Dos Equis Pavilion in Dallas, Texas — June 11, 2024

Noah Kahan prefaced his Dallas leg of his “We’ll All Be Here Forever” tour with a tweet from 2019 that was broadcasted across both big screens at the venue: “Yo ain’t nobody in Texas wants to come see me play and it’s genuinely breaking my heart please if you in Houston, Austin or Dallas buy a ticket or else I will cry for 6 straight hours into a mason jar and straight up drank that shit T Pain style (tiny desk version).”

He reiterated this sentiment a few songs into his set, looking out into the sold-out crowd at Dos Equis Pavillion and recalling how he used to have to cancel shows because no one bought tickets. While Kahan’s popularity is obvious—you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the modern era who didn’t at least know one, or likely more, of his top tracks—he reminded the crowd that he didn’t have immediate fame and success. He started his set with his incredibly popular “Dial Drunk,” followed by two more hits from “Stick Season,” but balanced the performance with a couple songs from his earlier days, like “False Confidence.” Partway through the show, the stage setup was changed to reflect his mother’s living room, complete with framed photos from Kahan’s childhood, and he performed the acoustic, nostalgic tracks of “Come Over” and “Godlight.”

There’s a certain magic in seeing an artist perform at the height of their popularity, when all of their years of hard work have paid off and they can enjoy the fruits of their labor. Kahan’s current tour is a perfect example of this. Throughout his set, he was often at a loss for words when so much of the crowd sang the lyrics of his songs back to him, and interacted with the crowd on an emotional level. Between dedicating songs to “children of divorce,” and reading the signs that attendees in the pit made for him out loud, Kahan brought a deeply personal element to his performance. He broke up his set by performing some acoustic tracks on the B stage, to be closer to those in the lawn section, stating that he “just wanted to be in this crowd, having fun.”

Noah Kahan somehow brought a sense of New England chill to a sweltering, sweaty Texas day, and infused soul and nostalgia into every song he performed, from the jaunty, upbeat tracks like “Homesick,” and “All My Love” to the soft and reflective beats of “Call Your Mom” and “The View Between Villages.” The encore closed with his insanely popular “Stick Season” (arguably, the song that launched his current career), and the crowd exploded into a fall-inspired frenzy, with some attendees literally swing dancing between rows of seats.

Words: Marquel Patton

Photography: roman a. peña