Noah Kahan on ‘The Great Divide,’ Playing for Fans, Upcoming Tour

In the years since Stick Season, Noah Kahan has been extremely aware of his evolution as the New England singer-songwriter has grown from hometown folk hero to bonafide stadium act.

“I don’t want to be stuck in one way,” Kahan tells The Hollywood Reporter on a Zoom from the Nashville-based Gold Pacific Studios, where he recorded his upcoming album, The Great Divide. “It was these fears that just rattled around in my head that made it so hard for me to write it all that eventually I just had to let him go. I have always evolved musically in my own way. I think a lot of times I haven’t had the confidence to put it into action.”

Shortly after this conversation, he’d join his producer, Gabe Simon, in meeting fans at an event he hosted with Mastercard, where attendees had a chance to listen to Kahan’s new album early and take part in a Q&A with the singer and producer. Kahan also played the crowd a few songs, including the pre-release singles “The Great Divide” and “Porchlight.”

Set to release in April, The Great Divide marks a new phase in Kahan’s career. The album’s highly anticipated, particularly by the dedicated fanbase he’s garnered throughout the years. He has a Netflix documentary on the way, Noah Kahan: Out of Body, which premiered at SXSW. In June, he’ll set out on a sold-out tour, heading to arenas and stadiums around the country, including four hometown nights at Fenway Park in Boston. Fans at Friday’s Mastercard event were gifted two tickets to the tour.

Below, Kahan speaks with THR about The Great Divide, sharing the album with fans and what to expect on tour.

Some fans are going to hear your new album tonight. How does it make you feel knowing people are going to start perceiving the album and forming opinions about it?

That’s a great way to put it. Perceiving is the right word. My perception of the album, of music I make, is always so different from the fans. I have my own stories and my own relationships with the songs, and part of me is nervous to let go of that and to let it out into the world, and into the world of opinion and perception. But I’m really excited because I’m proud of it. I’m proud of what I made, and my fans have always been really attuned to what I’ve tried to say.

They’re really articulate and intelligent and discerning music listeners, so I’m very excited for them to get a chance to be here with me tonight and really get asked the questions about the songs. To experience it in this intimate setting is really unusual and really coo, so I’m grateful to Mastercard for allowing this to happen. I’ve never been able to have a listening session like this that’s curated so much for the fans and so about the kind of connection that we have.

The kind of music you make is suited for these intimate settings, but you are obviously a stadium act these days. How do you feel about not getting the opportunity for these smaller moments as much anymore? Is that something you mourn the loss of sometimes, or does it just feel special when it happens?

I think a little bit of both. I think I do mourn the loss of that because when you’re in those smaller rooms, you just want to get to the bigger rooms. You want to play for the most people possible. You really lose sight of what makes those shows so special, the intimacy and the connection and being able to see every single face and to feel like you’re in a room with friends. Playing huge shows is an unbelievable privilege. As someone that spent eight years playing for people eating dinner that wanted me to be anywhere but next to them, I completely understand and respect the opportunity I’ve been given. But you’re right, I do think that this music in particular is really meant for intimacy.

Trying to deliver that on a large level has been a really fun process, but the best way to do it is by just making it intimate and playing for a little bit less people, playing some things acoustic. They’ve almost got it looking like a coffee shop in here, which is how I grew up playing music. It’s really, really fine-tuned to that kind of experience that I started out doing, which I think is not just special for the fans, but also really nostalgic and special for me.

You’re getting ready to go out on tour. What has the process been like? It sounds like you’re trying to make these large shows still feel intimate. What have you found so far to make that a reality?

In making the music, we were thinking a lot about how to translate these songs live. One thing that happened with Stick Season is that we didn’t really know what our touring plan was going to be. We were just making music to make music, really. This album, we knew [it] was going to be toured, and we’d be playing it for a while. We’d just gotten off of three years of stick season touring. A lot of these songs are really built for the stage. You don’t need to do too much finessing to change it. There are huge moments, but a lot of the songs in this album are very intimate and very close to me. Through stage design, through some arrangements, we’re going to make it really special to be in a place with 20, 30, 40,000 people. I want it to feel like people are just right there with me. The intention behind the whole thing is to make sure we maintain that connection to the fans.

This tour is obviously large scale. You’re playing four nights at Fenway Park, which is crazy. Getting to this level, do you still feel the same pressure in touring? Are you feeling more comfortable after all the Stick Season touring?

Not to sound like a broken record, but a lot of my confidence and a lot of my excitement and my energy on stage just comes from the fans. They’ve always been so eager. You could see from a lot of the stuff online, people are really excited and folks are really, really valuing this experience, and it makes me value it so much more. I was always nervous [about performing], and I was always kind of clenching my butt cheeks for the whole thing, for lack of a better… There’s got to be a better term, but I’m going to come up with a better term. Sometime around the last couple years, I started to realize that the chances to play with this many people don’t come around for artists a lot. They might not ever come around for me again. I started to just enjoy it and try to take it in. The fans feed off that a lot. I think they see me having fun, and they give themselves freedom to have fun. I see them letting loose, and I let loose.

Why did “The Great Divide” feel like a great entry point to this new album? I know you’d been playing it on tour.

That was such an evolving conversation. As we were making the album, we were always like, “Could this be the single? Could this be the single?” We kind of weren’t able to choose anything for that reason. They all felt really strong, but they also all felt like they could stand out as songs people might want to hear as a single. We kept looking for things that weren’t really the point. We were like, “What has the most catchy chorus, or what has the most loud, epic and themic part?” I think what we realized is that we wanted to make sure we led with the storytelling first. “The Great Divide” is really emblematic of the storytelling on the rest of the record, in my opinion.

It’s the best entryway into the record from a storytelling and sonic perspective. I think it offers something a little bit different from a lot of the stuff on Stick Season. There’s a little bit more going on musically, it’s a little bit more rocking, and I think that is really fun because that’s the direction I want to go in. It also just tells a story that I think is emblematic of the entire album.

You’ve had a very unique trajectory. You had this song blow up in a way that you don’t really see these days, and it led you on a years-long path to get to this point. What’s changed for you musically, and have you been able to reflect on what’s changed since you put out Stick Season? No one wants to put out the same record a million times, you have to evolve.

I was so aware of that. I’m like, “I have to evolve.” I have to be different. I have to have a different sound. I don’t want to be stuck in one way. It was these fears that just rattled around in my head that made it so hard for me to write it all that eventually I just had to let him go. I have always evolved musically, in my own way. I think a lot of times I haven’t had the confidence to put it into action. For my second album in particular, I feel like I was really low on confidence. I was trying to do what I thought I was supposed to do, which was to keep making pop-leaning music. Every once in a while, a song would sneak into an album or to an EP that I’m like, “That is what I want to make.” But the whole picture was never really there. I feel like “Stick Season” was the clearest I ever saw that picture form. I saw what I could be musically, and I feel like this album is exactly what I wanted to be musically. The evolution, it wasn’t strategized. It just kind of happened through working with new people and experiencing new things. As soon as I stopped trying to control it all is when that evolution actually was able to happen, because I was able to take in life and take in other music and take in experiences in a more authentic way.

In what way?

Music has always pissed me off. (Laughs) The one thing that’s stayed the same in my whole life is that writing songs has always been full of triumph and grief and pain and enjoyment. It’s always been like that for me. In a way, as everything around me changed — my lifestyle, my tour, my career — knowing that music could still frustrate me, still challenge me and still bring me that real feeling of joy that doesn’t just go away after a couple days, made me realize that I was growing. I wanted it so bad to be something that moved me as well.

Like we spoke about earlier, you’re going to see how people react to the album in real-time tonight. What’s your hope for the evening? How do you want people to leave feeling tonight?

I hope that people leave knowing that the album is going to have a wide range of feelings on it. So far, the songs we put out are definitely anthemic and kind of big choruses, but I think some of the songs they’ll hear tonight are a little bit more understated. Some of them are much more raw recordings. We really wanted to capture the feeling of Vermont in this album. Vermont has so many quiet, beautiful moments that you really just need to hear to experience. Some of the songs were recorded in ways that really capture that feeling.

Getting a chance to really hear some of the guts of this album, I’m very excited for people to leave hearing those songs. I’m excited for people to see what some of the songs could look like live. But mostly I’m excited for them to hang out with each other. Their community is really, really inspiring and has always been the backbone of my career. I really hope we can get some of that bond-building between them today because that’s really what drives this whole thing forward.