Strafford, VT · folk pop · indie folk

Noah Kahan

2 festivals played ↓

New England folk-pop about small towns and staying put, delivered with the kind of full-throated chorus that turns an amphitheatre into a choir.

Noah Kahan was born on January 1, 1997, and grew up in Strafford, Vermont, on a tree farm, the third of four children. His father taught him guitar and his mother, a writer of parenting guides, taught him to write; he began writing songs at eight and posted them to SoundCloud and YouTube, getting his first guitar at ten.

He toured for the first time at nineteen, opening for Milky Chance, and signed to Republic Records in 2017. His early work, including the pop-leaning debut album Busyhead in 2019, featured "Hurt Somebody" with Julia Michaels, his first single to chart. He has named Paul Simon, Counting Crows, Hozier and Mumford & Sons among his influences.

His sound shifted toward folk-rock arrangements built on banjo, acoustic guitar and layered group vocals. Returning to Vermont early in the pandemic, he wrote the EP Cape Elizabeth in a week, then recorded a second album, I Was / I Am, in Los Angeles, released in 2021 without a mainstream hit.

His songwriting draws heavily on rural New England, dealing with small-town life, family, mental health and the tension between leaving and staying. Snippets of "Stick Season" spread on TikTok for two years before its 2022 release, and the full album, produced by Gabe Simon, earned him a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist.

His live shows are known for audiences singing choruses back at full volume. A fourth album, The Great Divide, released in 2026, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with record-breaking streaming and vinyl sales, leading to his first stadium tour.

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folk popindie folk