Noah Kahan on Telling His Best Friend ‘Dan’ He’d Written a Song About Him: “He Was So Pumped”

In a new interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, Noah Kahan is opening up about the real-life inspiration behind ‘Dan’, the final song on The Great Divide: The Last Of The Bugs.

In many ways, ‘Dan’ feels like the cornerstone of the record, with Kahan spending much of the project exploring his relationship with old friends, new friends, lost friends, his wife, parents, siblings, and - of course - his home-state of Vermont.

After processing and navigating all the complex emotions that surface over the course of the album, we reach ‘Dan’, a quietly hopeful and peaceful vignette from Kahan's past, where he is happily camping with his best friend in the whole world - Dan.

When Lowe asks Kahan who ‘Dan’ is, the ‘Maine’ hitmaker responds, “Dan's my best buddy from back home...Another person where I was like, ‘Hey dude, are you cool with this?’”

He confirmed that - thankfully - Dan was overjoyed to find out about the song, “He was so pumped. I remember we were on our way to my bachelor party, and all my friends were sitting there, and I mention a couple of other friends throughout the record, and they were all there...He was just like, ‘I feel like Achilles, I have a song’. He's super obsessed with history...He felt it was one of the coolest moments”.

Kahan goes on to reflect on how, after the success of Stick Season thrust a lot of the personal relationships he was singing about into an uncomfortable spotlight, he was keen to ensure that he had conversations with those who were on The Great Divide.

He muses, “Again, another thing that I really didn't think about until much later in my life, like, this is a person and I definitely don't want to get too personal in this person's life”.

Kahan meditates on how he appreciates his friendship with Dan even more because of the fact that they had different upbringings and they have opposing views on certain issues. He shares that Dan “comes from a very different background than I do. We grew up in a similar area, where I think it was really easy to be like, ‘We're all from this area so we all must have the same lives at home...So my problems are as important as any of your problems, because we must be the same’. The truth is, like, where we're from and how we grow up shapes everything”.

Kahan outlines, “It takes a lot of courage, I think, and honour, to listen to somebody who you knew grew up with more privilege than you, complain about things..It's so easy to be like, ‘Well I grew up this way, so f*** you, that can't be a real problem’”.

The folk trailblazer underlines, “The friendship we have is so beautiful because we both respect each other so much and we both believe in each other's pain, without any prejudice or bias or pretence, and I think that's a beautiful thing. To know that somebody there might have a reason to say, ‘Well that's not that f***ing bad’”.

Elsewhere in the conversation, Kahan fondly recalls getting lost with Dan in the forest around his family home, with his friend eventually guiding him to safety. He shares how that was when he'd just signed a record deal, and most of his other friends had left for college, while he and Dan remained home in Vermont. Kahan stresses how much he valued having Dan's company, with both admitting they were lonely.

It's a heartwarming friendship that is wonderfully reflected in the sweet, rose-tinted song, making the hope and geniality ‘Dan’ feel like the perfect note to end the album on, especially after the angst and turmoil that pervades so much of the rest of the project. The Great Divide is one of the most rich and visceral records of the year, with Kahan set to be a key contender for 2027 Album of the Year at the GRAMMYs.

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