Noah Kahan

00:00:15Speaker 1: Pushkin. Twenty twenty three has been a hell of a year for singer songwriter Noah Kahn. Just three years ago, he started uploading snippets of his indie folks songs to TikTok while waiting out the pandemic at his dad's house in rural Vermont. Those songs quickly caught fire across social media and eventually turned into Noah's most recent album, Stick Season, and after releasing collaborations with Casey Musgraves, Hosier and Post Malone, Noah's amassed four billion streams globally. It's no surprise that last month he was nominated for the Best New Artist Grammy. But while Noah's often called the breakout star of the year, he's actually not a music industry rookie. He signed up Republic Records in twenty seventeen, initially working as a songwriter in New York, where he learned the intricacies of writing pop music. It wasn't until the music industry shut down in twenty twenty that he was able to apply those techniques he learned as a songwriter to his own work as a singer songwriter. On today's episode, Lea Rose talks to Noa Khan about navigating his often overwhelming newfound success and how he feels about being labeled the new quote unquote sensitive Woodsman singer songwriter de Jore. Noah also opens up about initially being embarrassed about his singing voice and his plans for evolving his sound on his next album, This is Broken Record. Liner notes to the digital age, I'm justin Mitchman. Here's Lea Rose's conversation with Noah Khan. When you were writing Stick Season, did you have any overarching guiding principles? You know? I think like in hindsight, it's always easy to say, like I wanted to write about loneliness during a lonely time, or I think I had been feeling lonely for a lot of my life and that was just kind of finding its way into my music. And I was in Vermont and that found this way into my music. I definitely didn't walk in with any you know, intention of like a theme. Besides that, I wanted to write about what I was going through at that point in my life and my relationship with my home state and my hometown, with my family and with myself. At that time, it was like kind of just in real life on my mind and really like a pervasive part of my experience day to day. And I think what my overarching goal was just to have an outlet for that, and I ended up being the start of, you know, the concept for the record essentially. And so what was your situation, Like what was a setup during the pandemic? Were you suddenly like back home in the house that you grew up in with your family, Like, yeah, pretty much like I. You know, I grew up in New Hampshire and Vermont, and we moved to this place in Vermont when I was halfway through high school, and so it kind of was like my childhood home in many ways. I we'd had the property my entire life since long before I was born. So it was a place that I was, you know, considered much at home or like, you know, a very familiar place for me that I had a lot of, you know, my memories and different attachments too. I was living in New York and was like really lost at that point in my life, like just kind of burning out pretty hard with music, and I for some reason never felt like a New Yorker I lived there. I mean, you know, I only lived there for at that point for about a year, but I never felt like I belonged. I felt like it was my first day there. Every single day I was in the city. And you know that the pandemic, you know that that one week in March, I remember, you know, getting one of those hoax texts. I was like, the governor of the mayor is about to close the borders to the city, Like you need to get out and keep pressing the link. And it's like it was actually a picture of a guy's dick, is what it was when pressed the link. But I I I had I pressed the link. I mean, my older brother was in town. We were like fucket. We literally ran for the hills and drove to Vermont that night, got home. We're like, okay, like they weren't closing the borders, but it probably was a good time to get back. So we we got home and uh, we don't. I don't go back to New York until I moved my stuff out of August of twenty twenty, and I was home for about a year and a half, so I really I went right back to the my parents' house. My parents split up and it became my dad's house and we have like a barn with like a little studio a little like an apartment above it. And my dad was like, hey, like while you're figuring what you want to do out and like, well, if the world is figuring what's going to happen out, like you can stay up there rent free. And so my dad let me stay up in the barn and that kind of became like where I made up on music and where I did these Instagram live streams and where I you know, started to really like digest my experience and start making the album. How old were you at that point? So twenty twenty I was, This is twenty twenty three. I'm twenty six. Now this is why I should have gone to college. Kind of do the math in my head. It's literally twenty six. Mine is three. I was twenty two, twenty three years old. I think I was twenty three at the start of the pandemic. Did that feel at that point, like moving back home? Like, how did that feel? Honestly? Like it felt amazing? Yeah, And I hate to like to be positively about what was like such a terrible time just generally for the world and for millions of people, but and I kind of a fucked up way like it was just it felt like this escape from this really monotonous style of life I was living, and it felt so refreshing. I think like I spent so much of my time as a musician and as someone that had like a very untraditional job, feeling like I'm living like an imposter's life, Like everyone's going to work and I'm kind of like grabbing a coffee at two pm and started to try to write songs. Yeah, stepping away and going on my phone for two hours. And I always kind of felt like I was moving in slow motion and everybody was moving at regular speed, and suddenly, like the pandemic felt like it brought everybody to the same speed for one second. And that's a very rare thing. And for me, it was so rare to feel connected to people that were around me. I felt this disconnected from everyone, from my friends and from my family, and from even other musicians, because I couldn't relate to my friends because they weren't musicians and they were working, you know, different jobs than a different you know, equally complicated and difficult but abstract in me lifestyle, and I couldn't relate to the musicians because for some reason. It always like talking to the musicians always created this feeling of anxiety within me, like just this feeling of other nis, just feeling of feeling left out of some shared experience that all the other musicians were having together. Whether that's just the insecurity, probably, but I still felt it, and so I felt like I was stuck between two different styles of life. And when the dynamic hit in that first few months of my family being back home and everyone being like, what the fuck are we going to do? And the musicians being like what the fuck are we gonna do? And the finance and tech people being like, what the fuck are we gonna do? It just felt unifying in like a weird way, and it made me feel like I finally had some even footing with the world, and that was strangely really nice for me, despite how challenging it was for other reasons. Is it different now the way that you feel towards other musicians. Have you found people that you're able to relate to more? Yes? And I think a lot. It's it's it's been a result of me making the effort and accepting that I might feel anxious or insecure and trying to power through that. Because there's not a lot of people that relate to what's going on in my life right now, and some of the only people I can relate to are people that I've been through it, and I had to force myself to be willing to hear them and to accept their perspectives and to try to learn from it. It all came for me, you know. It was all me facing the insecurity of trying to relate to people that I've typically had a hard time relating to, and it's made it a lot easier to kind of have those conversations now. Having those first few conversations and being willing to sit down and talk to somebody and be vulnerable with somebody that you know might understand it and been a really cool and eye opening experience for me this past year and a half two years. It's been very helpful, in fact, very crucial in a lot of ways. Did it change the way that you wrote songs when you were back home? It did? It really did, because I was writing songs in New York just because I wanted to fill time and I want to feel like I had a job, and I was You could hear it in the songs. It was you know, pop songwriting is just there's a real formula to it, for better or for worse, and a lot of sessions, you know, you sit down and you talk to somebody and you pretend like you're having a normal conversation, but you're both looking for a hook and what everyone's saying, or a concept, and then you identify it and sit down and write about it and fulfill the concept and write a verse and a chorus, and a verse and a bridge and a drop chorus and a chorus, and it just there is a real formula to it that for me was becoming monotonous and my numbing. And by the time I got home to Vermont, I was so sure that the music industry would never come back that I was like, I'm gonna write the way I like to write, and that is, you know, not having a concept, sitting down and writing about what I'm feeling, trying to come up with stories, and trying to be creative in a way that doesn't stick to a certain concept that might not even relate to me, just writing about anything that I feel in the moment, stepping away if I don't want to fucking do it anymore, and coming back a week later and sitting down with feeling inspired again, going on my own pace, and being willing to just make whatever made me happy in that moment. It's very difficult to control a song in a songwriting session in that way, because you're working with people that I would have motivations of their own and have schedules of their own, and you really have to To me, it felt like I was sacrificing some of the process for other people, and that was a terrible feeling. Yeah, were you working with like big named artists, like anyone we would know? Are you allowed to say I was working with incredible songwriters? Yeah, incredible songwriters, some of the best in the world who have written beautiful songs that are clearly heartfelt and full of emotion and full of grounded real feelings and have written huge hits. You know, I could have written with Max Martin. It would have sounded like I made it with my next door neighbor or something. You know, it didn't. Everything I was making was colored by my own burnout right, and by my lack of passion and my feeling of you know, exhaustion of being a songwriter. It was like every song to me, you had the same color to it, and I think that it's really like a symptom of depression in a lot of ways, Like, you know, every single thing feels the same. And I look back at some of these songs, like, you know, those songs actually had a lot of life in them in a lot of ways, and some of those songs are really great. And I listen back a like proud of those songs, more proud than I ever was in a moment, and I think it was just, you know, it was really a statement about my state of my state of my mind and my emotions of that time that made those songs feel, you know, the same, regardless of what I'm working with. Would you're writing a new song, do you have an idea of where the inspiration comes from? Like does it feel like it comes from outside of you or does it feel like it's more internal and making its way out. Yeah, I think it's more internal and making its way out. It's very rarely a conscious thing. I feel as if I'm writing because it feels good in the moment, and I look back and I'm like, oh, that's because of that thing that happened, or that's because I've been feeling like this for the past few weeks, and I don't realize it until after, which is kind of fun because it feels like you don't have to do the work of feeling bad about how you're feeling and then making the song. It's like you just make the song and then you think about how bad you're feeling later. It's kind of a nice It's kind of like a get out of jail free card for feeling emotions, which is kind of cool. And how quickly does it cause relief? Is it like as soon as you put a line down, do you start to feel a little bit of the pressure release? No, totally. I think just one line can make the whole difference. And then there are songs that I've heard that I'm like, I don't even like the rest of the song. Is that one line that I'm so connected to And that happens with me all the time if I write a you know, sometimes I'm like, this verse is fine, I might as well keep going because it has a good melody or a good core progression, and then the chorus and like, this is why it's good. That line is enough for need to love the whole song, and it really does create like an instant sense of relief, to feel, to feel that a line can, even just five words, can encapsulate how you're actually feeling. It's cool. That's what's so special about songwriting. That's so great. You never know when that relief is gonna come, and it's exciting, and it's kind of like gambling, you know, because you know you have to put so much emotional, so much emotion into something, and you don't know how it's gonna turn out. But when it hits, it's like the jackpot of feeling relief and feeling excited and feeling uh, satisfied. Is is worth that that kind of torture of making amusing? Does it really feel like torture? No, seems like it comes fairly easily to you. Yeah, I'm not working in a fucking coal mine. Uh. I always try to do care. Sometimes I find myself talking about songwriting. I'm like, I sound like a fucking asshole, Like this stuff is not that hard. What's challenging, uh, And what makes it feel like torture sometimes is the constant comparison. I think if I had like the Men in Black thing where you like make people forget that stick thing that like makes people forget their like what just happened? If I have one of those, and I can erase all the context of my songwriting career, my life, I think I would love songwriting so much more. I always find myself comparing whatever I'm doing in the moment to what I've made before. You know, the comparison. It's a thief of all joy. Yeah, he's the most successful thief in the fucking history of my life. Like, it's just always I'm always comparing myself, and so you kind of are already losing when you do that. And I feel like I set myself up for failure in that way, and it requires a real will to just sit in that feeling of comparing herself and to let it go to make the songwriting and feel exciting and fun. And I've gotten better at that, but it's still something I practiced. What do you think is the best song you've ever written? And you're comparing in your mind, like, what are you putting that up against? I think right now, I think my favorite song I've ever made would be Homesick, because when I listened back to that song, I'm not only excited about the lyrics and about the story, but also some of the risks that I took in the instrumentation, the musicality of it. It was one of the first songs I had that was like rocking and like let the band play a little bit and allowed states to happen in a way that still felt compelling. A lot of times I just stuff words over everything so that there's no one can find out that I'm playing the same three chords over and over again. But with Homesick, I felt like I allowed myself to just take a risk that people were invested enough in the song that I could have some moments to be musical and to be experimental musically in the context of my own music, by the way, experiment and allow that to live and to not feel like I need to smother that with lyrics so that song I'm really excited to buy another song. A lot of times I find the songs that I am most proud of are the ones that I still relate two years later. A song like young Blood is just a song I wrote when I was eighteen or nineteen years old, and I still feel like I connect to those lyrics so much, and they still feel mature to me and exciting to me. And that's always cool, you know, to look back at a song that I was written eight years ago and to feel like it was a representation of who I am. You know at twenty six, What part in particular are you thinking? Eh? I think from like a song running standpoint, I really like just the melody choices in that song, Like I like that, you know, ascending melody that comes into falsetto and comes out. You know, it's not like a vocal run that someone's trying to be, like an impressive vocal run, you know, or you're trying to like flex your vocal muscle. It's really just like an emotional vocal run that I thought was really you know, it's funny talking about myself in the past I thought was clever. And then lyrically, I think that that kind of mantra style of lyrics aged really well. A lot of times mantras came just we change our principles a perspective, But that perspective has still stuck with me and it's felt very relevant to my career. Now. Is there anything you're embarrassed about or anything you've said in a song, any lines that you thought were like incredible when you wrote them. Your younger self wrote them that you're like, I got it, like I figured it out, and you listen to it now and you're like, oh my god. Definitely. I think if you gave me twenty minutes, I could come up with a list of a thousand things I'm embarrassed about. But I think I'm mostly embarrassed about how much I tried to hide my singing voice. I think I tried to be really cute and stylistic and affected with my singing voice a lot of times, hiding because I didn't feel like I had a very good voice and that I had to be like more unique or like indie sounding, And I think I kind of adjusted it in some songs to feel like I was something worth listening to. And it wasn't until I started to kind of, you know, with taking vocal lessons but also just allowing myself to sing more naturally that I started to feel really proud of my voice as it is and be comfortable with it and come to terms with that. So I look back, I'm like, man, you should have sang that part like yeah, who carries you sound a little nasally or if like you sound a little bit a little bit sharp in that moment we got auto tune baby, like you should have just tried to sing it. So sometimes I look back and I'm a little bit ashamed of not trusting my voice a little earlier. Are there things that you're excited to try, like new ideas, new ways you're going to stretch either your voice or songwriting, or different musical ideas that you're looking forward to trying on your next album? Yeah, totally. We uh. I was work messing out in the studio a couple of days ago with Gabe Simon, who produced six Season with me, and Conrad Snyder who engineered it, and Carrie who played drums and all the songs. We were just jamming out and playing some kind of like some of my radio Head type stuff where I was really wail and singing, and it was really fun to kind of like wail and to not be so precious of the words and to let the singing, like the actual notes, you know, carry the emotion. Was really cool and something that I want to, you know, try a little bit more. I like, we place so many shows that I want every song to be really fun to play live. Yeah. I was going to ask you about that. When you're writing songs. There's certain songs that you have that seem like they were created with a live performance in mind, like some of the songs where it starts out quiet and then it just explodes like wall of sound, you know, once the chorus hits or even you know, as the verse develops. Is that something you think about when you're writing one hundred percent? I do, Yeah, I just think about how can we make this part as exciting as possible? And what has happened with a lot of the songs you know, on Stick Season, on the Deluxe and some of the stuff that I'm writing now is that I really love doing songs that don't have repeating parts, so it feels like a legitimate, like roller coaster ride for the fans. Like you have a start of something that's slow and builds and it comes into a crazy place. It goes into a different verse that's a different melody and different lyric and do a different chorus, Just allowing myself to kind of create a little bit of a journey and tell a story and the music instead of feeling like, you know, it's that pop formula verse chorus, verse, chorus, vers chorus, bridge chorus, joh chorus versus and being able to kind of step away from that is really fun and knowing that live it's gonna be so exciting. You know, there are songs like a song we have called Your Needs, My Needs that does that that just starts little and just explodes and it's the best moment of the set live and it's you know, certainly not the most streame song, but it's that song that really lives for the live performance, and you know, just to anecdotally, like I when I lived the New York one thing that I love about New York was every week, at least two or three nights a week, I go see a show. And sometimes I'd be at Webster Hall or Brooklyn Steele or MSG or whatever. A lot of times it was at you know, Ballery Ballroom or Mercury Lounge, seeing little artists and small artists walking away and being like, I know that artist so much better than I ever could if I listened on Spotify, because I got it year live. Yeah. Yeah, And that was something that really inspire me. How much are you changing the song's live? Because I know, as a music fan, sometimes you go and see an artist you love and when they change the songs too much. You're a little bit pissed because you kind of want to sing along to what you know. So how much are you actually changing the songs when you're performing live. Well, we always keep the parts that are recorded in this song, so we always make sure that we sing every lyric and every verse and chorus gets their own moment. We add a lot. Sometimes we'll add a moment from my band to solo, like these guys, it's funny. These guys are world class musicians that are having to play a E minor c F And I'm like, give these dud the second to jam out a little bit because they are talented and shit showcase it. And so we let the band play and they have fun, and we change it based on each crowd. Sometimes we change we add a chorus with the crowd is screaming every word and let them sing a little bit longer. Sometimes we'll be like, this crowdfucking hates this song, let's just do the regular version of it. Yeah, it's really a crowd by crowd, show by show thing. What's the song that gets the biggest reaction from the crowds. Well, we played Northern Aitude first, which is really fun because It just is a real sing along tune and people are are already excited for us to be coming out, and they're kind of like excited that it's a song. They definitely know that song gets a great response. We let them sing the chorus at the end, which is super cool. It's funny like Paul Revere is a song that gets a lot of attention live, which is just like a specific song about like a New England I guess legend, I guess you could say, or like old It's just like an a lot of New England references and wherever I am, that's always the fun one to play. We're gonna take a quick break and then come back with more from Lea Rose and Noah Khan. We're back with Lea Rose and Noah Khan with Northern Attitude. The lyrics are very literary and it's like you're outlining the major strokes of someone's life. Did you have somebody specific in mind when you wrote that song? Yeah, I think there are elements of it that I take from my dad, and elements that I see in trans parents and lots of children of divorce. You know, this feeling of what now and this is who I am, but you kind of have to start over. And I have so much respect for my dad and for my mom because it takes a lot of courage to do something like that. It's so easy to be stuck in. It's so easy to stay in what's comfortable, even if it's making miserable. I know all about it, and I have so much respect for people that make that decision for themselves. And I have so much respect for the journey afterwards of discovery, rediscovery and reevaluation, and that stuff is really hard to do at any age, but particularly when you have lived the life a certain way for a long time. So yeah, yeah, that's definitely inspiration for my pops, and I think there's some hope in it too, you know, like this feeling of accepting yourself and being able to evaluate yourself critically and explaining that to somebody as an important step and growth and change, and those are themes I want to evaluate in that team. During the pandemic, when you started uploading like little snippets of songs to TikTok, how much did you think about how you were framed in the shot and like how intimate and how upclose it was, especially since you were talking about being self conscious about your voice because you're like right up in there. You know, it's great for the people watching it because it's like it's very vulnerable, but like people really feel like they know you because we're like so close to you so you can see the fucking pores in my nose. Yeah, I honestly didn't think about it at all. Like I tell people, like every phone I have a nice new phone, every photo I've ever taken on a nice phone looks like it was taken from an iPhone too, like I have. I have such a poor grasp on technology. I have such a poor grasp on aesthetics. Like I was the guy in high school that would post a terrible photo of a sunset every like five months, and then that was like my Instagram presence. That was it. That's all I engagement. There was no engagement, no like the like it myself like that kind of thing nine likes, and I was like, oh, you know, so I I was never very like esthetically intuitive and social media challenge was definitely part of my part of my life for a long time. So when I was making the tiktoks, I was just like, all right, it looks like you just put the camera up here and hopefully the acoustics sound good. And like, my biggest nightmare is editing the lyrics on the screen, Like I cannot stand making the lyrics on the screen because then you get one wrong to wash the whole video again. Back then, when I started, I was kind of just like, look, I'm making music and I'm a sucker for validation, and so let's see what people think of this little idea. And what was so cool was that I really did inspire confidence in me and the response. You know, any response is helpful for me. People not liking it was like okay, like they don't like that one, do I like it enough to keep it going like yeah, And sometimes I had to be like I don't care what they think. And then I put the full version on. People loved it. So it was a way to kind of you know, road like the road testing when there was no road to testimon Yeah, you like crowdsourcing stuff. And then how seriously do you take the comments because I'm sure there's like a lot of conflicting opinions, like would you actually mold stuff based on feedback you were getting? No, No, not really. I think like I would say, okay, like there seems to be a positive response to this. A lot of times, I would, you know, for like a song like Homesick, I was trying to be really specific about New England, about my town, and I was worried that it wouldn't come across. So when people were like, oh, like, I'm getting this idea that you had, it inspired me to finish writing the song with the same level of specificity instead of being of making it more vague or trying to be more relatable. It did help, you know, influence the intention. I never like would change lyrics or anything like that, but I definitely feel like the input that I got was helpful. Yeah, you know, and comments sometimes like if I got a hurtful comment, like I would feel hurt for sure. Yeah, I always say, like I must. I do feel like hurt by hurtful comments and by people being mean or someone you know. I get it, Like I get why people do that. You scroll across the video that like you didn't want to see and you're like, fuck you asshole, and you're like, Okay, you don't think about what it might be, how it might be received. Totally. I don't know if you ever left hurtful comments for anybody. But now that you're like public and you're out there and you're reading comments about yourself, has that changed the way that you comment. I think in my past I probably did, like I was just like a kid, like everybody else, and I know what it's like to now that I know what it's like to be hurt like that, Yeah, it really makes you think about how you talk to people. I still feel I can read the hundred positive comments and one negative comment like just fucks me up, and it sucks because you're like, you're so wrong. I want to get into the weeds with this person and be like, well, this is why you're an asshole, and this is why you're wrong. I'm like, And then you do that, and you've aloady lost you know, You've you've lost time, and you've lost confidence. So I try to just do my best to not see them and not look at them. Yeah, what always helps me is when I I have been in a place where you feel the need to lash out of people and to be hurtful people, and I know how lonely and fucking awful that that space feels and how empty it is, And so I think when I see someone leave a comment like that, I try to zoom in into their bedroom and like look at them and be like, what are you going through right now? Do you really need me coming back and shitting on you right back? Or like do this person maybe just need to get that anger and pain out And if I can accept that and move on from that and it makes you feel better, that sucks for you and that's what you're doing. But I'm not going to stand in a way or whatever your processing, man, like you got shit to deal with. Yeah, I love that, by the way, Like I bing sure tiktoks. I watch all of them, and there was one where I think it was some sort of like maybe like an eating disorder awareness months post and I just really appreciate that you talk about just struggles that you've had or because we don't normally hear guys talk about body image issues or you know, eating disorders or anything like that. So I just really appreciated that. Thanks. Yeah, that song, I never ever talked to anybody about that still even really, and so that song was kind of surprised me with how I felt about how real it felt for me and how true it felt my experience listening to that song and being like, man, I'm I've never had an outlet for this feeling ever. I've done with therapy for a long time, and I've made a lot of progress in my own life, I think, but that's something that still haven't been touched on. And so it felt like it surprised my lyrics and like the guy, I guess, the vulnerability and some of those lyrics surprised me. And I won't name names, but I played that song on tour. I did it for the first time. It's really just a heavy song. To play it tard for me to play it. So I played it once for a World Mental Health Day, and people in my crew, guys on my tour, you know, tough guys and guys that didn't say watch, didn't speak much, probably took me aside to thank you for talking about that. And I don't want to keep the conversation video. This is just a male problem. It's absolutely not, but yeah, it's it is. I think more rare, at least in my experience and my exposure that for men to talk about these things. And so I saw that in real time what the impact might be for men struggling with eating disorders, and that was something that was really encouraging. To feel like I had this really painful, painful song and painful feeling that I wasn't alone in for a second was really nice. How has it been for you performing on TV? Like dealing with things like that and knowing that you've had issues in your past, Like you know, you recently played SNL, which is fucking awesome and it sounds like it was always a dream for you and you guys killed it. You sounded so good and you had your hair slicked back. It was kind of like Samurai the Samurai Bambook. But how is that for you seeing yourself on TV? Do you like pick yourself apart? Are you proud of yourself? Like what's the reaction internally for you? Well, I've done a lot of them at this point now, so I feel like I used to pick myself apart a lot more. It's so interesting, Like I get hair and makeup done, and the hair and makeup people and everyone is like, that's how it looks great. We just did your hair and makeup, Like, oh, I think that looks awful. So I think my opinion on like what is attractive or what is like good. It's different than like what the greater publics is. So I like go and be like, man, I should like wore my hair down and like throw it across my face and people are like no, like pull your hair back. So I feel like I try and not pick myself apart and trust that people that are in charge of making me look good have done a good job. But it is it is hard to see myself on stage. It just is weird. It's like unnatural. I think you observe myself, especially when I'm like in that moment in SNL, I was trying to have fun and hang out my band and enjoy the moment so much that like looking at that and analyzing that like it doesn't help me at all. I think being critical of what you look like in a moment of letting go is probably not healthy, so I try not to. But I was really happy because I saw myself and I was like, that is me when I'm having a good time. Yeah, you look like you're having a great time. It wasn't like faux excitement or like you know, bullshit, like smarmy, charmy shit, And it's like I was having a fucking blast hanging out in my band and my buddies, and that I was happy to see that come through in the way that I felt that on stage, What was like the behind the scenes like at SNL, like did you get to go to the after party? And what was it like being the live musical act? SNAW was a trip. It was like a full on the entire thing with a trip. I had been home from tour for about a week and was kind of finally starting to feel like in my human not everything it's about me mode, where like you're no longer like promoting yourself on the road, and I was kind of withdrawing from like this the uh outward talking to a lot of people when I was quiet, And then suddenly it was like down the New York you're in the fitting in the green room, you're about to do the sound the sound check, and you know, like there's all these famous people on the walls and you don't really even have time to process it. And then it's like pressing promo like Noah, like how did it feel a good? Like all these questions about me, and I started to be like I felt like I was like waking up from a long nap of like, oh fuck, I gotta go back into this like talk about Noah mode again. And so it took me a little bit to adjust. Is it like a week long process. So Wednesday night we got there and we had the fitting order of fitting Wednesday at the hotel and then Thursday is like the first day of a rehearsal and sound check and they filmed the promos and oh dude, filming the promo was so bad. I was like one of the maybe one of the most embarrassed moments of my career was you know, they have like a little script they made for me that I got like literally five seconds before I had to do it. Emma Stone is right there with the other actor, Sarah Sherman, and they were standing there in front of the camera and I was like learning my lines on it's just shoved on stage next to them and like wow. So I was so anxious and do you have acting chops? Like did you know how to deliver a lot? So this is the thing I always thought that I was like my band members, you got to get into acting, and like I always found myself to beat I would you know not the two man horn. I think I like I know my way around a joke. I think I could be a little funny. I can. I got some dead pan shit going on, So I was like, you, I could crush this acting shit. It's it's easy to fucking just say some shit and be funny and look funny. And I got on there and have never felt less in my elements and more nervous. I was reading and I felt like I was like looking at like a power point and trying to read off the world. It was so bad. I felt so unnatural. So I just like went in the nervous, you know, survival mode and read the lines and didn't like improve it all. And so that was a tough one and it kind of made me feel like I was cursed. I kind of felt like the whole weekend was gonna I was like, I was like, well, I just embarrassed myself in part of most of the crew, some of the cast, And on Saturday, I embarrassed myself in front of all of the crew and all the cast and all of America as well. Like my mind, I was so negative, you know, like this is a bad element. Yeah, just a little glimpse into my confidence, just like I'm gonna suck no matter what. And the next day was kind of nice. I gotta like kind of recalibrate this. The clip was posted on social media, people were generally nice. No one was like no, one was like no, it's the worst actor. Everything. The expectation was not that I was gonna be a great actor, and so I swallowed the pill of not being a great actor. I was not ast to do any sketches. I assume they saw the promo where like, this guy's not going in a sketch, which means I don't have to do that again. Let's just get my head around the performance. On the day of the performance, I was having trouble my voice and was I always have trouble my voice, and on the day of a big show, like I always just like I feel like I'm a cold, like I psychosomatic vibes, like my throat starts to hurt small damn. It's like thinking about it and drinking water and like trying to hide myself up. And I pulled up to SNL wearing all black hat, sunglasses at the nighttime, like superduche mode, like listening to push a tea in my headphones, just trying to hype I was trying to feel confident. It's like the dude in succession, Kendall Roy, literally like Kendall Roy. Like they drove me in like one of those nice town cars. The driver you like help the door feel like, what's up? Brother? And then I get in and I'm listening to a nostalgia I push a tea and and just trying to make myself feel like Kendall Roy for a second. Yes, So I was like, it's actually Kieran Colkin was actually at the show that night, which is funny. I probably should have that. Uh So we all we went out and my my best friends were at the taping and I saw them up there and we performed the first song and we crushed it, and I think and had a lot of fun. And then before the second song, like my little brother was like, dude, Malia Obama, Miles Taylor, Scarlett Johansson are all right there? What a crew and watching the show and yeah, And so I was on the second performance just thought it was so funny to look up and see my high school friends. Then they'll look down and see Miles Teller. Like the contrast was just hilarious and it just made it kind of fun and silly and we had a blast. After party was very cool, like super overwhelming. And where's it at, like at a like a club or a restaurant or is it at the actual SNL. I think it's actually at the Illuminati headquarters. I think I had to I had to kind of think on my wrist and like, I don't know, some guy put my butt into a vial that I got let in. Now I don't know, someone somewhere fancy and fancy. They had like a menu with my name and almost name on it, which is hilarious. Yeah, all sorts of famous hot people milling around the room. Everyone looks famous, Like it could have been the guy that like parks the cards and like I would have assumed that he was like an Oscar winning actor. Everyone to me well successful, well groomed. I felt like a fucking bron walking around there, like my whole family by my side, We're all like, where should we go? And you know it was cool. We're gonna pause for another quick break and then we'll come back with more from Noah Khan. We're back with the rest of Leo Rose's conversation with Noah Khan. So stick season must feel like it's like very much in the rearview mirror, even though you're out on the road. You just did a national tour, you're about to do a worldwide tour playing the music. But what, like what have you been working on? Like, what can you tell us about new music? We have a new song recorded called Forever that we've been playing on the Road's that I just happened a ton of time. I've been writing new music, and I'm always writing and working on new things. But you know, I like the six season being such a natural and like creatively fulfilling, you know, journey for me is kind of like created this complex of like I only wanted to be like that, And so I simply haven't had a break in about a year. I haven't had more than like a week off in a long long time, and so I'm just kind of giving myself the time I do get off to try to find that feeling and try to find that feeling of freedom and create creative fulfillment that I had back then, and keeping new music or any commitments to like an album at at arm's length. And so I feel wrapped around something in that same way, but still working no more collaborations and just trying to kind of find things to keep me excited. Any new collaborations you can talk about. I'm waiting for the Justin Vernon song to drop yah Me and you both. I wish I could get one with Justin Vernon. Have you talked to him? Have you met him? I haven't met Justin. Yeah, it was one of the most cool, crazy nights in my life. I met him at hunter Land. He's my hero. Getting to talk to him and getting a chance to pick his brain about music and about the industry. It was really interesting, a really cool experience. But I never want to be that guy that's like, dude, it's so cool hanging out with you, Like we got to get a collab in the work, you know, Like that's isn't that what people say? Though, Like you're like, hey, like let's do something, yes, And I hate it. Let's get a transaction in here, man, Like now that we hung out, like, let's do something that boosts my career. I think that's that stuff grosses me as sometimes, so I try to be careful about but I think at some point in the future, I would absolutely love to collaborate with Justin. If you was ever interested in doing that. But we have, you know, at least three more more collaborations coming that are are really cool and with artists that I adore and that everyone adoors, and I am excited for the world to see them. How are you feeling about the way that you've been covered or the way your story is written about. I know the New York Times just did a big piece on you. You were on the front cover of the Times. I saw at least the digital version. You were like right up there next to like Trump or something. How are you feeling about the way your story is being told? I think like there's always gonna be a framework in which people want to talk about you, just because it's if you just get down to the complete and total story, you lose a form of narrative. I know, people, you know the reference if you're bringing back this era that nobody wants anymore, and to feel like that is like a negative connotation. For some reason, it's been confusing to me. I know that the pendulum really swung away from that in a musical way in terms of what was happening on the radio after like the you know, mid early mid twenty tens. But I always found that music to be really well written and incredibly powerful. So to hear that as a as maybe an attempt at an insult or a criticism, or like a God, we're so tired of this shit. I feel bad for the people will put their livelihood into making that music because I care about it a lot and I think it's important, and you know, that's been my only qualm. I am happy to be being covered. I think it's it's cool that people will care enough to talk about me. My friends from New Hampshire, I sa I lived in New Hampshire and Vermont, and people from New Hampshire like, you're not from Vermont, people from Verma, you're not from New Hampshire. That's that regional tension. If definitely there. I've had to do better job of being clear. You know, I'll talk to someone, you know, from California or somebody from New York and they're like, we don't give a shit, Like you're in Canada, we don't give a buck. Yeah. Again, I think it's the nature of you know, being a white male singer songwriter isn't exactly a unique place to be. I think there's been many of me, at least this kind of this kind of vibe white guy with a guitar. So I think feelings with feelings, right, you know. They said it an article of the most Pop Music's Newest Sensitive Woodsman. I think an author writer wants to find a way to make your story seem specific and to seem like it separates you. And so I think they're coming to a small challee, come to my house, and they're talking about how that looks and how that feels unique to my experience. Yeah, I feel like the way I've been covered has been very there. I think I shy away from making myself a story. I just I do like to have my life be about the music and have my career be about the music. And if that's not enough to be on the national headlines and I'll just play for a thousand people and be boring, I'm fine with that. I think I've kind of been thrust in this world of like a mass exposure that I'm still learning to handle and learning how to how to navigate. I don't know, it's it's hard. It's a really weird process to describe if you haven't been through it. Yeah, I think what's what's hard is just never feeling like I'm alone, Like I'm already the guy that like when I smoke weed, I'm like everybody looking at me, you know. And and so I'll get off an airport in Boston and Vermont or wherever and be like, oh everyone, I think people here actually are looking at me. And that's like an overexposed feeling. And then you find yourself like acting different because you're you know, like if people are watching you, that you want to come across as being normal looking or like not ticking your nose or fucking wiping your hands in your shirt or whatever. Like you feel like you're performing all the time. And I fucking I I don't know, I don't have I don't have much to say. Most of the time. I'm kind of just like a grumpy dude walking around the world. Like for example, yes, two days ago, I was in the car driving to another interview and uh in Nashville, and this person behind you was like tailgating me like a fucking psycho, and I was like, oh, my god, it's just by driving like a nut job. They passed me and they're super close and swerving in and out, and like, what the fuck you doing? Look out my window, very New England, not out my window, but at my window, and they look over and they're just filming me, and I was like, oh my god, it's like I'm on the Truman Show. Dude. Like I'm like, I can't have an authentic angry experience or like emotional response to something. I'm so worried about it being like someone that's a fan or like hurting their feelings. They're coming across it being a dick or whatever. But I was so exhausting, gonna kill me. I'm exhausted, I'm tired. I'm tired of I can't get killed in traffic just because I want to be polite, you know. Yeah, And then it makes you understand. I'm sure now you have like a different level of understanding why some people like who are in the public eye or people who are like super famous, like end up the way they end up. I've never had more respect for them. Yeah, you know, I've never had more respect for somebody that says I don't want to do this anymore. It has It's no longer about the music, it's about everything else, and it hasn't hasn't gone to that point for me. I have incredibly respectful fans, like I really do they really respect me in my space and my privacy and my boundaries. But man, like, just if you're somebody that doesn't like the attention and doesn't like the demand of everything besides making music, then I can only imagine why anyone would want to be you know, famous or recognize its fucking invasive as hell, right, and less so for me than it's for being a woman and having the success and having you know, the sexualization and the questions about your dating life, and that's got to be fucking brutal, and just like having to put up with people asking about stuff that's not even about the music, you know, like that's about your personal life and about stuff that you don't put on display for people. Fuck that shit. Sure, yeah, if you ever want to find the Boston airport with me and see a bunch of dads and their daughters turned around, like you listen to that guy right then? An you want to see how it feels. It's not bad. It's just like if you're tired or hungover, dude, oh bro, being hungover and like having to like walk into like having to take a shower, you just want to not take a shower some days and like walk outside and you're like you gotta be you gotta be taking a shower. Yeah, yeah, you know when you talk about I just want to be stay focused on the music. Like the fame thing can kind of come and go and if it burns out, cool as long as like the music focus is there. How are you so sure that music is the life path? Have you ever thought about, Oh, I might want to be you know, like maybe I want to be an architect, Like has there ever been another vision or has it always just been music? Has never been, never been anything else. I think I've thought like critically and realistically, like yeah, it doesn't happen, Like what would I want to do? And there are things that I could do. I've always said that I wish I could be. Uh, I'd probably do someone like social work or psychology. Yeah, something that like I'm really interested in just like people and their behaviors and what makes them chick and like what makes them what they're about and how their past affects their future or whatever. That's always been really interesting to me. But like fundamentally, no, I've never had any other plan or vision for myself whatsoever. Like music and writing songs has been from the very beginning, the only thing I've ever ever wanted. That's so cool that you know that, isn't it cool? Yeah? It was cool when I got a record deal, but it was not cool before where I was like, this is all I want and I might not be able to do it. That would suck, you know. I'm just like so aware of like the sadness it is to see somebody that like tried to be a musician and like it didn't work out, and to see them like working a cubicle afterwards and be like, Yeah, that sucks, dude, because I know every single day you're like looking at the picture of you and the Talent Show and wishing that with you now. And I could like see that picture in my head. Even when I was like fifteen, I was like, oh, dude, I'm gonna be the guy in the Cuba gole like no, no, no, and uh. I was very grateful to have had the drive, but also the opportunity and the frank with the privilege of being in a place so allowed me to go to a recording studio and to you know, parents that were like willing to say you don't have to go to college, you know, like you can go make take the record deal. I grew up in a wicked nice area that I think contributed a lot to the opportunity and the ability to take the opportunity combined with like what really was like even as a kid, like a super crazy work ethic for music, Like I wouldn't do my homework, I would get fucking c's and B minuses, but like I would every day be writing a song or working on something. Like it was an every day for years and years grind for me. How did your parents think about you writing songs? Like, were they like, wow, we have like a musically gifted son, or was it just sort of like thought of as a hobby. My mom was an author, and so she was very I think from a certain point. She definitely saw some like potential and talent I think, and helped me hone it and was like a really amazing resource for me growing up. Just having someone that knows their way around writer's block and writing process and you know, creative struggles, you know they any number of them and knows how to like kind of have been there before because writer's block, that shit's hard, and like to get through that it's really hard, and it happens at every level. You know. Some people say there's no such thing as right a block, and maybe that's true, but I think we can all agree that sometimes you just don't have anything to say and you feel like you can't get the words out. And my mom would just sit me down, give me a blanks of paper and say, right, for thirty minutes, write anything that comes to your head, doesn't matter what it is. Write things down because the musclem he kind of does kick in. After a little while you start to like remember how to work it. I think if you go into that mode of like I'm gonna wait till I'm inspired to make music or to write something, is when you can get into some real trouble because the time since you last broke your thing gets greater and greater, and your your muscle isn't as isn't as worked out, and you're frustrated at yourself for not being as good as you were the last time. And I think if you build slowly each day, trying to put a pended paper, that you can really work your way out of those things. Do you have like a specific set of conditions that you've found lead to writing a good song. Like I interviewed Matt Berninger, the lead singer of The National, and he said his thing is like weed and iced tea in the afternoon, like that combo. That's it's kind of perfect. I think the most consistent thing has been weed. Honestly, like I do really work right well and I'm like smoking weed are getting high. I don't know, it just kind of takes me away from like my inner dialogue for a second, or like at least changes it. Vermont really is like, you know, here goes the sensative Woodsman again. Vermont really is a place that is conducing to like inspiration for me. I feel really like myself there. I feel very comfortable there. I think the biggest common denominator between all the good songs that I've made have come from a fuck it mindset, whether that be like this will never go to any this will never be released, so I might as well write it, or I've been writing all day, I've made absolutely fucking nothing good. I'm angry at myself, I'm upset, and then suddenly like there it is, you know, just that release of just being like I'm just gonna give myself up. To whatever comes out of my mouth or my whatever gets written down next. So I think we need a level of like disinterest and being in Vermont it's helpful. And then how high are you getting? Are you like getting dumb high? Are you like micro dosing high? Well, typically micro dosing, but like sometimes I'll get like dumb high. I always say to my friends like, I wish I could be, you know, like an hour after you smoked weed. That's what I wish I could be. The entire time, like the first like five minutes of being like, oh well lookick, I gotta call my mom, like I shouldn't. I should be in the car right now it's happening. And then and then like the hour later when you'd like gotten over the hill of being too high and you're like, oh, I just feel like relaxed and chill and like funny and good to be around. Yeah, that's kind of where I need to get to. It's never like right away. The stuff i'm right away it is like so bad. I feel like I'm doing like Sergeant Peppers and just like making like weird, like fucking like stuff that sounds off tune and bad. And maybe that song Peppers is zo sad amazing, but like the experimental stuff, I'm like, that's not that's getting back to ce An f for jazz, I trended to get Yeah, exactly. You mentioned earlier listening to push a t Like, since people love music recommendations, like, what else do you listen to? Like what you're loving? Yes, I'm loving lots of stuff right now, but let me pull up what I'm listening to. Yeah, okay, I'm listening to this Walks of Hochi song Problem with It, which I really like. This guy, Craig Finn made this song out of Chicago. U Sam Fender recommended him to me, and uh, it's really fucking awesome. The new Hosey record I think is incredible. I'm getting into outs ge on my moody shit that's on Poison Route. I really enjoy He's super cool, so fucking cool. That shit, dude, so cool. I love that. I love that freedom of just being like super loose with the genres, Like yeah, I don't know, I'm getting the vibe that you might that might be in your future at some point. I think that's kind of the thing where like all these cool things have happened this year is I'm like checking off all these amazing boxes so that on my next thing, I'm not like, well, I gotta play the song that gets I gotta write the song that gets do on SNL, I already did SNL thought, Yeah, well I gotta got a Grammy nomination. I'm gonna go make the music that I want. Like whatever, I've had all these I've achieved all these cool things, and uh, now i feel like I'm the freedom to uh do whatever I want because I'm not trying to. I'm pretty much done everything I've ever wanted to do in my career. You know. I feel like that's some people say before they get hit by a car or something. But so I'm not gonna would but the bad omens again. Yeah, you're gonna really sid into my brain. It just makes very good podcast perfect. Are you already starting to think about what you would say if you win the Grammy? Yeah, I'm gonna thank my mama for sure. If I want a Grammy, I would thank my mentor music mentor that I met when I was a younger kid who taught me how to be in a band and put me in a band and taught me everything about recording. That guy changed my life. He showed me, taught me what it was like to be a rock star. I would think tons of people, all the label and the man and every person that's gotten me here. But I think I would do a little shout out for my younger self because when I was a kid, I would practice my Grammy speech to make myself fall asleep when I was a little kid. And when I got my Grammy nomination, I was like, fuck, yeah, my eight year old self from a ten year old self, he's probably pumped right now. Is that huge validation for you? It actually is, yeah. And I I'm not somebody that feels the need for like total validation from like the greater music community or whatever. But for some reason, the Grammy just like man, it just was really was one of the greatest moments of my life. And I felt like nothing can can erase the fact that I got nominated for Grammy, and no level of failure or irrelevancy or whatever happens in my career, Like I always go to look back and say, hey, at one point got nominated for Grammy, And that's one that I can say the rest of my life. And that's that's fun to have those thinks. They're very few and far between at a musician's career. Hell yeah, congratulations on all the success, but also like I can't wait to hear what you put out. Hell yeah. Well, thank you and thank you for all the thoughtful questions and for you know, give me things to think about on my own. Honestly, it was fun to talk to you and h just think that you're great, So thanks so much. Thanks to no Ocon for taking us through his incredible year. You can hear the deluxe version of his latest album, Stick Season, along with some of his other music, on a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolladay. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's bay Anny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.