Vermont-native Noah Kahan reminisced with New Hampshire native Seth Meyers last week, sharing laughs about New England geniality while debating which of their home states is superior.
“You were very cool backstage,” Meyers, a Bedford, New Hampshire native, told Kahan. “Then you told me Vermont’s better.”
“Look—oh god, I’m going to have a bunch of people in flannel yelling at me if I say anything,” Kahan said.
“They’re gonna throw syrup on me,” Kahan added as the crowd laughed.
Kahan, a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, has experience in both states. He grew up in Strafford, Vermont, and graduated from Hanover High School in New Hampshire. He joined Meyers on his late-night show last Tuesday just before he played his second sold-out show at Madison Square Garden in New York.
In the 10-minute appearance, they talked about Kahan’s rise to fame. Meyers showed the crowd one of Kahan’s 2019 posts on X, which read, “I prolly won’t sell out Madison square garden, or even all the shows on my tour but I’ll keep writing songs for you all for as long as you’ll have me.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0pjWAAe1d4&t=78s
Meyers also showed a post from September 2023, which featured a childhood photo of Kahan holding a microphone during the summer at Whaleback Mountain in Enfield.
Kahan wrote, “Somebody tell him he’s gonna do it, somebody tell him he’s gonna play the garden.”
Meyers and Kahan also got into a debate about the Twin States and what “New England mean” means. Kahan’s song “Homesick,” has a line, “I’m mean because I grew up in New England.”
“That really resonated for me, but you’re not mean,” Meyers told Kahan.
Kahan explained to Meyers, “What’s cool about New England is that people are maybe not outwardly nice, but very kind. I always say, if you get a flat tire, they’ll change your tire for you, but they’re not going to look you in the eye the entire time. That’s what I love about New
England. There’s a community there, but they’re not going to give you a big hug,” he said.
“I think that’s very accurate,” Meyers said, laughing.
Kahan sold out Madison Square Garden before he played at Fenway Park in Boston last weekend, the later of which was far more impressive to Meyers.
“Madison Square Garden is all well and good, but as a fellow New Englander, you’re playing Fenway Park. It’s a cathedral, man,” Meyers said.
Here are some facts about Kahan you might not know:
He got his start playing at open mics in New Hampshire.
After coming home from school and writing his own songs every day for years, he performed at open mics in Hanover when he was 12 or 13, he told VTDigger. He sang at Jesse’s Steakhouse in Hanover every Thursday.
“It was what I’d look forward to all the time,” Kahan said. “I would play my own original songs with a bunch of people that weren’t listening, just trying to eat baked potatoes.”
He also liked soccer. Kahan played for the local Lightning Soccer Club in Hanover and he played striker for the Hanover High varsity team in 2013 and 2014.
He got a record deal as a senior in high school.
He started making music with his friend Phineas Choukas in high school. Kahan was a sophomore and Choukas was a senior at the time. People found their songs on Soundcloud.
Then, Kahan released a song called “Sink” in 2017, which hit SoundCloud big. Labels found it and connected him to a manager, Drew Simmons, who he met at the Hanover Inn with his parents.
“We were all afraid that he was actually going to be, like, a pedophile, because he reached out to me on SoundCloud, and I was like, ‘Who’s this weird guy who wants to come to Vermont, come to New Hampshire, to meet me? That’s really creepy and weird,’” Kahn said. “And so we were like, ‘You have to meet us in a public place.’ We had him meet us at this restaurant. He ended up being a really cool guy.”
Kahan went to Los Angeles and recorded “Sink,” which was produced by Joel Little, a New Zealand native who famously produced and co-wrote songs for Taylor Swift’s seventh album, “Lover.” Little has song credits on Swift’s “ME!,” “You Need To Calm Down, “The Man,” and “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince.” In 2020, Little and Swift also co-wrote and co-produced a sixth track, “Only the Young.” Little appeared on Swift’s “Miss Americana” documentary on Netflix.
Kahan moved to New York City.
After high school, Kahan moved from Vermont to New York City, thinking the Big Apple would bring him focus and inspiration.
“I was so frustrated at feeling like I had writer’s block for, like, years, and I wasn’t making anything that I cared about. So I moved to New York,” he said. “I wanted to get in the studio and get into sessions every day and feel like I was working, which is probably the wrong approach. I thought, I just need to dig through this feeling, this lack of inspiration that I had, and just go into the studio and work a bunch. I was doing that, and I really felt like it became a job. I was making music every day, but it wasn’t music that I really loved. I was working every day, but I didn’t feel proud of any of it. And I really burned myself out. I would spend all day scrolling through Instagram and just comparing myself to everybody.”
COVID shaped and inspired him.
Kahan moved back home to Vermont during the pandemic. While many people felt down and disconnected during the isolating time, Kahan felt inspired.
“For so long, I had felt out of place and kind of lost—for so long,” Kahan said. “And then everyone at once felt out of place and lost. And it kind of made me feel connected to everybody again, and connected to myself, and valuable as a human again.”
Kahan reconnected with Choukas and the duo released an EP called “Cape Elizabeth” in 2020. The EP was recorded in Choukas’ home in Vermont.
“We were at the same house, in the same studio, and it just felt like I was a kid again, making music because it was fun,” Kahan said. “And that kind of reinvigorated my love for music in a lot of ways, because it was just something that I loved.”
His parents’ divorce inspired his album.
At the start of COVID, his parents got divorced, which hit him hard.
“I was having some really complicated feelings with all that, obviously, as you do when your folks get divorced. It was really sad,” he told VTDigger. “A lot of times, I have a great relationship with my parents, but it was definitely something that was really hard for me to go through.
Kahan got his big break with his song “Stick Season,” about the dull period in the fall, just after the leaves have fallen, but before the snow starts. The song viral on TikTok in 2022 and sparked covers by artists like Zach Bryan, Chelsea Cutler, Maisie Peters, Gareth, Olivia Rodrigo, and more.
His album, also called “Stick Season,” was recorded at Guilford Sound in Guilford, Vermont. It debuted at No.14 on the Billboard 200 Chart.
He’s since worked with artists like Hozier, Kacey Musgraves, and Post Malone.
