Noah Kahan couldn’t have ordered better weather if he’d brought it down from New England himself.
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The thick gray clouds hanging over Carter-Finley Stadium muted the July sun. It was humid, but far from uncomfortably so, and the temps were unusually forgiving. By the end of the night, they had dipped into the 60s — not a heck of a lot warmer than it was at the same time back in Kahan’s hometown of Strafford, Vermont.
Who would have predicted a month ago that the weather on show night would feel almost as New England as his songs?
The crowd streaming into the stadium and forming seemingly endless lines at the merch stands felt rather New England-y, too. It wasn’t so much that an estimated 70 to 80 percent of it was female and just as heavily Gen Z; it was that the fashion choices leaned toward Bohemian, with a healthy sprinkling of Boston Red Sox caps and shirts as well as a noticeable smattering of Birkenstocks (although beachier types of sandals and boots, admittedly, were more prevalent).
Before long, even the stage would look remarkably like the Northeastern world Kahan’s songs have always inhabited.
But first: At 8:30 p.m. sharp, animated insects crawled across the screens as “Ooooo, baby, baby, it’s a wiiild world” rang out in Cat Stevens’s voice, while the wristbands handed out to tens of thousands of fans flickered to life and a giant timer began counting down from :60 on the big screen.
Then, with time ticking down, stagehands quickly erected a rustic front porch while a weathered roof descended from above.
Indeed, the 29-year-old Kahan’s first football stadium show in North Carolina wasn’t built around pyrotechnics, confetti cannons, backup dancers or any of the other trappings typical of shows by the world’s biggest touring artists.
It was built around an old New England farmhouse.
Or, to put it another way: around a physical tribute to his Vermont roots — the organizing idea behind one of the most thoughtfully designed stadium productions of the year.
And his legion of fans didn’t just come for “Stick Season.”
From the opening line of lead-off song “American Cars” (“I was workin’ on a plan to disappear completely”), the sold-out crowd hung on Kahan’s every word, by singing every word. I’m not exaggerating. Every word, over the course of a sprawling, nearly 2½-hour, 26-song performance.
That’s particularly impressive when you consider that 12 of the night’s 26 songs came from “The Great Divide” album, which just came out in late April, with two more drawn from the extended edition that dropped the next day.
Somehow, every one of them sounded like songs that have lived with audiences for years rather than months. Kahan himself seemed to have trouble believing it.
“You guys sound f—–’ awesome, dude,” he said early in the evening, chuckling to himself, after finishing the upbeat folk-pop song “All My Love.” “Let’s have a great night. I mean, we haven’t been here in a long time. We played Cat’s Cradle a few years back.”
It’s crazy to think he actually played there twice, in 2017 and 2018 — and that the first time, he was the opening act at the legendary venue that holds just 750 people. Saturday night, he performed for 50,000, many of whom paid hundreds of dollars to get in.
The Carter-Finley show also marked a personal milestone.
Though he has headlined basketball arenas and baseball stadiums since his meteoric rise to superstardom, this was the first football stadium he had ever headlined.
He pointed that out … then, in classic Noah Kahan fashion, he confessed the intrusive, somewhat disturbing thought that — for him — accompanies looking out at tens of thousands of people: “If you guys were all mad at me, you could all f—–’ rip me limb from limb if you wanted to.”
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It’s a combination of gratitude and self-deprecation he demonstrated all night, and it was both endearing and amusing.
At one point, he announced, “My name is Noah Kahan and we are here to make you f—–’ cry,” drawing a big laugh.
At another, he drew another by introducing folk-leaning heartland rock song “Dashboard” thusly: “I want you to access all the hate in your heart for the a——- in your life.”
He even attempted a little local pandering during a skit in which he answered a phone call from “God? Of all religions?,” paused briefly, then incredulously blurted into the phone: “NC State is better than Duke and UNC??” But after the line produced a roar of approval from some corners of the stadium and boos from others, Kahan sheepishly offered, “Okay, my bad,” suggesting he realized he’d wandered into a rivalry he didn’t fully understand.
What he does fully understand, however, is how to put in the work.
While he isn’t a particularly theatrical performer, he’s an unexpectedly physical one. He attacks his acoustic guitar with big, sweeping strokes, sometimes squeezing his eyes shut so tightly while belting a chorus that it looks almost painful. Then a moment later he’ll throw them open again, wide-eyed beneath his signature French braids, before handing the final lines to the audience and standing back as sweat pours down his face.
He — or his creative director, at least — also fully understands the vibe.
The production’s greatest trick was making it surprisingly difficult to tell where carpentry ended and animation began when it came to that farmhouse.
It could be presented as a full “house,” complete with a front porch. It could appear as just a rooftop, with a dormer for Kahan to perch himself upon while performing his poignant, heavy-hearted “Willing and Able.” It was even recast, at one point, as “Kahan’s General Store,” complete with signs for “Strawberry Wine, $8.99” and “Doors Light.”
But the set never felt more like a character in the show than it did during “Dial Drunk.”
For that one, the action was moved way off to the left side of the stage, where an ’80s-era Volvo station wagon dressed up as a police cruiser was parked at the pump of an old-fashioned filling station (although the price per gallon was, winkingly, nearly $4). As he sang the first verse and chorus of his energetic yet heartbreaking indie-folk song, Kahan engaged in a skit in which he was mock-chased, mock-slammed against the hood, and mock-stuffed inside the car by a mock-Vermont State Police officer.
It was a bit bonkers, in the best kind of way.
But just as quickly as he could get wild and crazy on a large scale, he could tone it down and find ways to make the stadium feel smaller. In the back half of the show, for instance, Kahan and all six of his core band members pushed out to a small stage at midfield to perform stripped-down versions of “Paid Time Off,” “Pain Is Cold Water,” “Maine” and “Dan.”
The farmhouse faded into the background. The spectacle largely disappeared.
It felt like a neighborhood brewery gig. Not in terms of quality — this was much, much better than a neighborhood brewery gig — but in terms of scale.
At least until the tens of thousands of synchronized wristband lights started glowing, twinkling and pulsing around them, reminding you that this was no Cat’s Cradle show.
Minutes later, “Northern Attitude” and “The Great Divide” exploded back across the entire stadium with pounding drums, soaring visuals and an audience singing almost as loudly as Kahan himself. And when showstopping closer “Stick Season” — his best-known hit — brought fans to a fever pitch, even those charging up the stairs before it was over, ostensibly to beat traffic, were smiling and shout-singing the chorus at the tops of their lungs.
Then, as the house lights came up, so over the loudspeakers did Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.”
Fenway Park would have approved.
1. “American Cars”
2. “Doors”
3. “All My Love”
4. “Deny Deny Deny”
5. “Staying Still”
6. “Haircut”
7. “Downfall”
8. “She Calls Me Back” (with Gigi Perez)
9. “Dashboard”
10. “Dial Drunk”
11. “Willing and Able”
12. “Porch Light”
13. “Orbiter”
14. “Howling”
15. “Paid Time Off”
16. “Pain Is Cold Water”
17. “Maine”
18. “Dan”
19. “The View Between Villages”
20. “Northern Attitude”
21. “The Great Divide”
22. “Orange Juice”
23. “New Perspective”
24. “End of August”
25. “Homesick”
26. “Stick Season”
This story was originally published July 26, 2026 at 5:05 AM with the headline “Concert review: Noah Kahan made a Raleigh football stadium feel like New England.”
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