Noah Kahan’s Stellar Career Is Only Getting Better After Life-Changing Advice From Legendary Folk Rocker

Alongside promoting his tour, Kahan was busy creating a provocative documentary that premiered at the festival. With the help of director Nick Sweeney (Santa Camp), Kahan created Noah Kahan: Out of Body, a piece where he opens up about his history with disordered eating and body dysmorphia. The singer-songwriter doesn't shy away from the messy, rollercoaster experience of recovery, nor does he downplay the more harrowing aspects of the journey. But before we really jump into the documentary, Kahan also teased the release of his new album dropping on April 24, one that also has ties with the movie. During the interview, he explains:

"It was a really difficult process to create, a very challenging process for me creatively, considering a lot of the things you'll see in the movie, like the pressure and the expectation, the changes in my lifestyle. But I really feel like I connected with myself again through it, and I really hope that fans can hear that in the music, and that in hearing that, they're able to find a way to connect with themselves. Nick said beautifully earlier, he hopes that when people watch the movie, they call their parents, they call that person that they've always wanted to say that thing to, and I hope they feel the same way about the album."

'Noah Kahan: Out of Body' Sheds Light on Mental Health

At SXSW, Kahan and Sweeney recount the experience of telling the story of disordered eating in the most authentic way possible. As his first time on camera for a cinematic project, Kahan talks about how he got comfortable with the idea of being on-screen while divulging such an intimate story, but how it also ultimately became a "cathartic" experience that changed him. Meanwhile, Sweeney reveals why he was first drawn to Kahan's "cinematic" style of music and the process of filming and editing a documentary that is so personal. They also discuss the importance of raising awareness around mental health, advocating for the mission behind The Busyhead Project, which raises millions for organizations that support these demographics. As such, you can hear about it all straight from Kahan and Sweeney in the video above, or you can read the conversation below.

Noah Kahan’s Dunkin’ Order Is the Most New England Thing You’ll Hear All Day

"I'm Casey Affleck. See you guys later."

COLLIDER: I'm going to start with what I think is the most important question. I grew up south of Boston, and so I am very curious with New Englanders, which you are, what is your Dunkin' Donuts order?

NOAH KAHAN: Two glazed sticks and a coffee with no cream because they go insane with the cream. I'll get my own cream if I have to, because it's so creamy. It's insane.

You see, you are a true New Englander. Here's the thing, and I don't mean to bring in Dunkin' Donuts, but I love Dunkin' Donuts, but the problem is that depending on the person making your coffee determines what the coffee will be. Every time it’s different.

KAHAN: It’s insane. You’ve got to find the one that does it right. Like, there's a Dunkin' Donuts in Jamaica Plain that I would go to, and it was like going to a completely different place.

No one watching this, unless you've been to Dunkin' Donuts, understands.

KAHAN: Yeah. It’s a toss-up.

Completely. There's one that I know of that I love, and then the other one that's a mile away is garbage.

KAHAN: And they don't always have consistency in the kind of donuts they have. It’s really frustrating because if you want a glazed stick and they're like, “We have jelly,” but that’s a completely different realm of donut. It just throws you for a loop. Ruins your whole day.

We're on the exact same page. And this has been your Dunkin' Donuts update.

KAHAN: [Laughs] And I'm Casey Affleck. See you guys later.

So listen, I really want to say congrats on the doc for being so honest and for doing such a great job capturing his honesty. Let's jump backwards. When did you first connect to talk about, “Hey, let's work together; I want to tell my story?”

KAHAN: Well, we were talking about doing a documentary to kind of capture The Stick Season Tour experience for me and for the fans. It was really just this crazy moment in my career that we knew we wanted to capture, and it wasn't really until Nick came on board that it became something a little bit bigger and a little bit more vulnerable. Nick really, really pushed it to somewhere that was, I think, really special, and maybe not just so much like a “here's my tour” kind of thing.

NICK SWEENEY: I’d been working with the production company, and I was hearing rumors that there might be a documentary that Noah wants to make, and I was really interested in it because his music is very cinematic. There are all these details about the place that he's from and his town. My big question was, “Is this person actually ready to let me in? Are they really going to let me be there as they confront the huge existential questions of their life?” And as soon as we started talking, the answer was yes. Completely.

Nothing was off limits. I kept waiting for Noah to be like, “I don't want to cover that,” or “I don't want to talk about that,” and it just never happened. He really goes so deep in this film. So, as soon as we started talking and as soon as we started filming, it was clear that there was something like a very big personal documentary there to be made.

What I'm always so curious about with docs is how long, for example, on this project were you filming for? Was it one of these things where you're filming seven days a week all the time, or was it a conversation like, “We'll do it these days?”

SWEENEY: The tour was a natural thing to be filming because obviously, there are these incredible venues, and in Noah's trajectory, they just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We see in the sequence of Stick Season in the film where he's starting out in these 2,000-person rooms, and then it's 5,000 people, and then it's 10,000 people. So, the tour offered a really natural thing to capture.

Beyond that, we're in pretty regular contact about what is Noah doing? When is he visiting his family? Is somebody coming to visit? And it was really just a matter of us then responding to that because we would find out, like, Noah’s dad is coming to visit him in Nashville in a week or something, and then we would just very quickly get a consistent crew together and go down and film stuff.

When you were doing it, I know you shot footage, but did you ever have two or three cameras going? Obviously, when you're filming a concert, you have multiple cameras, but when you're filming at your house with your dad, or when you visit your high school, is it a one-camera crew?

SWEENEY: We stayed very small. We had a very small crew — myself, the producer, Sam [Mustari], and Henry [Allison] and Asher [Brown], who are actually filmmakers who happened to go to high school with Noah. So, it was a pretty tight and small team that we had. That was it. It was us four, and sometimes even less than that. There were scenes, for example, in the studio when Noah was recording a new song, and that's just me. I keep kind of giggling to myself because I keep remembering he kept closing his eyes when he was doing the vocal takes because he was singing, and each time he closed his eyes, I would sneak up a little bit closer, and then he'd close them again, and I'd sneak up a little bit closer. Then you see in the film, by the time you get to the chorus of this song, the camera's there, and he opens his eyes, and I think he was hoping that I wouldn't be there. But yeah, it was a very small team, and that's how I think we got such great stuff.

KAHAN: Yeah, that trust is really important. Like, knowing that if someone's in this space with you in a very vulnerable moment, that they'll be capturing it with the intention of telling the story instead of just looking for a scene of me crying or a scene of me singing. I feel like there was more behind each shot than what would meet the eye, and it was really cool to watch it back and see, “Oh, that's what you're doing in that section.” It was really eye-opening to see the process.

Noah Kahan Says His Documentary Felt Like “Therapy” While Filming

"It's helped me understand how to be more present."

You obviously have cameras in front of you, and you're very proficient on social and putting TikToks out, so you're comfortable with the camera, but it's one thing to be with your phone. It's another thing when you have a crew following you around and recording. At what point did you feel comfortable with the cameras being there, and did you find yourself, as the shoot was going on, becoming willing to become more vulnerable and talk in a way that perhaps surprised you?

KAHAN: Yeah, definitely. It just takes time. You just start to get used to it a little more and more. And once you accept, “They're going to be here,” it becomes easier. Especially in the moments with my dad, I think I was mostly worrying about their interpretation of the cameras, but once I saw my dad relaxing, my family relaxing, I felt like, “Okay, if they can do this, I can too.” Honestly, so much of it was so cathartic that I kind of forgot that it was going to be a documentary, eventually. I was just like, “This is basically like therapy,” and then the cameras happened to be there, and it made it easier for me to handle. It's like right now, where I'm nervous, it's like, “Oh, people are going to actually see it,” but in those moments, it just felt good to talk and to be me and to be comfortable, that it became easy.

Like I said at the beginning, you are very vulnerable in the film and really pull back the curtain on your headspace and who you are. Obviously, you know all this stuff about yourself, but when you saw the movie for the first time, did it possibly change you in a new way, or did you see yourself in a way that you'd never seen yourself because you're being so honest?

KAHAN: Absolutely. What's really hard to watch is how consumed I am by the pressure and expectation, and that impostor syndrome. There are a few scenes where I'm, like, surrounded by family and friends and screaming crowds, and you can tell I'm really still thinking about what comes afterwards. So, it's helped me understand how to be more present in those moments, and to know that whatever I'm consumed with can be saved for later, but to try to enjoy those moments of being around my wife or my friends, my family, and all these people that are there for me, and trying to be more there for that moment, is something I learned about myself, because I was really lost, I think, through a lot of the filming. So, I don't think I would have had that knowledge without those hard moments. But that's what's really cool about the documentary, is that my family, myself, my band, my friends, they all got to see what we all look like together, and that helps inform how you want to behave and how you want to be in the future.

Something that you address in the film is the success of your last album, and then trying to write after you've had such success. It's getting back into a headspace of where you were when you were first writing. I've always found it interesting when musicians experience extreme fame and extreme success, and then they're trying to write. I watched the Counting Crows documentary recently, and something that Adam Duritz did, which I found so amazing, was that he had all that success after the first album, and he moved to LA and worked as a bartender at the Viper Room for six months, and was just Adam, working as a bartender. Then he wrote Recovering the Satellites, which is this amazing album.

KAHAN: One of my favorite albums of all time.

I honestly think it's better than the first album, but it's from those six months of living in LA. I'm so curious what it was like for you, because you have a new album coming out, trying to figure out that headspace of writing after the success, and the difficulty of that.

KAHAN: It's a really, really complicated thing because what brings you success is, like what Adam did or what I did to mix Stick Season, which was kind of letting go of the result and just being where you are, making music. I just sat on my mom's couch for a year and wrote songs, and it just was what I was doing. There was no intention behind it, really, besides to make music. Then suddenly you're trying to go back and trying to repeat this process, but then you're already being inauthentic by trying to repeat something. The irony is that you can never go back, and I think moving forward was really hard for me.

But what the documentary helped me with was that it addressed a lot of the things that were lingering in my life, like questions about my self-image, my relationship with my family, my relationship with Vermont, and with fame or whatever. I didn't really see how that looked from outside of my head until I watched the documentary, and once I realized some closure by watching the movie, I feel like I was able to start writing and start looking for it again, and kind of felt like I had not solved, but confronted some of these things, and that was really important.

I had a conversation with Marcus Mumford on the phone when I was really in the throes of burnout. This was after the documentary was done. Six or seven months, I was doing nothing, and he said, “The process is not going to be the same, and it's okay to let go of the idea that it will be the same.” And once I let go of the result or trying to control it all is when I feel like things came a lot easier.

I'm fascinated by talking about editing because it's where it all comes together. You obviously had a ton of footage, so talk a little bit about what it was like. You get in the editing room with the beast that's in front of you. How did the film get shaped in the editing room?

SWEENEY: Noah goes so deep in this film. I mean, he talks about things that I never expected that we would be covering, and yet I think he also kind of exists in this sweet spot between painful and funny sometimes. There are some really good examples of that in the film, like at Fenway, he makes this joke about, “How many people out of here’s parents split up? Let me hear you say ‘two Christmases!’” It's like that. It's like this very, very delicate balance that we wanted to make sure that we captured because it was what was in the footage. So, as we were putting it together, it was really important to us to exist in that space where it's not all processing of big existential questions, but also showing the fun and the humor of his life.

One of the things that you see is this insane scale between these huge venues and huge shows, and then his very quiet everyday life. There's a moment in the film just after Fenway where we wake up the next day, and he goes and helps his mom do chores, like putting a dock into the pond, and all you can hear is frogs and crickets, but 12 hours before that, it was people screaming and fireworks. We really wanted to show that contrast, and it really informed the way that we cut it together.

KAHAN: There's so much bipolarity in a musician's life, or a touring artist's life, and I feel like I don't see that a lot. I feel like you think it's either all great or crushingly lonely, and I think there's an in-between space that Nick captured really beautifully, was that silence in the noise. I just thought it was beautiful.

So I do the studio here at South By, and we go all day, and it's morning to night. Yesterday, eight in the morning, I worked until midnight, and again, I'm lucky to do what I do. I'm not trying to complain, but what I am saying is, I finish my work at midnight, and I need time to decompress, to be able to go to bed, even though I know I have to be up again early in the morning. What the hell is it like playing at something like Fenway, where you're in front of tens of thousands of people, and then how do you decompress after a show to be able to actually go to bed at a reasonable time, to do it all over again the next day?

KAHAN: Yeah, it's hard. You see in the documentary those moments where I'm just immediately going on my phone and thinking about the show. I have a hard time. It's hard to escape that moment. You just want to stay in that kind of serotonin high.

One thing that's always helped me is just literally turning my phone off, going to Vermont, hanging out with my parents. As you see in the film, it's a very grounding place. My family is very down-to-earth, and they always bring me back to even, which is something I try to do as much as I can. It's hard. It's hard for any artist. I think any artist would tell you the loneliness of that experience, of being here and then there, is really tough. I'm still working out how to find that decompression. But sometimes it's just the physical exercise of turning your phone off, not talking about the show, playing some video games, playing some golf, whatever it is you do. Those things have helped me.

Noah Kahan Gets Real About Fame, Fans, and Sold-Out Shows

"I'm incredibly grateful."

I looked, and I think your entire 2026 tour is sold out?

KAHAN: Yeah. At least the United States and Canada stuff is sold out.

What is that actually like? There are a lot of artists right now that are struggling, that are hoping to go on a summer tour, but the economics of the industry make it very, very difficult. But you have sold out your tour, which is like, Holy F.

KAHAN: I was surprised, too. I used to say that if I did this or if I did that, then it would solve this problem for me, and so I went into this tour without the mindset of like, “We need to sell it all out for me to be happy!” Just the fact that we're in these venues, and people still want to come see me, especially considering the economic times we're in, that price of tickets, the demand for live music, and the inability for some people to afford shows, it's not lost on me. I'm incredibly grateful. I'm very, very fortunate for my fans. They're just so, so dedicated to this, and, I do it all for them.

You have an album coming out at the end of April, [April 24th]. What do you want to tease people about the album, and, I don't want to say how it compares to your previous music, but what do you want to say about it?

KAHAN: It was a really difficult process to create, a very challenging process for me creatively, considering a lot of the things you'll see in the movie, like the pressure and the expectation, the changes in my lifestyle. But I really feel like I connected with myself again through it, and I really hope that fans can hear that in the music, and that in hearing that, they're able to find a way to connect with themselves. Nick said beautifully earlier, he hopes that when people watch the movie, they call their parents, they call that person that they've always wanted to say that thing to, and I hope they feel the same way about the album.

I really want to commend you for The Busyhead Project, which is shining a light on mental health. You should say a little bit more about it, but 20 years ago, 30 years ago, mental health was like a stigma that you just couldn't talk about, and especially in the 1900s. I feel like in the last 10, 20 years, it's gotten so much better. Can you talk about what you're doing, which is helping so many people?

KAHAN: My family and I are incredibly open, and we've always had an open dialogue about mental health. We've all struggled with it in one way or another, and we also all had access to treatment for it, which was just such a privilege growing up. So, as I left the bubble of that experience and saw a lot of folks who don't have that kind of privilege or who don't have conversations around the dinner table about what they're going through, it just made a lot of sense for us to try to do something in this space.

We have access to thousands of people every night who, I think, want to support this cause as well. We've raised $6.5 million in three and a half years. It's an unbelievable privilege. We're not experts, so what we're doing is we're highlighting organizations that are doing amazing work in the space. That is the coolest part, getting to meet these people who are boots-on-the-ground, saving lives, helping people get through really hard things, and being a part of supporting that is the most fulfilling endeavor of my career so far.

Real fast, a few last things. What's your go-to karaoke song?

KAHAN: “Doses and Mimosas” by Cherub.

What about you?

SWEENEY: “Wuthering Heights.”

KAHAN: [Laughs] Topical.

I did not expect either of these answers. Something else I'm curious about is, I love seeing musicians that I love performing songs by other people and seeing their interpretation or take. With this upcoming tour, or just in general, what are your thoughts on doing cover songs or performing songs by other people that you love and making them your own version?

KAHAN: Totally. We just did a festival in Mexico we put on called Out of the Blue, and we did an entire night where every artist would come up with us, and we learned a new cover. Having spent so much time in the open mic space growing up, covers kind of became this thing where I was like, “Man, I did those for so many years,” and I feel like I went away from that for a while. But getting to do this festival set and reimagining songs that we love with my insanely talented band is really fun. We have a ton of covers that we've been working on, and it's just a matter of finding time in between our songs to play something for the fans, finding the right song. I love when someone makes a cover unique, so always trying to make it sound like ourselves, but also the artist is a fun challenge.

So, I've been asking this of everyone coming in: Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?

KAHAN: Yes. I’m a huge soccer fan, so whenever I meet a soccer player, for me, that's like meeting a hero.

Alexi Lalas was just here.

KAHAN: Alexi Lalas was here?

He was literally just here.

KAHAN: Nice. Yeah, it would be nice to grab an autograph from Alexi.

It's just funny that of all the people who were here.

KAHAN: Alexi Lalas, 1994!

There's a doc here at South by called Summer of ‘94. It's going to be on Fox on May 23rd. It's all about the summer of ‘94. Alexi is a huge part, and all the players. It's really well done.

KAHAN: He has a music project.

He was also just on The Masked Singer and just got eliminated. I saw his closing song, and he can sing.

KAHAN: Yeah, no, he's good. Yeah. He's like a legit artist. What about you, Nick?

SWEENEY: Shirley Manson from Garbage, not so long ago.

KAHAN: Nice!

Noah Kahan: Out of Body premieres on Netflix on April 13.