Down to Earth - Noah Kahan

Vermont Fall Foliage, October 2022

New England makes up less than 5% of the United States’ population. But for as low as that overall slice of the pie is, there is a wicked strong cultural identity for the region. I’m not talking about the stereotypical ‘R’-dropping, Dunks-in-hand, rude-to-the-face caricature that is portrayed in an SNL skit, but rather the hardworking, stoic, and loyal nature of New Englanders.

I make it no secret that I’m a proud New Englander, with some of it taking the form of stereotypical diehard Boston sports fandom. My outward love for this region is born out of my immense pride for it. While there are many iconic New Englanders (JFK, Matt Damon, and Stephen King, to name a few), there is perhaps no one more in the spotlight right now than singer-songwriter Noah Kahan.

I first became familiar with Noah’s work like most others; with the title-track single ahead of Stick Season’s release. A demo version he recorded on a livestream became a popular social media song for short-form videos. I heard it a couple times and was hooked by the chorus, particularly by the opening line, “And I love Vermont, but it’s the season of the sticks.” So I wasn’t the hipster that was, ‘a fan before it was cool,’ but hearing Vermont referenced in a song like that resonated with my western New England self.

With the chorus of that song becoming an earworm of mine, I dove into the background of the artist behind it. I was pleasantly surprised to find he was a fellow late-90s-born native of the Connecticut River Valley, just a hundred miles upstream of my western Massachusetts in central Vermont. Immediately I felt a connection to this guy that I only heard one song of.

For context, within New England are several subregions. Jokingly, Boston is often called, ‘The Center of the Universe,’ while areas like western Massachusetts and Vermont are the, ‘Lands of the Dragons.’ While places like eastern Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and Rhode Island dominate the New England narrative, areas like western Massachusetts and Vermont are essentially secondary places within the picture. Sure, we’re still New Englanders, but we’re not at the cool kid’s table. Vermont was my playground for much of childhood. From summer vacations at Smuggler’s Notch to weekends skiing at places like Mount Snow and Okemo, Vermont holds a special place in my heart. Unfortunately, relatively few get to appreciate this incredible state with it being 49th in population and its main tourism attractions involving semi-niche outdoor activities (backpacking, skiing, leaf peeping, etc.).

All of this is to say that there were a lot of similarities in origin I shared at the surface level with Noah when I first looked into him.

As I dove into his available catalog of music beyond the Stick Season single in the summer of 2022, the first album I listened to wasn’t what I expected. It had that early 2010s stomp-clap folk-pop sound to it (this was Busyhead, his first full-length album). It was nothing like the song that drew me in the first place. However, since I still had made a level of connection based on our shared background, I decided to give it another go with the EP Cape Elizabeth. That project roped me back in, especially the closing track, Maine. Thus I followed Noah Kahan on Spotify and added a couple tracks to my folk rock rotation.

Dropping shortly thereafter was the second Stick Season single, Northern Attitude, a particularly New England-coded track that once again had a beltable chorus. I was extremely impressed not only with the deeply emotional lyric writing, but the guitar work leaning into that more folk-based approach I found on Cape Elizabeth versus the indie-pop vibe on Busyhead. 

It felt like what I’d expect from Vermont.

Stick Season, released in October of 2022

The full Stick Season album dropped in the Fall of 2022 and it exceeded my expectations, officially making me an open fan of his music (along with a ton of other people). I’ve usually been a music first, lyrics second kind of guy, but I was captivated by the raw writing of some of the tracks. It was the first artist that eerily, but yet beautifully, captured some of the darker sides of my generation. Topics like mental struggles in tracks like Growing Sideways or the complicated relationship of leaving your hometown in The View Between Villages are the types of things many late Millennials and early Gen Z are facing at this moment in time. If you ask many of my peers what their lives have been like since 2020, I bet a majority of them would admit to sharing these same universal struggles that Noah captures elegantly in his music.

Of course, at the root of the songs is a grounded individual, which is perhaps why he’s become the superstar that he is now since the release of Stick Season. Watch any interview with him or even the documentary on him on Netflix and you’ll find a guy that is extremely grounded amidst the roaring success. There hasn’t been that Californication that seems to grab hold of so many musical artists. It is beyond refreshing to see someone achieve mainstream success, but yet still go back to Vermont and help out his mom with chores after selling out Fenway Park. 

It seems like people are starving for realness in a time of an accelerating artificial world. (Jesse Welles is another artist that particularly fits that bill, but that is a topic for another day).

Earlier this year, Noah Kahan released his follow-up studio album to the breakout Stick Season, The Great Divide. I waited for the release with bated breath, knowing how much of a daunting  task it probably was for Noah to follow up the success of Stick Season. The pressure to write and record that must’ve been enormous. When it was released in April, it exceeded my expectations. I felt as though there was even more growth in the songwriting without it feeling forced. I’m no music critic, but it seemed to me like Stick Season was what was needed to hook a mainstream audience while The Great Divide was able to have some more artistic freedom. Ultimately, I was impressed and felt the need to see Noah live.

For additional context, my girlfriend and I have few musical overlaps. To be fair, I’m a bit of an old soul when it comes to my musical tastes, with some modern indie rock artists in the fold that I can understand don’t pull a mainstream audience. However, Noah Kahan is probably the artist beyond The Beatles where we share a strong enjoyment for. When he was on tour in 2024, work schedules got in the way of being able to see his shows at Fenway Park, something I deeply regretted as it became a New England lore moment in history (and eventual live album). While my girlfriend is not a New England native, how cool would it have been to see a New England musician play the most important venue in New England history? So once tickets went on sale for the FOUR Fenway shows in 2026, I tried my hand at snagging a pair before the resale market and was unsuccessful. Little did I know though, my girlfriend’s mom (shoutout Kate), got us tickets for Addy’s (my girlfriend) birthday at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, just a couple subway rides away from our apartment in Hoboken, NJ. It may not be Fenway, but we were seeing Noah Kahan live.

Having tickets for Night 2 of the New York shows proved to be a blessing in disguise. In the days leading up, of course there was a sizable severe weather threat forecasted for greater NYC on Night 1. Those storms did in fact come and led to the cancellation of Night 1. I felt for those folks, but it was another example of Mother Nature being in charge.

Noah Kahan live from Citi Field, July 19, 2026

On Sunday, July 19th, we took the 7 Train from end-to-end, Hudson Yards to Flushing, and paraded with the masses into Citi Field. After standing in a merch line for awhile (one hour and thirty-some odd minutes, but we had nothing better to do) and obligatory ballpark snacks, we settled into our seats well-timed with the closer from opening act Gigi Perez (Sailor Song, which I think might even be bigger than the Stick Season single from a streaming numbers perspective). The sun started to dip below the left field grand stand as the crowd roared as a countdown clock appeared on-screen. Cat Steven’s Wild World was replaced by the entering band members’ (Noah Levine, Mike Harris, Dylan Jones, Nina de Vitry, Alex Backari, and Marcos Valles) swelling extended intro to American Cars before Kahan bursted through the door of an on-stage house.

The first five numbers were high-energy, all engaging the crowd. The cloudless twilight sky shifted colors from the warm various hues of sunset to blue to black as the ballpark came alive in unison. It had been years since I’d been to a concert at a venue of this size, mostly going to theater/club-sized shows of late, so I was soaking in the moment of some 40,000 people sharing a common love of music. It’s powerful and refreshing in a time of so much division. A weave of high energy and somber interlaced the middle acts before an extended stretch of ballads. While slower and more moving pieces, the crowd remained fully engaged. It was clear all of these songs had their own emotional ties for each individual, allowing for this extended section of slower songs without losing any energy. I made a conscious realization in that moment that further confirmed that people have been longing for an artist that is rather emotionally raw. It has been a weird time to be alive and so many people in early adulthood have been struggling with the weight of it all… and here was an artist that translated these seemingly universal experiences into enjoyable and even therapeutic choruses.

That’s music at its best. 

I’m not claiming that what Noah Kahan is doing is revolutionary by any means, but rather he’s a well-timed breath of fresh air of a real dude writing down-to-earth songs with mainstream energy after years of manufactured malarkey. I know for me it’s the first mainstream musical artist in years that has exuded that energy and I hope there is more of that on the way. Maybe there’s hope in a renaissance of great, raw, imperfectly human music as the powers at be try to drag the 99% towards this artificial nonsense nobody seems to want.

I hope there are more Noah Kahans to come. They are needed.

Hopefully some more real New England folks are in the pipeline.