Noah Kahan’s records lean on a sound that’s instantly recognizable: bright acoustic strumming, banjo-rolling underneath, and a vocal that carries the song’s emotional weight. The songs themselves are some of the friendliest beginner targets in the modern folk-pop catalog, but you have to know the capo trick to see why.
The Noah Kahan capo trick
Most of Kahan’s songs are recorded in flat keys that sound terrible if you try to play them in their original position. Open up a chord chart for Stick Season and you’ll see Db-Ab-Bbm-Gb (or similar). Put a capo on the first fret and play C-G-Am-F instead. Same song, same key for the listener, beginner-friendly shapes for you. Northern Attitude needs a capo at the third. Homesick needs a capo at the fourth. The capo position is the only thing that makes any of these songs hard to figure out without help.
Stick Season is on this site already and is the right place to begin. Once that’s clean, Dial Drunk uses essentially the same template at a similar tempo with a capo on the first fret. Northern Attitude is a small step up, and Hurt Somebody is the slow ballad alternative if you want to practice the same chord vocabulary at half the tempo.
The thing worth taking from Kahan’s playing is the percussive eighth-note strum. He drives songs forward with a relentless right hand, but the volume stays even rather than building, which leaves room for the vocal to bring the dynamics. Match that pattern on any of his songs and you’ll feel how much rhythmic work the strumming hand is actually doing in modern folk-pop.