Noah Kahan – Stick Season

My husband, son, and I drove up to my daughter’s for Thanksgiving today. She is cat sitting and didn’t want to leave the cat overnight so it just made more sense for the three of us to go up there. We brought most of the food with us and cooked it there, which worked out fine. I did have a new appreciation for my mom during all those years when we would drive an hour and a half up to my grandma’s and then my mom would get busy cooking for the giant crowd. My grandma might peel and chop potatoes but she was not a great cook and I think it was just an unspoken arrangement that my mom took over when we got there.

We had a storm blow through on Tuesday night. The wind was so strong that the sound woke me up in the early hours on Wednesday. There are two pine trees in our neighbor’s yard that hang over our driveway and there were hundreds of pine cones (and the pine needles, a never-ending battle) littering the driveway and the street. The street sweeper even came by and made several passes to try and get them off the road. Before the storm there were still leaves on some of the trees but as we got on the road today it was clear that stick season is upon us. It’s just gray-brown barren branches, with some pine trees sprinkled here and there, as far as the eye can see.

My daughter is a huge Noah Kahan fan. I went with her to his concert back in September because she needed a ride. She had been playing his music in the car pretty much anytime we were driving together so I was already very familiar with it all. She had first described him to me as this guy who writes songs about living in New England, which is certainly true. But the more you listen, the more you come to learn that it’s also depressed, heartbroken guy who is suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder because he’s living in northern New England songs. My daughter used my phone to stream her playlists while driving and now Spotify suggests playlists to me with titles like, Sad Girl Indie. It’s not really my jam but I appreciate the scene he paints with this song. There’s another one called “Northern Attitude” (now with Hozier joining in to the delight of all the sad indie girls) where he sings about being raised out in the cold and on little light, and I find myself nodding along.

At the end of September, tickets for the two Noah Kahan shows at Fenway Park next July sold out as soon as they went on sale. My daughter had one in her cart but when she went to purchase it, it disappeared. She was crushed and was sure she had screwed up somehow but someone I know at work had the same thing happen to her. I think the Red Sox site was not really set up to handle the kind of demand it got that day. I felt sorry for her and did my usual thing of looking for other cities where he might not be as well known and where tickets might still be available. It basically came down to some places in Canada. She is only half joking when she talks about going to Quebec in April to see him. I would love to go to Quebec again but in April? That is still stick season for sure.