• Luke Awtry
• Noah Kahan performing at Burlington's Waterfront Park

In the late afternoon of Saturday, July 29, 2023, I was walking home from the office. Something was happening on the Burlington waterfront — a common summer occurrence — and I avoided it by taking Lake Street, which runs behind the concert staging area.

"Who's playing?" a woman asked me as we passed each other on the sidewalk. I had no idea and told her so, fully aware that I should know as the publisher of Burlington's premier arts and entertainment weekly.

Minutes later, I started climbing car-free Depot Street as a large number of people streamed down the hill — concertgoers, but not the usual Vermont mix of casually dressed music fans hauling outdoor gear. It was a gaggle of excited young women, a demographic rarely seen in my corner of Burlington's Old North End.

Still chagrined but also curious, I picked one out of the crowd and asked who she was going to see. She happily replied: Noah Kahan. I acted cool but in truth was thinking, Who? Somehow, in the swirl of work, I'd missed the story of Vermont's latest breakout music act. I felt like Rip van Winkle — the old lady version.

When I got home, I scoured the Seven Days music section for some sign of the big show but couldn't find anything eye-catching. I emailed music writer Chris Farnsworth and his editor, Dan Bolles: "Is Noah Kahan playing here live tonight and tomorrow? I'm confused." Dan responded: "Those shows were announced months ago and sold out immediately."

Dan and Chris patiently explained over email that Seven Days has a long-held policy of not giving much ink to sold-out shows. It creates false hope, they argued, and takes valuable space away from events that still have the capacity to accommodate people looking for something to do. In fact, I found a basic listing for the show in our calendar, noting that it was sold out.

In retrospect, I wished we'd made a bigger deal about it. Kahan's back-to-back waterfront gigs were huge — a public spectacle right in the heart of Burlington. The shows were newsworthy. Especially because, as it turned out, those young women were on to something: Kahan was lifting off into celebrity space.

Within a matter of months, the Strafford native was playing his hit song "Stick Season" on "Saturday Night Live." He'd been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist and was booked in giant arenas across the country, including Madison Square Garden and Fenway Park, as part of his 2024 We'll All Be Here Forever tour.

As Chris writes in this week's cover story about Kahan: "He's cultivated a fan base reminiscent of Taylor Swift's in its dedication and willingness to shell out gobs of money to see him perform in the kind of venues he dreamed of playing as a kid ... His massive audiences are heavily populated by Gen Z fans who will scream his lyrics back to him, often through tears. And these aren't just the 'Oh, my God, a famous person!' sort of tears but the 'group therapy bordering on mass religious experience' kind."

A year ago, Kahan's press people were begging music journalists for coverage. Now, Chris writes, they're "replying to interview requests with, essentially: Um, maybe in the summer?"

Not everybody likes Kahan's music. And some local musicians grumble that he didn't "'pay his dues' by slogging it across the stage at Nectar's in Burlington or playing lovable dives like Charlie-O's World Famous in Montpelier," Chris notes. But there's no debating that this unassuming, flannel-clad young man is Vermont's most recent cultural success story. If you missed some key chapters, as I did, give "Noah's Arc" a read before this weekend's Grammys.