STRAFFORD — Saunter into the circa-1885 Strafford General Store and you’ll see locals beeline for such staples as donuts, duct tape and Darn Tough socks. Then comes the more circuitous buzz of visitors in search of this Upper Valley hamlet’s favorite son: 29-year-old Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Noah Kahan.
“Somebody comes in just about every day that we can tell is not from here,” manager Adam Smith said recently near a street view of porch chairs, cordwood, free-roaming chickens and a “I’m a Veteran Not a Sucker or a Loser” yard sign.
Unlike the town’s 1,094 residents, travelers who detour off Interstate 89 exit 2 swarm only for Kahan clothing and cards that arrived with the folk-pop musician’s 2022 breakthrough album, “Stick Season,” and remain in demand with this spring’s release of his follow-up, “The Great Divide.”
“We’re waiting on new merch,” Smith said, “as we anticipate even more crowds.”
Long-timers can tell you Strafford gained its name from an English earl related to the royal granter of its 1761 charter. It then earned acclaim for 1800s native son Justin Morrill, a U.S. representative and senator, and the late retired resident William Sloane Coffin Jr., a onetime Vietnam War-opposing Yale University chaplain and civil rights activist.
Local youth, for their part, know today’s visitors are more drawn by Kahan (“it’s pronounced Kahn, not Ka-han,” Rolling Stone’s current cover story advises), the homegrown strummer who signed a record deal as a high school senior in 2017, only to end up housebound during the Covid-19 pandemic, launch “Stick Season” on social media and see it log 1.7 billion streams on Spotify.
“Mr. Kahan writes about quiet moments in small towns that lead to grand catharses,” the Wall Street Journal noted in a recent review. “If one were to link Mr. Kahan’s music to broader cultural trends, you could say it connects to what is called the ‘male loneliness epidemic.’”
That sense of isolation is attracting plenty of people. Kahan, the weekend’s musical guest on “Saturday Night Live,” just hit No. 1 on album charts in the United States, Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
“It takes so much more than just me,” he posted on social media this past week. “It takes an amazing group of fans.”
Fame, however, has a flip side. With so much demand, Kahan’s publicists have limited his appearances to national platforms ranging from life coach Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast to “Sesame Street.” Even so, the singer can’t stop thinking locally.
“I come home and I’m like, ‘Did I adulterate this place?’” he told Rolling Stone. “‘Did I misrepresent it? Did I change my relationship with it because I’ve shown it to everybody now?’”
Neighbors aren’t complaining — even if they don’t understand all the commotion.
“Our building is in one of his videos, so we have people stopping and taking pictures,” Town Clerk Lisa Bragg said at the 143-year-old municipal office. “I think it’s in, I’m not sure, ‘Stick Season’?”
(Yes, that’s the late-fall lament with the lyric, “I love Vermont, but it’s the season of the sticks.”)
Melvin Coburn, the now 81-year-old former storekeeper, was set to retire after nearly a half-century when a camera crew stopped by for an interview.
“Quite honestly, I do not listen to his music very much,” Coburn went on to tell the world in a new 90-minute Netflix documentary, “Noah Kahan: Out of Body.”
Coburn may not know many of the songs, but he’s aware of their reach. The octogenarian tried to sell his market in 2022, only to find no takers. Then Kahan’s rise spurred the New York Times to publish a story headlined “‘Stick Season’ Gave This Vermont General Store Pop Music Fame. Now It Needs a Proprietor.” Soon after, a nonprofit community trust bought the building and chose Smith to run the business.
“Alger Brook Road is featured in one song,” Smith said as he stocked shelves, “so fans ask where that is.”
Drive there to see the signpost and a neighbor will greet you: “You’re the second one in 20 minutes.”
Reporter after reporter also is visiting to discover “Gen Z’s soft-hearted rock star,” as deemed by Rolling Stone.
In its recent article “Noah Kahan Makes an Unlikely Home-Town Hero,” The New Yorker noted “Kahan is from the Upper Valley, a quaint and seasonally verdant region” that “is perhaps as Platonically New England as an area can get (peeling red barns, rickety covered bridges, green mountains, golden retrievers).”
The Times has pointed to songs that paint an inner and outer portrait colored by Kahan’s self-disclosed anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and body dysmorphia.
“Kahan’s music teems with the verbose internal dialogues of an anxious mind,” the Times wrote, “but his lyrics often evince a kind of therapized wisdom.”
Take the new song “End of August,” in which he says of the area, “It’s a place where most kids just grow up and have kids/Who grow up and have kids who build homes for the rich.”
Or “Haircut,” in which he speculates how locals see him: “You grew your hair out long, now you think you’re Jesus Christ.”
Kahan recently appeared on Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People of 2026” list. And on NBC’s Tonight Show. And in the Netflix documentary, which also features his parents, three siblings, wife, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (captured speaking at a concert for the musician’s Busyhead Project for mental health) and 102-year-old neighbor Hazel Linton Lewis (filmed just before her death in 2025).
Still, fans are hungry for more.
“Noah Kahan, if you’re out there, we tried to get you onto The Bulwark for an interview,” a staffer of the political website said on a recent video titled, “Noah Kahan Explains Young People Better Than Any Politician.”
Such passion can spark problems. Locals will point out the town’s 1799 meeting house, 1833 Universalist church and 1850s Morrill Homestead. But they won’t reveal where Kahan and his family reside — a courtesy similar to when Russian Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once lived an hour south in Cavendish and that town’s store gained fame for its sign, “No Restrooms, No Bare Feet, No Directions to the Solzhenitsyn Home.”
Kahan is appreciative.
“Hey folks, love you all and am always flattered by the dedication people have to understanding and becoming closer to the place that made some of the songs from stick season, but I have to ask that you please have respect for the privacy of myself and my family by not visiting private property,” he has posted on Instagram. “My family are real, normal people who live and work in their homes and want to feel safe and unbothered.”
Fans in search of song references can look to the larger landscape. Travel Interstate 89 between Vermont and New Hampshire and you’ll experience the inspiration for “The Great Divide” lyric, “While we drove aimlessly along the Twin State line.” Visit during what Kahan tags a “masochistic” winter and you’ll see why “Homesick” notes, “And every photograph/That’s taken here is from the summer.”
“It’s important as I’ve kind of gained my platform to represent not just, like, the beauty of Vermont but also the challenges,” the musician recently told broadcaster Zach Sang. “To make sure that people understand that there are real issues.”
Kahan is set to play 30 concerts spanning from Boston’s Fenway Park to Pasadena’s Rose Bowl to capitals in Europe and Australia. The tour — and its collective 1 million tickets — is already sold out.
Back in Strafford, the store remains open.
“We’re a little off the beaten path, so this keeps people coming in who wouldn’t normally stop by,” Smith said. “It’s definitely good for business.”
Kahan’s father was recently spotted at the checkout. But that doesn’t mean his globe-trotting son is so easily seen.
“I’ve been here for almost a year,” Smith said. “I’ve never met him.”
