited,” she says. That could mean returning to a simpler setup with fewer microphones and less equipment, an approach that would put the focus back on the song, the performance and the creative process.