Changes have been the recurring theme which Vermont’s very own, Noah Kahan, has endured in the last couple of years since he released his debut album, Busyhead. Now with the release of his sophomore album, I Was / I Am, the singer-songwriter chats with Variance's Ethan Ijumba regarding these changes he’s faced such as his brief hiatus from music, the inspiration behind his newest album, and his upcoming tour beginning in October.

Be sure to scroll below to read their conversation and to stream I Was / I Am on all platforms.

Ethan Ijumba:
So since we last talked, everything at that time was quarantine themed series and with gags like “Couchella”, “Quarantine and Chill”, and all that stuff which was a whole different world at that time. How have you been now? With everything's been going and it’s pretty much we outside again vibes with everything opening up but how have things been for you?

Noah Kahan:
Good, it's weird to look back at that time of quarantine it’s so funny to look back on, everyone was like I'm eating and drinking so much and like I'm doing nothing and we're like making bread and I don't know this is a very specific time, so it's funny to look back on that, I feel like we were all collectively different people then. I feel good being back out and back in new york city moved out of my dad's house and I'm kind of like living more of an adult independent lifestyle. getting ready to hit the road this album is coming out this weekend, so that's kind of a big thing I've been thinking about for the past few months and it's kind of been very pervasive in my mind and I'm excited to shed that stress this weekend and be able to move forward, and also have the album that people enjoy. 

EI:
That's what's up. You were quarantining in Vermont when you were back home right? 

NK:
Yeah, I lived in Manhattan and then I moved back home in March of 2020, which was in Vermont, until May 2021. I was back home for a while and I was like, I could always [build a life] in Vermont. I was very comfortable and I didn't even really need to leave until my dad and I decided that I wasn't making a lot of progress there and moving to Brooklyn was a big step but it was the right one I think. 

EI:
So now you're currently based in Brooklyn?  

NK:
Yeah, I'm in Greenpoint Brooklyn.

EI:
Do you enjoy it? Is it good with the surroundings and just everything overall? 

NK:
I love it I really do, I lived in Manhattan and never really felt like home to me, it was just very busy and super intense and I'm just a little bit more laid back than what the energy was there, the neighborhood here is really friendly and homey. I also have a dog now and there's a park nearby and being able to walk the dog around and have space for her and a space for me to has made the experience way better and has made the community feel way more welcoming. 

EI:
So since we last talked you pretty much released your most recent EP was Cape Elizabeth and that served as the follow-up to Busyhead. Now we're getting your newest album which is your sophomore which is, I Was / I Am. Compared to Busyhead, what have you learned and approached differently on I Was / I Am exactly. How exactly did you treat this one? How did you go about it? How would you compose it? Were there any differences? And how exactly did you go through that thought process with it? 

NK:
Yeah, there are definitely, differences in the approach to making the album. Honestly, I wasn't thinking about how I gotta make my next album. I knew it was going to come to a point where I would release another, but I was more so just writing songs and I want to document where I'm at in my life. I feel like I found a place of better self-understanding for me, Busyhead was very uncertain, and about where am I in the world? I feel like I've got my feet a little bit under me a little more now I think. So this album kind of comes with that feeling of knowing where I'm at knowing why I got here and knowing what I want to be and those songs kind of came from that feeling. So I was writing songs that unconsciously were pronouncing that feeling of being situated in my life and looking back and forward. Then those songs that really presented themselves as a piece of cohesive work that we ended up making it to an album. So it wasn't a situation where I was writing like I need to write 10 songs. I was just writing all these songs that felt honest and real to me and they ended up speaking to a certain idea kind of unconsciously and that became the concept for this record. 

EI:
So with that being said, most debut albums have the same goal to introduce an artist to listeners. Kind of like a new complete body of work that can just have people be like a, “Hi my name is” kind of album or a “nice to meet you, this is what I sound like”. This being your second album, you don't have to do that introductive approach because we already had Busyhead. So for the second album, was there any specific impact or goals that you were trying to achieve or just maintain or obtain when releasing this one? 

NK:
Definitely, I feel like it's really important for me to not feel like I'm stagnating in terms of my creativity in the way I make my music, and also musically I want to advance. I wanted this album to feel like it took a step forward in terms of the sonics of it. I wanted it to be higher energy, more anthemic and I wanted to feel bigger and that was an approach I consciously took when making this record, I think what draws people to my music is my honesty. I didn't want to lose that brutal honesty and the self-deprecation in the lyrics, but I also wanted to be able to advance the music and not feel like I was kind of staying in the same place. So I tried to advance musically for this project and I think the songwriting evolved too as I got older. So I think just trying to always stay pursuing more and staying hungry for more is the evolution of the music and the lyrics.

EI:
To go along with that answer when you were making this album, were there any specific influences or inspirations that you had that really brought out a different side of you for this project. For example, some people try not to listen to certain artists, or some go about only gonna listening to a specific genre, or approach it as I'm going to work with this specific person to see if I can have this kind of piece inside of me. Was there any specific influence, methods, or inspirations that you had for yourself for this project? 

NK:
Yeah, it's hard, it's not, I really can't really hard for me to pinpoint one, I think for this album, I knew it was gonna be more pop leading in the production and the kind of the songwriting structure, you know, artists in like the pop at night, the pop kind of space that I feel are really able to still be honest and still tell stories. Artists like Jon Bellion and Post Malone, are good at producing really beautiful songs that are smart but also really catchy. Those kinds of artists inspired some of the songs and I wasn't necessarily listening to people be like, oh, that's what I want to sound like. I think it's kind of just like seeps into you when you're listening. Those are definitely two guys that inspired some of the tunes and of course, I'm always listening to, you know, Paul Simon and Cat Stevens and tons of folk music and I think of the whimsy that comes with some of those older songwriters play a role in my songwriting for this album. 

EI:
Honestly, I think that's one of your biggest talents that you really have and that's being able to balance between the folk and pop music sounds to blend and compose it into your side of things where people can be like, wow, he sounds like this, but doesn't sound just like a specific person solely with you having your individuality. With that being said, do you ever find it difficult to bridge the gap between those two genres at all? 

NK:
Yeah, it's gotten even harder because I set the Cape Elizabeth EP which is really more on the folkier side. And now I'm like, damn, I kind of wanted to make one of the other and I end up either going too far in one direction and isolate myself from my people that like my pop music or going too far to the folk, and I'm not as accessible anymore, I'm still really working on finding that balance. I think the word pop music is kind of a weird box to put anyone in because it just means popular. I want to always have narrative-driven songs that feel raw and organic, but don't necessarily have to be like a mandolin and banjo and wearing overalls. I want to be able to kind of have a hybrid of both and if I want to lean more into the narrative and the traditional folk storytelling then great, and if I want to leave more to the hookey pop music style then cool, I'm just trying to find a balance of that for sure and it's been a big challenge.

EI:
So speaking of your songs, I know that in 2019-2021, you had a huge let's take a break from what we normally do as an artist period. For example, you didn't get to go touring, you didn't get to like promote how you normally promote, you didn't get to like drop as many singles or even get any follow-ups or any videos or anything like that. The whole music industry just was a very, very different world from that time being. For this record, you said that it was a lot about during that time you had a lot of losses. You had a lot of changes through that period and that each record really just represents a new understanding of yourself. Is there any song specifically that really gave you that personal connection to you most that really just derived how you were feeling and just kind of like emulated everything that was going on and how you are now as a person that really just captured that.  

NK:
Definitely, I mean there's a lot of change, and as you said usually an artist is touring and dropping songs and filming videos and traveling, traveling, traveling and I was doing all that for so long that I didn't really have any required reading in terms of my self-reflection, it was kind of just like, oh, I can just like travel and tour and like push this shit away for as long as I'm busy and that's really easy to do and then Covid happened and it was like, okay, I have to think about the shit I have nothing else to do. I have to think about this shit. And I was able to write the song that I love called “God Light”, which to me it's a real reflection of the changes that have happened to me since I started in music when I was younger until now and a lot of them are negative and adverse. I don't think I would have been able to make that song without that forced reflection that Covid brought me. So I was forced to look at myself and think about who I was, what I lost, what I sacrificed, and how I can be better from who I want to become later on and at what cost it'll be at. So, Covid gave me a place to reflect on that for better or worse. On a lot of the songs on this project, I don't think I could have written if I had just been continuing to force myself into a billion different little projects that would never allow me to actually take time to reflect and feel real feelings. It's really easy to create an artificial life around yourself where you don't have to challenge your thoughts and your feelings at all if you don't want to and Covid really stripped that away for a lot of people. So I think a lot of people who have been having periods of reflection are uncomfortable and I hope that this album speaks to those people’s dialogues and not just mine. 

EI:
So with that being said about how you mentioned how this record is much more of a reflective side for you to look back, see yourself, and view from your different perspective. What exactly would you say you learned in that time that you were away from everything that people might hear from this album that you’ve learned a lot based on that period about yourself.

NK:
I don't know necessarily how much it comes through, I hope it does because it's hard for me to hear the music objectively as if someone listen to it the first time. I’m just too tied up in my musicianship so it's hard for me to know what people will take away from it. But, what I took away from the songs was that finding fulfillment in success will never really happen for me. I always thought, when I sell out this show I'll be happier, or when I have 10 million streams on a song, I'll be happy. it's always where you just want more and more and that happiness never really feel satisfying and I think what I realized that most were that I need to find things that bring me lasting fulfillment and that it's not gonna come from success, but it's going to come from honesty and creating and forming a community and relationships with people. I think I now know that I need to focus on those things for excess, building blocks of my happiness instead of monetary success or whatever numbers on Spotify or numbers of people in the crowd. It's a physical exercise, but I'm really trying to practice reminding myself that grasping for that kind of happiness and that kind of success isn't gonna bring me real happiness and I need to find the things that do really equal real happiness.

EI:
Kinda like how you can win a Grammy, but that doesn't mean you're successful.

NK:
I know what you mean, I think most artists and creatives don't see that there's no end to what you feel you can accomplish and what you want and what's going to satisfy you. But, you also need to have things that really do make you comfortable with being yourself because it's a hard life to live, and I've lived a lot it relying on numbers to make you feel like a human being and it just leads you to a place where you're not going to get out of the hole. So having a little bit of both is something I'm working on balancing, and that's definitely something that I hope comes through this album is like understanding yourself and understanding truths about yourself that are difficult to digest.

EI:
Basically chasing unfinished glory. 

NK
Yeah, totally. 

EI:
So ideally, now you guys are album coming out, you got everything going in but now October 15 marks your first day back to touring and now back to playing shows, back to getting prepared, and back to rehearsal. How has it been since having this huge hiatus from on the road?

NK:
Yeah, I’m excited and it's a little weird not having toured in two years to be going back out and I still remember how to play music, but I don't remember what it's like to tour anymore. I did it so long, I left, I didn't want to think about it because I was tired and then I didn't have to think about it for two years so I'm nervous, but I'm very excited and just the opportunity to play music live or something I'll never take for granted again so I can't wait to get back out and play music for my fans I’m so excited. 

EI:
Are you doing everything from Cape Elizabeth, Busyhead, and a couple of songs from your new album and kind of keeping them a little bit mixed in here and there and switching it up between them collectively?

NK:
I’ll probably mix them in, It's kind of tough cause you want to play new music, but also don't want to sacrifice any of the songs that I love playing live and I haven't gotten to play any of Cape Elizabeth live so I really want to do some of that. It's gonna be interesting to see how that translates because it's folkier and it's a little rawer. So it's gonna be interesting, I think it's gonna take some trial and error and there's gonna be some shows where it'll feel a little weird, and eventually, by the middle of the tour I think we're gonna be really locked into a really cool set that's a hybrid of all the songs 

EI:
Aside from that, I know that touring really brought you a lot of places to meet new people and market and just overall, show your music to new people that I probably never heard of, something that's similar sense before. With that being said, do you also have any big plans you got coming out? I know that you were working with Dermot Kennedy a couple of months ago and then you have the Cat Stevens project as well. Is there anything else that you've got upcoming or planned that you can speak on? 

NK:
Yeah, I did do a writing session [with] Dermot Kennedy, which was wonderful and a real dream come true. I don't know the status of what we did, it was for his project so I guess we'll see. But I have been doing a lot of writing for other artists and trying to get into the world of songwriting for other people. I think it's something I've always wanted to do and like, I can really see myself having a career in, so I've been working really hard at that. It's really hard and I'm learning a lot. So maybe there's some stuff there that will happen soon and other than that I’m really just focused on this album, touring it, and getting back and making more. It's never-ending just releasing an album that doesn’t mean they're not gonna release another song for like two months later so there will be new music coming soon. 

EI:
That's what's up man, honestly, I can't wait to see it. Overall, it's great that you've got this new piece of music coming out. It's been such a huge want and wait from everybody that people have just been missing and needing it.