In march of last year, on a night of musical exploration in the city, I ended up at a basement concert organized by Berklee students. Any show where Berklee students participate feels like watching the next generation of great musicians come to live. A highlight of the night was a guitar player who was rocking jean overalls and silver rings and was playing a mint green guitar. Almost six months later, when Noah Kahan came to town with his “Stick Season” tour, I was looking at my friends’ stories on Instagram when I stumbled upon a video of a musician performing a great guitar solo during the song “Homesick”. I immediately realized it was the same guitar player I saw that day at the basement show. His name is Noah Levine, or as his fans know him, Noah in the Open.
Noah started his music journey at the early age of eight years old when he found his dad’s guitar at his home and asked him to give him lessons. While growing up, he wrote songs, played different instruments and was involved in the music scene in his hometown as much as he could. He attended Berklee College, where he pursued music at a more professional level with the most talented young collaborators in the country. Today, the musician is the guitar player for Noah Kahan’s band and has played in around thirty cities around America and will be playing his own headline show this month.
The name “Noah in the Open” came from his younger years in music. “To be honest at the time, I just thought Noah in the Open sounded cool”, the artists shared. He explained that with the passing of the years he had found a deeper meaning to his stage name.
“There was nobody really in my setting who wanted to do what I wanted to do, you know? If people wanted to do music, they wanted to go the classical route. They were set on playing in an orchestra, but splitting their time between academics so they could have an easy fallback. I started writing and releasing music when I was in eighth grade. None of that music from eighth grade is out now, thank God. But I was really putting myself out there, in a place where it wasn’t unwelcomed, but it was not taken seriously. In that sort of environment, the general idea is that that type of career has a ninety-nine percent failure rate. That was what everyone had in mind. It wasn’t taken seriously, so I really felt like I was opening myself up to my community in a really vulnerable way. I have found meaning in that ever since”.
Noah Levine’s journey to become Noah Kahan’s guitarist on tour started with an internship in Nashville with the “Stick Season” album’s producer, Gabe Simon. The musician started the job by completing tasks like any other intern, making coffee and taking out the trash in the studio. Eventually, he graduated to playing guitar and doing some co-production along with Gabe Simon.
“He had me do a whole bunch of stuff and eventually Noah Kahan came to Nashville to finish up his album. He was doing two days in Nashville because he had done most of it in Vermont already. And you know, I was there to intern, to observe and watch. They were tracking “Growing Sideways”, and I was helping set up microphones and bringing Noah tea and then “Homesick” came around. Gabe was playing the solo and Noah didn’t like how it felt, so Gabe, without a word, just handed me the guitar and they started playing the song and I think it was like the second take that they kept. I got to play that on the record and that was awesome. I found out later that they were going to credit me. That was all enough in itself … I went back to school, I was there for four weeks and I got a call like at seven am before my classes, on September 21st. It was a call from the producer and he said “Hey, Noah needs a guitar player for the tour and he asked for you. You will have to drop out of college and you will need to let me know by tomorrow”. And I was like “OK, let me call you back, I’ll think about that”. I called my parents and, without even finishing my sentence, they both in agreement, said “You have to drop out of college””.
When the first leg of the tour came to an end, the artist came back to Boston. In a full circle moment, Noah put together a show for his closest friends.
“That was a really, really special night for me and my friends…In between tours I always try to make time to spend some time in Boston to go see them. My friends in Boston are my only reason for coming back right now, since I am not studying there. I could have tried to book a venue to play at, but I wanted something very intimate and special with my people there. One of my friends in Boston hosts house shows at his house in Allston, and he hosted me and my friends. It had been a period of change over the past couple of months for the better, but it was bittersweet. To be able to come back and have every single one of my songs be sung back to me, which is something that has never happened before, was just incredibly powerful. I miss those guys every day, they are my best friends”.
The night of this show, Noah in The Open also shared the stage with Noah Kahan. They sang a cover of Jason Isabell’s “If We Were Vampires”.
“I didn’t expect Noah to come out. I had that house show planned, and Noah was in New York that weekend, so I didn’t bother asking him. I texted him some inside joke from the tour and he responded back “See you tonight, baby!” and I was like “What?” and then he said “I am driving back to New York right now to come to your show”. I asked him at the last minute if he wanted to sing a song with me, and we did “If We Were Vampires”. That was another reason why it was really special, because it was kind of a bridge between the two worlds I am living in right now, of my Boston people and the Noah Kahan life on tour. It was really nice to bridge that, to have a connection between those two things”.
Noah in The Open is headlining his own show in The Middle East on March 14th. He announced that New Yorker Jojomber is joining him on stage during the concert. He also shared with us some of the things we could expect for the night and promised there are going to be some surprises we can look forward to.
“I am playing just about everything, the new stuff, a bunch of old stuff. I am playing some unreleased music too, because I’ve been writing a ton and it’s hard to be able to record on the road, so I am just anxious to let people hear the stuff I have been working on. Noah and I have been writing a song too. If we finish it on the road, I would love to play that as well. It’s going to be really special. I am very excited”.
From song writing, to guitar playing, to the production of his own music, Noah has proven to be an up-and-coming artist to look out for. After a year of change and growth, Noah in The Open shares with us a good lesson he has taken from his journey this past year.
“Patience is one of the things I’ve learned… Patience leads to trusting your gut. I would say my gut has been the most consistent thing I can trust. With this whole thing, there have been a lot of hard decisions that I have had to make, and different directions I could have gone. At the end of the day, if it feels good internally, and you are not lying to yourself, then it’s never steered me wrong”.
Listen to Noah in the Open here!
Catch Noah in the Open at The Middle East here!
