“Excuse this thing, by the way, this is not a bong. It’s just me using it for my voice” Noah Kahan says, brandishing a steam inhaler in front of the camera. The day of our conversation, just a few before Thanksgiving, the singer-songwriter is in London, Zooming from across the Atlantic as he preps for the last two shows of his U.K. tour.
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There’s no denying that 2023 has been the biggest year of Kahan’s career. The previous fall, the Vermont-born troubadour had released his third studio album Stick Season. Equal parts sentimental, cynical and filled with hometown pride, the LP is at once a folk-driven love letter to the singer’s small-town upbringing in northern New England and a clear-eyed cross-examination of the places that made him. The album rocketed up the charts, and the title track even earned Kahan his first No. 1 on Billboard’s AAA radio tally.
Eight months later, Kahan expanded on Stick Season with Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever), featuring seven more tracks including the feisty, infectious “Dial Drunk”—which became his first official hit on the Hot 100—and the heartbreakingly tender “Call Your Mom.” Remarkably, the deluxe edition seemed to prove it’s possible to catch lightning in a bottle, outselling the original version as the singer relentlessly toured the U.S. and sold out New York City’s famous Radio City Music Hall not once, but twice.
As Kahan’s explosive breakout year draws to a close, the milestones don’t show any sign of letting up. In early November, the balladeer scored his very first Grammy nomination in the coveted Best New Artist category. Days later, he booked a prime slot on Saturday Night Live, serving as the musical guest for the Dec. 2 episode when host Emma Stone joined the illustrious Five-Timers Club.
Below, Kahan opens up about experiencing the many lives of Stick Season, the validation of his Grammy nomination, plans for a stadium tour in 2024, and a lot more.
American Songwriter: OK, to get started: are we currently in stick season?
Noah Kahan: I’d say we’re edging…we’re kind of at the end of stick season. November really is the month of stick season, for the most part, depending on the snow. As far as I know, my dad told me that we’re gonna be expecting light winter sprinkling [back in Vermont], so we should be getting some snow by the time I get home. Which kind of transitions us more into winter, but I could say we’re still in stick season. You’ll go home and it’ll be a day where it’s, like, gray and you’ll see nothing but sticks and wood and hard ground. You know, that kind of dismal part of the year. So we’re definitely still there.
AS: And then once it snows, we’re done with stick season?
NK: We’re in winter, yeah, we’re back to regularly scheduled programming at that point.
AS: Speaking of “Stick Season,” have you recovered yet from Olivia Rodrigo’s cover?
NK: Actually, I was just thinking the other day, like, sometimes I forget that she covered it. I’m like, “Whoa, what the f—? Like, I’ve got Olivia Rodrigo singing my songs?” I’m kind of constantly re-remembering that it happened and being like, “Oh my god, what a cool moment and what an amazing honor.” She’s such a dynamic talent that, you know, could’ve fooled me—she could’ve been making folk-pop music her whole life. I was blown away by her rendition …We’re actually going to cover “lacy” [from Rodrigo’s 2023 album GUTS] at BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge.
[RELATED: Watch: Noah Kahan Gives Nod to Olivia Rodrigo with Live Lounge “lacy” Cover]
AS: You originally released Stick Season in 2022, and then the deluxe album came earlier this year. Now you’re teaming up with artists like Post Malone, Kacey Musgraves, and Gracie Abrams to reinvent a bunch of the songs. Did you ever expect this album to live this many lives?
NK: No! But this record means so much to me that I’ve kind of been interested in exploring it more. And especially with my schedule, doing so much touring and spending so much time away from home and the studio, the only way I can really be creative right now is to still live in this universe and find new ways for the songs to feel new again.
You know, Olivia covering “Stick Season” was just happenstance, but having these [other] artists create their own versions of the verses or add their own intricacies and style to the songs has really breathed new life into what we’re doing. It kind of feels like it’s a whole new record in some ways.
AS: How did growing up in New England shape your perspective on life and music?
NK: I grew up in a small town—I started my life in Strafford, Vermont, moved over to Hanover, New Hampshire, then back to Strafford. [I’m a] twin-stater, but lived in two very different, very small towns. So I was always super-bored. I was not a great student. I was always smart but I spent all my class time thinking about music and how to create a different world than the one I was having to live in. Which was a wonderful one by any standard, but for me it was just familiar and boring.
AS: How old were you when you started dabbling in music and songwriting?
NK: I think I started writing songs when I was eight? Like, really awful, sad songs. I was listening at that time to Good Charlotte and Simple Plan and Green Day. So I was trying to make that work within the context of my eight-year-old worldview, which was very limited. My parents would be like, “Are you alright? What is going on with you?” [laughs]
And my mom is an author. So I had this really great resource for my writing and was able to bounce ideas off my mom when I was a little kid. And she would always give me really good advice. That’s kind of how my songwriting career started, just playing songs for my mom and writing songs in my room.
AS: Stick Season has such a strong sense of place. How did where you grew up inform your lyrics on the album?
NK: No one knows your hometown like you do, you know? We all have a really specific relationship with where we’re from. Some people might see it in a completely different way than me, but we can only tell our own story. … I think it’s cool to have pride in where you’re from—or at least to understand it and to be able to describe it. That’s really important, I think, to reckon with where you’re from. And I hope this record brings that to people, wherever you’re from: to think about why it is the way it is, why it’s made you the way you are, how it has affected you, what you love about it, what you can’t stand about it.
AS: What was the creative impetus for the album? When did you realize you were onto something special?
NK: I think the creative impetus, for me, was just mental health and survival…of just feeling like I was in this rut. Mentally, with my music career, I didn’t really feel like I was writing about anything that I cared about anymore. I really needed to find a reason to make something, because otherwise I would just half-ass stuff and scrape by and maybe never have a successful career.
So I started to think about writing about Vermont and it gave me a real purpose again. It started to come together as one project about a place and I started to realize there was some real potential in writing about where I’m from. ‘Cause it is a very specific and under-thought-about place, northern New England…I don’t know, most people think it’s in Canada. So I was excited to get a chance to show that to people. I don’t think I realized how big it could get, but I knew that it was catchy as hell and was playing into this growing theme of this, like, folk/Americana stuff that was coming up. I knew that it had a place somewhere; I didn’t realize how big of a place it would have, though.
AS: “Northern Attitude” opens the album, and now you have Hozier on the new version. What did he bring to the song that it didn’t have before?
NK: He brought Hozier! You know, he brought his incredible voice—some ad-libs that I think are really elevating, like that yell after his verse is really great. He brought a harmony to the chorus, which I was really excited about. That song was recorded so quickly that we didn’t really have a ton of time or the ability, really, to go back and change a lot of it. So having the harmony there kind of filled it out a lot. In some ways I feel like his voice lends itself to a specific feeling that maybe mine didn’t. Like, it’s more tender and forgiving in some parts but also more powerful and angry.
AS: Are you saying your voice is unforgiving?
NK: Maybe. I think that’s how I feel in the song, yeah. [laughs]
AS: “Growing Sideways” also really sticks out, it’s a song that compels you to tell your friends, “Hey, you need to listen to this.”
NK: Yeah! “Growing Sideways” is one of my favorites, too, because I feel like it’s one of those songs that had a lot of me in it and has a lot of truth to it. I feel like when I was writing that, I was getting something off my chest. And I hadn’t been able to describe that feeling within myself until I wrote it in a song, which is always a really fun exercise.
As someone that has been in therapy for most of my life but has never really done therapy the right way until kind of recently, I almost felt this guilt come over me when I was writing the song. ‘Cause I didn’t really grapple with how much of my own time I wasted and how much money I wasted…It made me grieve for my younger self, for how long I spent in this place of real unhappiness just because I didn’t want to open up. I guess I thought life was like a movie, where something happens where you’re forced to change and be a better person. And I guess I just waited a long time for that to happen and it didn’t. So it took my own reckoning with that song to realize how I had stayed the same for so long.
AS: When you performed “New Perspective” at Radio City Music Hall at the end of summer, you jokingly said it was a song about cutting people down and told the crowd, “Every chance you get, promise me you’ll bring people down.” How do you balance the nostalgia of your songwriting with some of that cynicism and humor?
NK: Yeah, that’s a good point. I think growing up with depression in my family, that’s kind of how we handled it. We would just joke about it and be like, “Well, whatever, we’re f—ed anyways! As if we could feel happy!” Really cynical, and that was always fun to me. And, like, I can’t fake positivity. I can’t fake incredible enthusiasm all the time. I guess I am an enthusiastic person, but I’m not always living on the bright side of things, maybe. I think it’s just how I grew up, and where I grew up. You’ll find a lot of New Englanders are dry and cynical. It just reminds me of the jokes I tell my brothers and sister at the dinner table.
AS: Which of your older songs would you want new fans to go back and discover?
NK: I think I’d like them to hear “Godlight.” Because that song, to me, is about touring, it’s about the effect of touring. And I have obviously been touring really hard, and I have a really hard time complaining about it because it’s just a really cool opportunity and I agreed to all of it and, you know, I’m not working in a f—ing coal mine. But I think it helps me understand what touring is like on my brain; it helps my fans hopefully understand what the artist-to-audience member relationship looks like and what the cost of doing this job is. Because I feel like there’s a lot of misunderstandings in the music industry about mental health and why people are struggling out here.
After that, I would like them to listen to “Close Behind,” which is off an EP called Cape Elizabeth, which we never really promoted and I feel like I would like to shed some more light on those songs.
AS: You’ve toured so much this year, but how will your live show evolve when you start playing stadiums and arenas?
NK: It’s definitely going to evolve! We’re bringing out a new band member, which’ll add a totally new dynamic to the show and to what we’re able to do onstage musically. You know, it’s one of those things where, like, I’m not Madonna. I’m not gonna be running around and getting dropped down on a wire or whatever. But we’re going to be adding some new, fun elements that make it feel like an arena show. Hopefully we’ll be playing some new music—I’m gonna try to get some new music made.
What I would love to do is to play some older songs and to give people who’ve been fans for a long time a chance to hear songs that are on earlier records, which we definitely haven’t done a good enough job doing this year, I’ll just say it. So we’re gonna try to add things that make us feel more connected to the audience, and make the audience feel like a main character of the show and just make it fun as hell.
AS: OK, can we talk about manifestation for a minute? Because you’ve got your first Grammy nomination, you booked SNL, you’re an official L.L.Bean influencer now. So whatever you’re doing is clearly working. How have you manifested all of this?
NK: Yeah, there’s no way to describe it. I’ve wanted this my entire life, every single part of it. And I don’t know, I feel like it’s hard because you can’t leave your own life and see how unlikely it is. I thought I had a real powerful thing to say in my life, with my music, and from when I was a little kid, there was a time when I thought, like, “Oh my god, I might be a good songwriter!” You know? Then as things went along, I feel like the world just dumps and f—s and pushes you down and makes that thing that says “You’re great!” into being like, “Just make sure you can stay in a job and make sure you can stay as a songwriter,” or “Make sure you don’t f— up so much that you have to go get a real job.” It pushed me down and pushed me down and then recently, I feel like I hear that same voice again as when I was a little kid. I’m like, “Wait. Maybe I was right! Maybe it was just bullshit, maybe there is magic still. Maybe fantasy and childhood dreams mean something—maybe they actually do come true.”
And that’s been the coolest part of it. I just feel so happy for the kid that believed in me at one point, ’cause I spent so many years not [believing]. So it’s been such a f—ing amazing thing to make him proud…it just restored my belief in myself. It’s also something that no one can take from me, ever. I feel like I read all the time, it’s like, “This moment is passing!” It’s like, yeah, it is a moment and I’m grateful for it. For the rest of my life I can say I got nominated for a Grammy. I feel like it just brings this confidence to keep doing what I’m doing and to make sure I stay true to myself, because it got me SNL, it got me nominated for a Grammy, it got me sold-out arenas. It just re-instilled that confidence that I feel like I’ve been missing for a long time.
Photo Credit: Aysia Marotta | @aysiamarotta
