[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The Grammys are this Sunday and today we are hearing from some of the folks who have been nominated. Now we've arrived at Best New Artist Nominee, Noah Kahan. His album is titled Stick Season. If you live in Vermont, where Kahan grew up, the phrase stick season is lingo for that very specific time between fall and winter, after the trees lose their leaves, but before the first snow. The album is a soundtrack to that moment.

Noah brought his guitar with him to our studios, and he kicked off the conversation with a live performance of the record's title track, which, by the way, went extremely viral on TikTok. Here's Noah Kahan's live performance of Stick Season.

[MUSIC - Noah Kahan: Stick Season]

As you promised me that I was more than all the miles combined

You must have had yourself a change of heart like

Halfway through the drive

Because your voice trailed off exactly as you passed my exit sign

Kept on drivin' straight and left our future to the right

Now I am stuck between my anger and the blame that I can't face

And memories are somethin' even smoking weed does not replace

And I am terrified of weather 'cause I see you when it rains

Doc told me to travel, but there's COVID on the planes

And I love Vermont, but it's the season of the sticks

And I saw your mom, she forgot that I existed

And it's half my fault, but I just like to play the victim

I'll drink alcohol 'til my friends come home for Christmas

And I'll dream each night of some version of you

That I might not have, but I did not lose

Now you're tire tracks and one pair of shoes

And I'm split in half, but that'll have to do

So I thought that if I piled something good on all my bad

That I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from dad

No, I am no longer funny, 'cause I miss the way you laugh

You once called me forever, now you still can't call me back

And I love Vermont, but it's the season of the sticks

And I saw your mom, she forgot that I existed

And it's half my fault, but I just like to play the victim

I'll drink alcohol 'til my friends come home for Christmas

And I'll dream each night of some version of you

That I might not have, but I did not lose

Now you're tire tracks and one pair of shoes

And I'm split in half, but that'll have to do

So I thought that if I piled something good on all my bad

That I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from Dad

No, I am no longer funny 'cause I miss the way you laugh

You once called me "forever," now you still can't call me back

And I love Vermont, but it's the season of the sticks

And I saw your mom, she forgot that I existed

And it's half my fault, but I just like to play the victim

I'll drink alcohol 'til my friends come home for Christmas

And I'll dream each night of some version of you

That I might not have, but I did not lose

Now you're tire tracks and one pair of shoes

And I'm split in half, but that'll have to do

Oh, that'll have to do

My other half was you

I hope this pain's just passin' through

But I doubt it

And I love Vermont, but it's the season of the sticks

And I saw your mom, she forgot that I existed

And it's half my fault, but I just like to play the victim

I'll drink alcohol 'til my friends come home for Christmas

And I'll dream each night of some version of you

That I might not have, but I did not lose

Now you're tire tracks and one pair of shoes

And I'm split in half, but that'll have to do

Have to do

Alison Stewart: Noah Kahan. There's a lot of applause. Turn behind you. [laughs]

Noah Kahan: Oh my God. It's like Live Aid.

Alison Stewart: The entire control room going bananas. Obviously, you're from Vermont. What is a tell? What is something about you that I can tell you're from Vermont before you even say it?

Noah Kahan: I think there's a common thread through Vermonters and New Englanders in general. They're a little bit prickly, maybe a little bit impatient, but I think deep down there's a kindness. This is also what I'm saying about myself. This might be interpreted differently by my loved ones, but I feel like people in New England are incredibly kind and very reserved. I think being cold all the time, trying to race as quick as you can from place to place to get out of the cold, it plays an impact on who you are.

For me, I feel like if you get to know me, I'm very kind, but on an outward glance, maybe it comes off as a little bit bristly. I find that to be common in a lot of Vermonters. I find that in myself for sure.

Alison Stewart: New Englanders, they just don't really have a lot of time. To your point, they're trying to get someplace warm, they've got something to do. It takes a lot of ways to get around places in New England because streets are one way and don't [unintelligible 00:05:02] made for horses, not for cars is what they say.

Noah Kahan: This is also the only day that I'm not wearing a flannel this week. I think if I came in with my flannel, that would have been the first tell.

Alison Stewart: Got you.

Noah Kahan: We're rocking flannel. I have a Subaru Outback. I'm all the stereotypes in one person.

Alison Stewart: When you headed back to Vermont from New York for a little while, how long did it take you to feel home again?

Noah Kahan: It was pretty immediate. There's a real genuine feeling of relaxation and and peace that washes over me as soon as I get into Vermont. Living in New York was so fun, but I was always so stressed and I would have to travel 30 minutes to go see green grass. Coming into Vermont and just being surrounded by hills and the mountains and the trees was immediately calming for me.

It wasn't really until I was having an argument with my dad about laundry or asking if I could use my mom's car until I really felt like I was home in my childhood home again. There's a real peace and simplicity that comes with having those kind of arguments with your parents instead of having the existential conversations that I was engaging in internally in New York. I felt like there was a simplicity to where I was that I was definitely looking for.

Alison Stewart: When did you write Stick Season?

Noah Kahan: Funny enough, I actually wrote it in LA. I was in the studio recording my second album. I really love my second album but the process of recording, of being in Los Angeles and feeling so far from home was wearing on me. I would go home to my Airbnb and I would just write folk songs about New England because it made me happy and because I felt like they were just mine. I felt like I'd given myself to so many different things and to so many different people and I was like, "I just want something for me."

This little ditty about Vermont and Stick Season was really me and my own. I wrote it in the Airbnb and I put it up on TikTok and it started to react over there. It felt like something that was more for my soul than it was for my career, which was a really cool experience.

Alison Stewart: When did you realize the song was blowing up on TikTok when it was seeming to go viral?

Noah Kahan: I think the moment I was like, "This is a viral song," was when people would use the sound but they would turn it all the way down and then promote whatever content they were making because it just would boost the algorithm to have the song in the video. That was when I was like, "Okay, cool. They don't like the song. They're using it for their own gain." I'm like, "That's when I know I'm doing the right thing. It's just working."

The first moment I was like, "This is really going to react and going to happen," is when these hundreds and hundreds of covers of people making their own versions and making their own lyrics started to come onto my "For You" page. My "For You" page is very weird. It's all soccer commentary and NBA 2K highlight videos. Having my own song on my "For You" page meant that it was really reacting and spreading across the platform, and it was really cool. A little overwhelming, but very cool.

Alison Stewart: No, you may have talked this into existence. This may be partially your own fault about the-- Not fault. About the TikTok, because you posted this hilarious video right before the song came out talking about the marketing of it. It's clearly tongue-in-cheek. Let's take a listen.

Noah Kahan: Hey guys, this is Noah Kahan, and I'm about to start promoting my song Stick Season on this app pretty hard. I just wanted to warn you guys that it's going to be really annoying. I'm going to have to use current trends, popular things in pop culture, and guerrilla marketing to infest your souls with my music. It's going to happen unfortunately whether you like it or not, it's just part of the job. You won't even know at first that your soul is being taken over by my music. Slowly but surely, you will start to need to pre-save my song.

I just want to let you know that there's no shame in just pre-saving the song right now so that you don't have to let it happen to you like this because your soul is going to be taken over by this music.

Alison Stewart: It's so funny. There's truth in the humor that these days, if a song is on TikTok and it catches on, that's it, game over. It's going to be a big hit. People might think you're an overnight success. We'll talk about that in a second. You've been in the business for a while. How are you feeling about the idea of TikTok spreading music?

Noah Kahan: I think there's there's a lot of positives to TikTok in terms of exposing really great music that might not have been heard by people. I think there's obviously negatives.

I think it's a real grind. It's not easy to be a self-promoter. A lot of the greatest artists don't care about promoting themselves or aren't savvy with social media or marketing.

It's not totally fair to ask someone who is supposed to be a professional musician to also be a professional social media marketer.

I think what's really cool is it allows people to be given a platform, given a stage to show their music to the world and it changes lives in a lot of ways. It's definitely changed my life.

I find it hard to sit in this chair with a lot of success on TikTok and to talk bad about it. Like any social media platform, there are positives and negatives, and it's about how you engage with it and how much you're willing to buy in. I think the problem is as everything falls under the TikTok category, that it's requiring everybody to do the same thing. There doesn't seem to be an alternative for someone that just wants to make music and be successful, but I think that'll come, and I think people are starting to reckon with their relationships with social media, their relationships with TikTok, and I think that's going to change things in the future.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Noah Kahan. The name of the album is Stick Season. There's more than a dozen other songs on this album. They're all a little bit different, but they have a cohesive sound. It's sort of smooth but lush. Some of the songs reminded me of The Waterboys a little bit. You co-produced this, right?

Noah Kahan: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What soundscape were you hoping to achieve?

Noah Kahan: I was hoping to be able to make the production feel lush, large, anthemic, and let the lyrics feel lonely. I think a huge theme in the record is isolation. I spent a lot of time in isolation in my life and in the past five years and in making this record, I was very isolated at my mom's house in Vermont. I wanted those lyrics to speak to those feelings.

I think Vermont being the second most rural state in the country with the second oldest population in the country, makes it one of the loneliest places in the world to live. I wanted to have that come across in the lyrics but I didn't want people to be confined to the loneliness of the lyrics and how they experienced the production.

I think what's really cool about music and about the other producer, Gabe Simon, who I worked with, is that we were able to have a conversation about conveying ideas through the music and not through the lyrics alone, which is something that I struggle with in my previous records. There's some songs that use space. There's some songs that use big anthemic choruses that are saying something that speaks to being alone and being lonely. I wanted that to come across in the production.

Alison Stewart: What did you learn about yourself as a songwriter now that you had to produce yourself?

Noah Kahan: I learned that I am pretty lazy. I think for a lot of the times for my last records, I was just letting the other person do it because I didn't know how or didn't think I was good enough and didn't want to try. This is the first time I really tried to take a role in co-producing, and I felt a huge creative gratification from that, just being able to have the power to say, "I want this to be here. I want this to sound like this." Not being afraid of if it's bad, being given the freedom to make something that's not working and trying again.

Those were experiences that have shaped me into a more confident artist. Just fundamentally, I am trying to have my true north be what makes me happy. I think the success of this song Stick Season and some of the other songs in the record have been really cool because it's allowed me to see that making yourself happy can also make other people happy. Just trying to continue on that path and keep doing things that fulfill me.

Alison Stewart: For people who think, yes, Noah Kahan, he's a TikTok artist. You've been at this for a while. You had a record deal six years ago or so, something like that?

Noah Kahan: Yes. I got a record deal when I was 19, and I'm 25 now, so.

Alison Stewart: Can we hear another song, Growing Sideways?

Noah Kahan: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: You want to set it up a little bit?

Noah Kahan: Sure. Yes. This song is about my experiences in therapy and my experience with compartmentalization through a lot of my childhood. I, again, was so fortunate to have parents who supported me in that they allowed me to go to therapy from when I was 12 years old. I didn't think I needed it at the time, and now I'm like, "Thank God they did that", but at the time, I still was going to these sessions and I was like, "I'm in therapy and that's enough work."

I can say I went to therapy, but I wouldn't actually be in therapy. I would just be talking around everything. I would never approach anything that I really held close to my heart. Any of that pain that felt super intimate, I would never talk about. I would spend all this money and I would leave and not learn anything new about myself. About two-and-a-half years ago, I started to go to therapy in a way that feels more honest and doing a little bit more of the work and approaching these feelings.

Once I did that, I started to feel really sad for myself who had every opportunity to get better and be better and I didn't take it. I was kicking the can down the road and pushing things aside. I wanted to write a song about that feeling. I really did feel like I was never making any progress. I wrote a song called Growing Sideways, which is about that experience.

Alison Stewart: This is Noah Kahan.

Noah Kahan: Quick tune here.

[MUSIC - Noah Kahan: Growing Sideways]

So I took my medication and I poured my trauma out

On some sad-eyed, middle-aged man's overpriced new leather couch

And we argued about Jesus, finally found some middle ground

I said, "I'm cured"

And I divvied up my anger into thirty separate parts

Keep the bad shit in my liver and the rest around my heart

I'm still angry at my parents for what their parents did to them

But it's a start

But I ignore things, and I move sideways

'Til I forget what I felt in the first place

At the end of the day, I know there are worse ways to stay alive

'Cause everyone's growing and everyone's healthy

I'm terrified that I might never have met me

Oh, if my engine works perfect on empty

I guess I'll drive

I guess I'll drive

So I forgot my medication, fell into a manic high

Spent my savings at a Lulu, now I'm sufferin' in style

Why is pain so damn impatient? Ain't like it's got a place to be

Keeps rushin' me

But I ignore things, and I move sideways

'Til I forget what I felt in the first place

At the end of the day, I know there are worse ways to stay alive

'Cause everyone's growing and everyone's healthy

I'm terrified that I might never have met me

Oh, if my engine works perfect on empty

I guess I'll drive

And if all my time was wasted

I don't mind, I'll watch it go

Yeah, it's better to die numb than feel it all

Oh, if all my time was wasted

I don't mind, I'll watch it go

Yeah, it's better to die numb than feel it all

But I ignore things, and I move sideways

Until I forget what I felt in the first place

At the end of the day, God knows there are worse ways to stay alive

'Cause everyone's growing and everyone's healthy

I'm terrified that I might never have met me

Oh, if my engine works perfect on empty

I guess I'll drive

I guess I'll drive

Alison Stewart: That was Noah Kahan. Noah, you just came off a national tour and given that that song was about mental health, how are you taking care of your own mental health when you're on tour? It can be exciting, but it can also be grueling. You're around a lot of people and then you're by yourself.

Noah Kahan: Yes. I thought I was doing a better job this time. I was going to therapy weekly and taking care of my body and sleeping more and trying to be more balanced. I think it was an improvement, but after getting off the road, I've definitely suffered from a lot of that withdrawal feeling of the attention and the busy schedule and the people that are helping take care of your life for you and coming just to nothing afterwards has been really hard.

I don't want to say I'm doing a perfect job, but I'm definitely making strides to be better at taking care of myself. I used to think that I couldn't go to therapy when I was on the road because I had to be in this specific mindset of just to get the shows done at all costs and who cares if you feel gross or bad about yourself because as long as you can perform every night.

That created a lot of problems in my life. As you can imagine, that created a lot of anxiety. It created a lot of bad eating and drinking habits and these ways I was coping with these really crazy, stressful two hours of my days that came back to absolutely nothing for the rest of the 22 hours. Going to therapy was really helpful on this tour.

Every night I had the chance to tell everybody in the room that I don't care how happy you are, if you can afford it and you have the opportunity and the privilege to do it, please go to therapy. It's so important. If I have any platform I want to tell people to try to go to therapy if you can because I think it's such an important tool.

Alison Stewart: Of all the songs on your album that you think doesn't quite get the love that you'd like it to get, what song is that?

Noah Kahan: I have to say, every song I feel like has gotten a lot of love, but if there's a tune that I think is one of my favorite songs I've ever written that I just hope has a chance to stand alone and be a single someday is the song, Homesick. I'm really proud of it. I'm proud of the musicality of it. There's a guitar solo in it, which is unheard of for my songwriting process. That's a tune that I just adore, and I hope gets its chance in the light.

Alison Stewart: It is serendipity that we picked that as the song to go out. We didn't know that. I'm so glad that that's the one we're going to go out on. Noah, thank you so much for being with us.

Noah Kahan: Oh, it's an absolute privilege. I absolutely love your show. Thanks for having me on.

Alison Stewart: Let's go out on Homesick.

[MUSIC - Noah Kahan: Homesick]

And that makes a lot of sense

This place is such great motivation

For anyone tryna move

The fuck away from hibernation

Yoo-hoo

Ooh, ooh-ooh

Oh, no

Well, I'm tired of dirt roads

Named after high school friends' grandfathers

And motherfuckers here

Alison Stewart: That was my conversation with Noah Kahan, one of the nominees for Best New Artist at this year's Grammys, which will be held this Sunday.

[music]

Alison Stewart: Up next, we'll talk to the artist behind one of the nominees for Best Alternative Jazz Album. It is called Love in Exile from vocalist and composer Arooj Aftab, jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, and producer and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily. They'll join me to talk about it. This is All Of It.

 

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