Noah Kahan comes home: 'Stick Season' musician plays two triumphant nights in Vermont

For a few hours on Saturday, it was beginning to look like Noah Kahan wouldn’t have the triumphant return home he imagined.

The Vermont musician had to cancel his appearance Friday at the Newport Folk Festival because of problems with his vocal cords. Would his voice hold up for his sold-out home-state shows Saturday and Sunday at Waterfront Park in Burlington? Would the afternoon-long rain and chance of thunderstorms put Saturday’s opening gig in jeopardy?

The second question was answered beautifully, with the rain stopping and the sun peeking out above Lake Champlain almost exactly as the gates opened at 7 p.m. Saturday. Kahan had vowed on social media earlier in the day that he and his balky voice would be there, but until he took the stage at 9:15 p.m. a hint of doubt remained for many of the 4,500 or so in the crowd.

He and his band played their first song, the folk-rocking “All My Love,” and Kahan’s voice sounded strong. The crowd roared and shrieked in celebration. The 26-year-old musician whose career has exploded in 2023 on the strength of “Stick Season,” an album inspired largely by the state he grew up in, was playing his biggest show ever in Vermont.

This was a full-circle moment for Kahan. He wasn’t about to let it slip away.

“I had to cancel my show yesterday, and maybe I should have today,” he told the crowd at the conclusion of “All My Love.” But there was no way that was going to happen, he told fans.

“I’m happy to be here,” Kahan said.

‘Stick Season’: ‘Fortunate to have some success’

Raised in the small Orange County town of Strafford, Kahan (who also spent part of his youth just over the border in Hanover, New Hampshire) has seen his career grow in particular over the past couple of years, selling out multiple shows at Vermont’s top music venue, Higher Ground in South Burlington. The release of “Stick Season” last fall, however, shot Kahan into the stratosphere.

The album − named for what Vermonters call the time of year when the leaves are off the trees and the snow has yet to fall – in June reached number three on the Billboard 200 list of most-popular albums. A newer song, “Dial Drunk,” hit number 39 on the Billboard Hot 100 the day of his first Waterfront Park concert.

It wasn’t just his home-state shows that sold out in a jiffy. His tour schedule for August (vocal cords permitting) includes sold-out shows in Chicago, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, Seattle and, perhaps the most-heady of all, New York’s Radio City Music Hall.

Vermont has had a number of successful musicians, including Phish, Grace Potter, Anais Mitchell and Neko Case. None has had the combination of chart-topping and sold-out shows, certainly not in such a short period of time, quite like Noah Kahan.

“I’ve been fortunate to have some success this year,” an understated Kahan told Saturday’s crowd.

Saturday, July 29: “Put those hands up, Burlington!”

By 7:15 p.m. Saturday, the line at the merchandise tents inside Waterfront Park stretched for several hundred feet. Fans took selfies with the gorgeous sunset over the lake just behind them while they waited.

Once they arrived at the merch tables they found items such as Noah Kahan CDs ($15), Noah Kahan patches ($15), Noah Kahan tote bags ($30), Noah Kahan vinyl albums ($40), Noah Kahan T-shirts ($40), Noah Kahan “Stick Season” candles ($45), Noah Kahan hoodies ($75) and Noah Kahan signed albums ($100). Many fans sported Noah Kahan T-shirts and, on this chilly, damp evening, Noah Kahan hoodies as they walked the grounds before the concert.

Fans unable to score the 9,000 or so tickets for either of the weekend’s shows gathered outside the gates at Waterfront Park to catch some songs and maybe even a glimpse of Kahan on stage. Others took to the water itself, a small flotilla of canoes and kayaks and stand-up paddleboards and power boats coming into place by the time opening act Joy Oladokun took the stage at 8 p.m.

Kahan was in a reflective mood as his concert unfolded. The self-effacing humor he displays on social media came out at Waterfront Park when he mentioned that he seemingly always came in second in songwriting contests held at Halvorson’s Upstreet Café in Burlington. But he was appreciative, too; the Burlington area, he said, was the first place he got to play as a musician, starting as an 8-year-old from small-town Strafford.

His cheeky sense of humor came through as he played the song “False Confidence.” “Put those hands up, Burlington!” he exhorted the crowd, and they did just that. “OK, put them down, that looks weird to me,” he said, poking a hole in an otherwise rote concert convention.

Kahan also grew serious, talking to fans about how he had been going to therapy since childhood and lied his way through it. He was 23 when he realized the only way to improved mental health was to talk honestly about his struggles, and once he did he finally became happy. He urged those in the crowd who can afford therapy to pursue it.

Kahan’s voice grew raspier mid-set on songs such as “Growing Sideways” and “Northern Attitude.” Sometimes he would take a vocal break and let fans carry the chorus of the songs.

Many of Kahan’s songs are about getting drunk or getting high, including “Dial Drunk,” a song that includes a video he made with Post Malone. The lyrics, he told the crowd, are “about being a drunk piece of (excrement),” but he crafts them more carefully and cleverly than the topic suggests. (“I dial drunk/I’d die a drunk/I’d die for you.”)

His set drew toward the end with “Homesick,” a love-hate song about growing up in rural Vermont, and “The View Between Villages,” which mentions Alger Brook Road in Strafford. He concluded with “Stick Season,” the Vermonty title track from his latest album, with Oladokun coming out to sing the second verse. At song’s end the crowd bellowed. The horns of the boats on Lake Champlain honked in approval.

Sunday, July 30: “One day I’d play for a big crowd”

The flotilla on Lake Champlain verged on armada-size with the sunnier, warmer weather Sunday. The non-ticketed crowd that gathered outside the gates at Waterfront Park grew as well. The line for merchandise was at least as long as it had been Saturday.

Hailee Bartlett brandished a Noah Kahan T-shirt she had just bought at the merch table. She’s from Underhill, the rural Chittenden County town she said has “a very ‘Stick Season’ vibe.”

Bartlett likes Kahan for his positive feelings, his encouragement to people to improve themselves, “just his light he gives off,” she said.

“You know you’re never alone, no matter what you’re feeling” when hearing a Noah Kahan song, according to Bartlett. “You can definitely relate to him, and everything he’s gone through you can play into your story.”

Kahan’s second show (again following an opening set by Oladokun) was longer than Saturday’s – approximately 90 minutes versus 80 – and maybe slightly less contemplative and more free-wheeling than its predecessor. His voice was a little raspy from the start but mostly on-point as he performed much of the same material and relayed many of the same stories he did the night before.

“I always told myself one day I’d play for a big crowd,” he said after he and his band performed “She Calls Me Back,” and this is a big (expletive) crowd.”

Kahan said people ask why he schedules so many shows. “It’s the only time I feel connected to everybody else,” he said.

All those shows explain why he’s having vocal issues that, as he wrote Friday on social media, led him to cancel the Newport Folk Festival gig “to avoid long term consequences to my voice.” He didn’t hold back at Sunday’s concert, though, screaming his way through parts of the song “Your Needs, My Needs.”

He screamed again – “Burlington, Vermont!” – at the intro to “Northern Attitude.” During that song he bounded up the steps of the drum riser and leapt off, doing a 360-degree spin in midair while playing his guitar. He was like a star pitcher reaching back for a little extra on his fastball as the game neared its end. As his two-show run in Vermont was nearing its end, Kahan was giving everything he had.

“This is much more fun than resting my voice,” he said.

The night ended, as it did Saturday, with “Stick Season,” and Oladokun again contributing vocals on the second verse.

“I’m just grateful for everywhere this song has taken me,” Kahan told the audience. That hit tune has helped him go from Strafford to two big home-state shows to selling out Radio City Music Hall to whatever the world has in store for him next.

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Noah Kahan plays 'Stick Season' songs in Vermont at two sold-out shows