How Writing a Viral Hit Restored Noah Kahan's 'Faith' in Music — and Inspired New Album 'Stick Season'

Like many millennials, singer-songwriter Noah Kahan spent the pandemic at his parents' house, holed up in an old barn amid the trees of rural Vermont.

Unlike many millennials, however, Kahan's year-and-a-half-long hibernation yielded more than just banana bread and a completed jigsaw puzzle. As he came to terms with the isolation he felt moving back to the small town that raised him, he also wrote Stick Season, his upcoming third album — which, according to Kahan, is a culmination of years of work.

"This is something I wanted to do my whole life, and it felt like every musical moment I've ever had has led me to this project," he tells PEOPLE. "It made me feel inspired and fulfilled."

The 14 tracks on Stick Season are a love letter to New England that embody the dropping temperatures of autumn in a way perhaps no album has since Taylor Swift's Red. With his folksy guitar, Kahan transports listeners to the tree-filled woods of his youth — even if you've never experienced a flannel-clad bonfire, listening to the album will probably make you nostalgic for one.

Kahan's depiction of small-town life will be familiar for many — he sings of dirt roads named after high school friends' grandfathers, and the ways in which a new Target in the area has kickstarted a "downtown."

"This place is such great motivation/For anyone trying to move the f— away from hibernation," he sings on "Homesick," which also includes the lyrics: "I would leave if only I could find a reason/I'm mean because I grew up in New England" and "I will die in the house that I grew up in."

On "Northern Attitude," he belts, "If I get too close/And I'm not how you hoped/Forgive my northern attitude/Oh, I was raised out in the cold."

"In New England, the stereotype is that people are more reserved, maybe a little more standoffish — but I think there's a very genuine kindness that comes out of that," he explains. "I think it's a real specific kind of life to live when you grew up in the cold with little light, and it lends to a personality type that is specific to where we're from."

Where he's from is Strafford, Vermont and Hanover, New Hampshire, both small towns that inspired Kahan — the second-youngest of four children — to look inward for excitement in his adolescence.

"I was pretty much just bored all the time," he says. "I love where I grew up, [but] I felt like I had cultivated a really good sense of imagination as a little kid, and this creativity that comes from having to create your own excitement when you're living in a place that's small, and where you know everybody and you see everything."

He credits his mom, an author who worked in publishing, with helping fuel his creative writing spark, and for helping shape his music taste, as she played him Counting Crows, The Avett Brothers, Paul Simon and Cat Stevens around the house, all of which he cites as influences.

Strafford isn't exactly rife with opportunity when it comes to allowing budding songwriters to grow, but Kahan worked with what he had, playing talent shows and open mic nights. His first song, written at 8 years old, was titled "Wednesdays Are the Worst Days of My Life" — and its debut at a school talent show earned him a trip to the guidance counselor.

"I remember a lady came and brought me to her office and was asking me to draw pictures of my family," he recalls. "I didn't realize until later that was just the school being worried about me and trying to find out if there's anything going on at home, because my song was really depressing and weird and sad and morbid."

By the time his senior year of high school rolled around, Kahan was at a crossroads: he'd gotten into Tulane University, his first choice college, but the same week he was set to accept, he received interest from a record label and a manager. Now, his life's path was up in the air.

Kahan says his parents encouraged him to take the record deal, and so he did. He signed with Republic Records in 2016, and his debut studio album, Busyhead, was released in 2019. Both his first and second album, 2021's I Was/I Am, were rooted in pop music.

But when Kahan moved back to Vermont from his New York City apartment during the pandemic, the change of scene proved more inspiring than he'd ever imagined. Much of Stick Season was written during the making of I Was/I Am as "an escape," as, he explains, "it's really hard to write pop music when you're in an old barn looking at like, a 1950s tractor."

"It felt like I was doing them for myself," he says of the songs that make up the album. "A lot of the work I've done in the past felt like I was kind of just trying to stay in the music industry and trying to make an album and continue to have output. I think I was getting really bored and I was running out of ideas and inspiration."

He found what he was looking for at home, where, despite a sense of isolation, he was able to reconnect with his siblings and parents.

"We had to kind of come to terms with a lot of stuff that was going on in our family and my life," he says. "Writing the songs made me feel a little bit less alone, and especially when I saw them start to connect with people… I kind of felt like I got sucked into Vermont and it never really left me again."

Kahan knows that, as one of the country's smallest states, most of his listeners aren't from Vermont. But small-town life is one that transcends state lines, and Kahan is confident that his life experiences are ones that plenty of people can relate to.

Take "Stick Season," which he wrote in 2021, but which blew up in a big way this summer on TikTok. The song, named after the local term for the transition between fall and winter, has been streamed more than 43 million times on Spotify, and hit No. 1 on the platform's Daily Viral Songs Chart. Famous fans like Maisie Peters and Zach Bryan have also released versions of their own.

"I was talking to my manager and we were both like, 'Man, I can't believe this many people around the world are relating to the song whose main line is, 'I love Vermont,'" he says with a laugh. "It's changed my life, it's changed my career and the opportunities I can get, but what has changed the most is my faith in music. I was losing faith in the business, I was losing faith in what I stood for as a musician, and what I stood for as a person, and what I wanted."

He continues: "Writing a song that really meant so much to me, and having it mean a lot to other people, it's been the most reaffirming and incredible experience I've ever had. This is the first time I've ever felt comfortable in my skin as a musician, and I'm really happy about that."

Kahan briefly moved to Brooklyn in May 2021, but is now back in New England, living with his girlfriend and German shepherd Penny in Watertown, Massachusetts, outside of Boston. His sold-out tour kicked off on Oct. 12, and the musician seems eager to hit the road and connect with fans.

"I did a lot of shows for not a lot of people for a long time," he says. "I never played for nobody, but I've played for almost nobody, and it's not a lot of fun. To have this tour sell out and to have the response I've got… it's been really surreal and I'm trying my best not to let it feel normal to me because it's not."

Stick Season is out now.