Noah Kahan

When singer/songwriter Noah Kahan was in the fifth grade, he wrote himself a letter. He wrote that if he didn’t have a recording deal by the time he graduated high school, then pursuing music just wasn’t for him. But the young artist must have had some sort of fated inclination even then, because by the time the now 21-year-old was done with his studies, he had indeed landed that record deal he was hoping for. “I always knew I was going to be a songwriter,” Kahan says, as if it was written out in the cosmos.

For Kahan, though, an emerging singer coming from a small town in rustic Vermont, his pursuits of making it in the music industry seemed almost intangible just by his lack of resources and abundance in distance. “I basically had zero access to the music ‘industry’ as it is growing up in Vermont, outside of the internet,” he says. “I never had even the slightest idea of how difficult it can be to breakthrough or how unlikely the chances of succeeding in the way I had dreamed for myself. I just assumed things would figure themselves out, and I wasn’t good at anything else, so I kept writing songs believing one day people would hear them.”

And because songwriting had been Kahan’s utmost passion since his childhood — the gift he felt compelled to release into the ether — people did hear them. Though a side of the singer felt as if the world would never be able to hear his voice coming from the North East, Kahan illustrates that where we our from does not have to deter where we go, but can beautifully inform the journey. And because of this, Kahan is where he is, not just telling stories to you through his folk-inspired songs, he’s writing them for you.

With only the internet truly within his reach, Kahan followed the formula for success that seemed most familiar: releasing his music online and hoping his songs find their way to the right set of ears. So, after working with a local producer, that is exactly what the up-and-comer did, which actually did end up connecting him to industry professionals and making the aspirations he had held onto since fifth grade feel real.

Those songs that struck his manager who once discovered him via Soundcloud, label heads, and his ever-growing fanbase, like the tracks off his recent Hurt Somebody EP, converge catchy pop sensibility with folk’s romantic arrangements and storytelling lyricism. In his gentle, comforting voice singing therapeutically over an accompanying acoustic guitar, Kahan creates songs that feel as if they are the warm glow shining down onto the earth in a forest clearing.

Brought out of the woods of Kahan’s Vermont home and his own intrapersonal, he writes music inspired by similar songwriters before him like Bon Iver and Gregory Alan Isakov, hoping to strike a chord with his fans as those artists did for him. He says, “I felt like they were looking into my soul. All I knew after hearing Bon Iver and Gregory Alan Isakov was that I needed to find out how to do what they do.”

By drawing from their personal lyrics, Kahan discovered his own sound and sought to offer fans the feeling of relief and connection music had given him, writing songs like the bittersweet “Young Blood” that simultaneously pulls the you in and out of a dark place as if to guide you to a place of betterment. He says, “I try to write about every aspect of my life, the good and the bad. My mom told me that if you just write about what you’re feeling at the moment you’ll never run out of material, so that’s what I try to do.”

“I hope people listening will hear me speaking about my insecurity and my soft spots, and feel less afraid to speak about their own, or at least come to terms with them. That is the end goal for me, and if there is anything I can offer to people through my music, I hope that will be it,” he says.

Kahan’s songs seamlessly offer this form of relatability, as his pours his heart wrapped up in solemn experience, anxieties, and personal growth into each verse — but coming from a small town, entangled in what felt like whirlwind success, it took Kahan time to be able to wrestle with the industry and get to the artistic space that he is in. “At first I felt afraid that everybody and everything was going to screw me over, and that if I wasn’t writing the best song every single time, or wasn’t hitting each note perfectly every time that I was a failure. I’ve learned to trust my ability and my instincts and trust those around me want what’s best for me,” he says. “If there somebody who was going through change or finds themselves in a weird new place in life, I recommend just being patient and waiting for time to make things seem normal again, because that’s what worked for me. Try to breathe and tell yourself there’s a reason you’re where you are.”

It’s like there is a reason Kahan is where he is today — on the cusp of releasing his debut album, setting out on tour across the globe — like every Vermont autumn informed his organic sound and the child who once picked up a guitar for the first time knew he would never let it go. So, even if it was a “relief” to Noah Kahan’s eleven-year-old self when he finally landed that record deal, perhaps he always knew that this was the story, or folk song, he was writing for himself. “Success is static and fleeting,” he says, but “no amount of failure will take away my love for writing music.”

Written by Sadie Bell | Photography by Anna Maria Lopez