On January 19, 2019, singer-songwriter and Vermont native Noah Kahan pressed send on a foreboding tweet: “I prolly won’t sell out Madison Square Garden or even all the shows on my tour but I’ll keep writing songs for you all for as long as you’ll have me,” he wrote. A cool five years later, after James Bay's opening set, that same tweet is being mirrored on the massive screens that flank the Madison Square Garden stage, as fans file in to watch Kahan play the first of two sold-out shows in one of New York City’s most storied venues.
I’ll always be a fan of the hero story. The idea that you can start your life in a small town with zero evidence that the future you want is possible, and then by some strange twist of fate and faith, boom — you’re living in a three-dimensional version of a fantasy you never thought would come to fruition. I love that story even more when the main character seems in awe and humbled by the magic of the whole experience as if their hard work is only a small part of the manifestation; as if it could’ve happened to anybody, but thankfully, it happened to them. As Kahan walked out on stage that night, throwing a “Holy shit, what’s up?” at the crowd, he almost seemed surprised to see there; it was clear he made the perfect protagonist.
When his song “Stick Season” became a viral success in 2022, there were internet murmurs that he’d come out of nowhere. But, despite being raised in a town of around 1,000 people, he, in fact, had come from somewhere, making it to this literal and figurative stage after years of music-making with two album releases proceeding the success of Stick Season.Still, I can see how people may be shocked that Kahan has reached international sold-out venue status at a time where Americana music (think: banjos, stomp-and-clap, folk stories, me in 2013 going to see Mumford & Sons in an oversized floppy hat and floor length skirt) has been drowned out by bustling new age of pop. I guess there’s just something magnetic and cathartic about songs that are honest, cutting, and at times make you feel “a little bit shitty,” as he told the crowd that Monday night. There's also something magnetic about seeing someone live out a once tweeted destiny.
Standing at the Garden, facing the center of the stage, I can't help but be reminded of how rare it is to have a career where you go to MSG to write about songwriters. On my best days, I think I made it all up. On my worst days, I think I made it all up. It’s that same guttural creeping feeling that hit me as Kahan sang the lyrics, “I'm terrified that I might never have met me” during his slow-burner of a track, “Growing Sideways,” in a venue he’d once only dreamed of playing. It’s the gratitude of all the pieces falling into place. It’s the terror of what could’ve happened, would’ve happened — if one piece hadn't.
So Kahan, with his writing that reminds you of home (like the lyrics about a Target opening in an intersection and the locals immediately labeling that area downtown in “New Perspective”) and pull you back to when everything felt possible (like the optimistic abandon of youth imbuing the words “I'm seventeen again I am not scared of death/ I've got dreams again” in “The View Between Villages”) and his self-deprecating humor (like when he likened himself to a youth pastor during a quiet moment on stage, saying "Jesus Christ has rizz") are all synonymous with the overarching plot that big ambitions pay off, that dreams (as cliché as it sounds) come true.
Before the second night of his MSG two-night stand, Kahan sent another tweet. “The day I wrote [“New Perspective”] was one of the lowest I’ve had as a musician. Just totally defeated by the weight of my low self-esteem and the mountain I had to climb just to put pen to paper. I told myself I was going to quit that same evening. I played it at MSG last night.”
He replied to his own tweet, adding: “It ain’t over even when you think it’s over.”
Photography: Toby Tenenbaum
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