Noah Kahan
photo: raph_ph · cc by 4.0 ↗Noah Kahan grew up in rural Strafford, Vermont, and turned the specific ache of small-town New England — its long winters, its 'stick season,' its pull between leaving and staying — into a strain of confessional folk-pop. After several years as a promising streaming-era songwriter, he broke through in 2022 with the album 'Stick Season,' whose banjo-and-acoustic anthems about home, family, and mental health made him one of the defining folk voices of the 2020s. His songs pair plainspoken, diaristic lyrics with big, communal choruses built for crowds to shout back.
Kahan has repeatedly named Paul Simon among his formative influences, and it registers in his craft: dense, wordy verses full of concrete place-names and family detail set over fingerpicked acoustic guitar, and choruses that lift a private, melancholy story into something singable.
listen forPut on Simon & Garfunkel's 'The Boxer' and then 'Stick Season' — hear the same rolling fingerpicked guitar under a tumble of plainspoken, self-lacerating lyrics that resolves into a big, communal refrain.
Kahan cites Mumford & Sons as an influence and has performed alongside Marcus Mumford; their revival of banjo-driven, foot-stomping folk that swells from a hushed verse into a roaring, cathartic climax is a clear template for his own arrangements.
listen forLine up Mumford & Sons' 'I Will Wait' against 'The View Between Villages' — both start intimate and build, layering drums and voices until the song erupts into a full-throated, arms-around-strangers catharsis.
Kahan calls Justin Vernon of Bon Iver a hero and recruited him to contribute to his music; you can hear Bon Iver's woodsy, hushed intimacy and stacked, aching harmonies in Kahan's quieter, more introspective songs.
listen forFollow Bon Iver's 'Skinny Love' with 'Growing Sideways' — notice the same close-mic'd, cracked-voice vulnerability and layered vocal harmonies turning a raw confession into something warm and enveloping.