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Surprisingly Good: A Review of a Noah Kahan Concert By Kimberly Ireson ENGL 3130 Fall 2019 December 4, 2019

I had never heard of Noah Kahan before this year. Noah Kahan As Kahan is a lesser known artist, I had never heard any of • Republic Records his songs on the radio or any music streaming platform. It • One album: Busyhead o Released 6/14/19 was my best friend Ashton who found his music online and • Four non-album singles • Folk-infused pop immediately fell in love. She had shown me a few of his songs, and I had thought that they were okay, but they weren’t quite my thing. However, it was exactly what Ashton liked, and she began to listen to him more and more as she slowly and surely began to feel a connection to the artist and his words about getting older and how it feels.

It was a hot July afternoon and I was at work when my phone began to go off every few seconds for a solid three minutes. Multiple calls, multiple texts. I made my way through the swinging double doors into the stock room at the back of the store to see what the issue was. It was Ashton who was freaking out because Noah Kahan’s Busyhead Tour was going to be making a stop in Asheville, North Carolina which was only one hour from where we lived in

Johnson City, Tennessee. He would be there in September 2019, three months from when she made this discovery. She begged me to go with her, and, as tickets were only twenty dollars, I agreed.

I did not expect to get much from this concert personally. This is not my type of music nor is this an artist I was familiar with. I was going for my friend who usually hated concerts but wanted so desperately to go to this one that she promised me in return a concert of my choice. Ireson 2

And she hates the music I listen to. This was a big deal for her. I was going to the concert as a favor to Ashton, and so I went in expecting to spend a few hours of my life listening to music that I would probably never listen to again.

About the Artist

Noah Kahan is a twenty-two-year-old singer-

songwriter from Strafford, Vermont. Kahan began

writing songs and uploading them to SoundCloud, an

online audio distribution platform, when he was only

eight years old. At seventeen, Kahan attracted the

attention of Drew Simmons of Foundations Artist

Management. Simmons is now Kahan’s manager.

In 2017, Kahan signed with Republic Records. He then Busyhead Tracks recorded six songs with Joel Little, who has previously been known 1. False Confidence for working with artists like Lorde and Khalid. In 2017, Kahan also 2. Mess released two singles, “Young Blood” and “Hurt Somebody”, the latter 3. Hurt Somebody (ft. of which was rerecorded with Grammy nominee Julia Michaels Julia Michaels) 4. Young Blood featured on the track. Kahan released his debut full-length studio 5. Busyhead album Busyhead in June of 2019. 6. Cynic 7. Save Me Kahan was part of quite few tours during 2017 where he 8. Sink opened for artists such as Ben Folds, Anderson East, and Milky 9. Tidal Chance. Kahan has toured in North America and around the world. He 10. Carlo’s Song is currently headlining shows across America in his Busyhead Tour. Ireson 3

The Venue

On September 28, 2019, Ashton and I climbed into my black Volkswagen Beetle and drove the hour from Johnson City, Tennessee, to Asheville. The concert was supposed to start at

9 o’clock so we arrived an hour and a half early to ensure that we would be able to see Kahan, as there were no pre-sold seats at this venue and everyone attending had paid the same amount for tickets as we had.

The concert was being held at The Grey

Eagle Tavern and Music Hall, located right on the edge of Asheville’s River Arts District. The building is not quite what I expected it to be, as it is a tiny one floor building with an old awning and two glass doors. Pulling up to the event, I was confused as to where the actual concert was going to be held with the building being that small. I had been expecting some sort of auditorium instead of a small non-descript building.

Upon entering through the double glass doors, I found that the inside did little to change my opinion. The first room you encounter is the front hall, where they were selling merchandise for the artist, and from there you could enter either the bar or the music hall. Having arrived an hour and a half early, we first made our way to the bar. The Grey Eagle offers a huge selection of beers, but next to no mixed drinks. I ordered the worst sangria I’ve ever had in my life. I hated it so much I threw it away and bought another drink, this time a cider from a brand I had never heard of before called Golden Arrow. It was delicious, and it made up for the nasty sangria in my Ireson 4 eyes. Ashton got a blood orange margarita, which she said was quite good, and then one of the ciders herself.

Now with drinks in hand, we made our way

to the music hall, which turned out to be an empty

room with hardwood floors, old painted blue gray

walls, and a stage at the front of the room. On one

side of the room there was a wooden slat hung up

that had been painted over with a watercolor-like

splash of rainbow colors with a music note in the

middle. I was more than a little surprised to see how small the actual space where The Grey Eagle held performances is. The stage only rises about two feet above the floor and there is no seating except for a VIP booth in the back corner of the room. We would be standing this entire concert.

Before the show I was quite upset with this turn of events. Why was this how the concert was going to be?

What was wrong with seating? Before the show began, all I could think about was how miserable standing in a crowd of people was going to make me.

However, I will say that by the time the concert was over my opinion of the small space and its usefulness had Ireson 5 completely changed. With only about two hundred people in attendance, the small venue added an air of intimacy to the show which benefitted the overall feel of the concert immensely.

The Opening Act

When the first cheers began, Ashton looked at me with very confused look on her face as a tall redheaded man walked out on stage. “That isn’t

Noah,” she whispered. The man sat down at the piano and began to play. We had not been aware that there was going to be an opening act. It never said so online or anywhere within the venue. The merchandise for sale at the front of the building had even been only for Kahan.

The man opening the show was JP Saxe. He opened with a song called “Changed” which was his debut single when he first began to release music. He had no band backing him up. All of the songs that he performed he did by himself, and he played any instrument that accompanied him, usually either the guitar or the piano.

He is very talented. His voice is melodic and sorrowful. He expresses a depth of emotion in the songs he played unlike any I had seen before in person. He displays incredible musical talent in the way he was able to play different instruments and needs no accompaniment other than what he is able to provide himself. I personally loved his set, and I would go watch him perform again in the future.

Noah Kahan

After JP Saxe finished his set, there was about thirty minutes of nothing. There were a few stage crew members who came out to set up the stage, but for the most part nothing Ireson 6 happened. This is really my only complaint for this concert. I cannot understand why there would be that long of a break between the two acts. It really killed the momentum of the show and only made me realize how absolutely exhausted I was from the now two and half hours of standing I had done.

Kahan’s band came out on stage before he did. The band consists of a drummer, a guitarist, and a keyboard player. All three of the band members are men who appear to be in their mid- thirties. The show started with Kahan’s song “Passenger” which got everyone back from the lull that the break had put us all in.

Kahan’s set was accompanied by light effects which would sweep over the stage and out into the audience, something more high-tech than I had expected for the small venue. Many of the light effects were visually stunning and contributed to the feel of the concert.

Kahan, much like his opener, conveys so much

emotion in his voice that you can almost feel it in the air

around you. He is a wonderful singer, and his songs

seem to reach out into the audience and grab you by the

heart. He seems to really enjoy what he is doing when

he is up there, and his enjoyment draws people in and makes them enjoy it as well.

He is also very good at engaging with the audience. He spoke out to them in a way that was somewhat awkward and very relatable. It made him seem more real, more like a member of Ireson 7 the audience than some performer who we had all paid to come see. It gave him the feel of a friend and not a stranger.

The audience consisted almost exclusively of 15 – 25 year olds. Kahan’s songs seem especially appealing to this age group due to their content as they masterfully deal with topics from depression to love to anxiety. Much like the performer himself, the music is very relatable.

It allows the listener to feel as if they are not alone.

At the end of the set, he thanked the crowd and walked off stage. The lights never came back up, the obvious sign an encore was coming. With the crowd cheering, the band came back out one by one. First the drummer who was given a few moments to showcase his talent on the drums. Next was the guitarist and then the keyboardist, who were both also given an opportunity to show how well they could play on their own. They were all followed by Kahan. For the encore they performed the songs “Catastrophize” and “Young Blood”. These two songs especially were incredible, and the entire crowd went crazy for them. After they played these two songs, Kahan truly thanked the audience with more depth than he had the first time and then left for real.

Overall, I was extremely surprised with how much I enjoyed the concert. This is not my type of music or even close, as I often find myself more interested in pop punk groups like Fall

Out Boy or The All-American Rejects. However, I would say that Noah Kahan and JP Saxe have both made a fan of me. They provide audiences with relatable music sung by men with incredible, emotional voices. In the end, they truly give listeners a way to feel as if they are not alone. The venue itself was less than I expected, but the artists far exceeded my expectations. I would attend another Noah Kahan concert without any hesitation.