Noah Kahan at Burlington’s Waterfront Park last summer Credit: Luke Awtry

Look, I didn’t want to write about Noah Kahan.

Hear me out: It’s not like he didn’t merit coverage. If you’ve read this week’s cover story or paid attention to basically any entertainment media in the past year, you know all about the Strafford-born singer-songwriter’s ascension. Grammy stuff, “Saturday Night Live” stuff, shout-outs from Olivia Rodrigo, charity functions … It’s all good news about a nice guy making a shitload of people happy. So what’s my problem?

Well, first and foremost, I can be, on occasion, an insufferable asshole about national coverage of Vermont music. (This isn’t an apology, just an explanation. I know what I am, people.) And in Kahan’s case, this was a musician so good he got signed right out of high school — no need to drive around the state for a decade playing ski resorts and dives for shit money like 99.9 percent of working Vermont musicians do. Outside the Upper Valley, he just wasn’t part of the local scene. That’s not a dig, just facts.

If Kahan had stuck around instead of heading to Nashville and New York City and Los Angeles, I have zero doubts he would have risen to the top of a seriously talented pool of songwriters in the Green Mountain State. Given that he’s selling out stadiums around the globe and could be known as “Grammy winner Noah Kahan” by Monday morning, however, I think we can all agree he made the right call in seeking his fortune elsewhere.

So, after Kahan released Stick Season in 2022 and suddenly Vermont had new theme music, I was reluctant to engage with it as a writer. Not immediately, to be clear. I interviewed him a few days after the record came out (insufferable asshole humblebrag) and thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Kahan is a fun interview: He’s self-deprecating, with solid comedic timing, but isn’t afraid to go introspective.

Still, I wasted no time in handing the review of the record off to one of our freelancers. Not because I didn’t want to deal with Kahan’s music but because I was already getting a sense of his growing importance to Vermonters, and I frankly wasn’t sure how to handle that.

Something started to happen during conversations at shows. A friend or acquaintance would flag me down, we’d talk about the show or other Vermont music stuff, and then something like this would go down:

“Did you see Noah play the other night?”

The “other night” could have been one of Kahan’s local sold-out shows in 2023, late-night TV appearances or even a Lollapalooza set — it didn’t seem to matter. (Seriously, do you people think Seven Days has “send the music editor to Chicago” money? We need more Super Readers!)

When I would invariably reply, “No, didn’t catch it,” the reaction from my native Vermont friends was almost universal: WHY NOT? HOW COULD YOU? YOU HEARTLESS FLATLANDER PIECE OF FILTH!

That’s not an exaggeration, though I will point out that one friend was smiling while she said it, per the Vermont custom of telling off kids born in New Jersey. It doesn’t matter that I’ve lived most of my adult life in the Green Mountains; I was still born at a hospital off Exit 8A on the Jersey Turnpike. To twist some of Kahan’s lyrics, I was not, in fact, raised on little light.

I began to realize that, to write about what Kahan means to Vermont, I needed to understand the connection between him and people who grew up here. As a kid who moved around the East Coast his whole life, I had no such musical totem. I don’t know how it feels to have a musician hit the charts singing about street names in the city where I grew up.

The musical figureheads of my generation were West Coast kids who seemed much angrier than me and most of who soon offed themselves — real talk, my therapist has begged me to stop using “’90s singer malaise” as a psychological concept.

I idolized them. I wanted their awesome hair and perfect sneers, and I desperately wanted a band that sounded like Led Zeppelin and the Clash had babies. But it wasn’t like I truly identified with what they were singing about. (Still heroin-free, baby!)

The Kahan fans I interviewed for this week’s cover story identify with his songs on a level I couldn’t comprehend until I saw it in real time. I had to watch a girl break down in tears when the chorus of “Call Your Mom” hit. I needed to hear a group of friends scream along to the “Homesick” lyrics “The weather ain’t been bad if you’re into masochistic bullshit” before it started to hit home.

The experience brought back a strange, perhaps long-repressed memory from my childhood. I only lived in Freehold, N.J., until I was 7, but during that time, my hometown had a musician who conquered the world in an even bigger fashion than Kahan. To say Bruce Springsteen was a hero in that community would be an understatement. A rock star who sang about Jersey? Get da fuck outta here!

But, like I said, I was 7. The lyrics to “Atlantic City” were just a tad above my comprehension. I liked Duran Duran, and I liked shouting “Wild boys!” loudly along with what I now think is that band’s stupidest song. But I liked it, and besides, I thought Springsteen and Billy Joel were brothers who were fighting over the same woman in the videos to “Uptown Girl” and “I’m on Fire,” respectively, which tells you about my level of understanding.

So, when I went over to my neighbor’s house one day to watch MTV with my friend Michael Russoniello and I turned down the record player, I was wholly unprepared for the reaction.

“Hey! Who turned off the Boss?” Michael’s father bellowed from the kitchen.

“We’re going to watch some MTV, Dad!” my friend replied, but I could see from the red on his face that we had committed a serious transgression.

Mr. Russoniello appeared, flushed, confused and wearing an apron.

“You boys are from Freehold,” he said. “You don’t ever turn off the Boss.”

That was the only reason he gave. I never made that mistake again.

I saw some of that same loyalty in Kahan’s fans these past weeks as I asked them, essentially, What’s so special about him? Their answers were a little more complex than “He’s from here,” but it was the same energy as Mr. Russoniello’s.

Now I understand better why anyone would be excited to watch the Grammys this Sunday. If I felt I had a homie in the running for a statue, I’d organize a watch party, too. As it stands, I’m rooting for Kahan, as well as Vermonter Erin Bentlage from the vocal group säje, who are nominated for Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals.

To be clear, I’m not saying only Vermonters can really get Kahan’s music. Judging by his sold-out world tour and the whole No. 1-in-the-UK thing, that’s not the case. I’m just saying, hey … I get why this means so much to Vermonters now. I promise never to change the music when you’re blasting Stick Season, OK?

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This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 6, 2024.

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Music editor Chris Farnsworth has written countless albums reviews and features on Vermont's best musicians, and has seen more shows than is medically advisable. He's played in multiple bands over decades in the local scene and is a recording artist in...