Following Storm Delay, Noah Kahan Closes Out Rolling Stone’s Inaugural Stateside Festival With Intimate Set

In between stops on Noah Kahan’s “The Great Divide” North America stadium summer tour, the superstar singer/songwriter treated fans to an intimate set at Rolling Stone’s inaugural Stateside Festival on July 4 at Hutton Brickyards in Kingston, New York. Severe weather caused the 4,000-capacity, sold-out event to be paused for approximately 90 minutes but after his set start time was pushed back by 15 minutes, he was able to triumphantly close out the festival. 

A review from Clutchpoints noted that Kahan “cautioned his fans that this would be the ‘most depressing Fourth of July of your lives’ (which couldn’t be further from reality). Ironically, this came before he serenaded the crowd with ‘All My Love.’ … He flaunted his vocal talents at the end of the song, hitting an elongated final refrain that got a big pop from the crowd.”

Kahan’s set kicked off, appropriately enough for the holiday fest, with the tune “American Cars,” which he debuted on NPR’s Tiny Desk earlier this year and hails from his fourth album, The Great Divide. 

Along with other tunes from his new LP, Kahan showed off favorites from his catalog including “Dial Drunk,” “Northern Attitude and “The Great Divide.” He wrapped up the set with the title track from his critically acclaimed Stick Season album and the set was followed by fireworks. 

Stateside Festival also included a set from Kahan’s tour opener Gig Perez, as well as main stage performances from Nashville’s Sydney Rose, Long Island’s Arcy Drive, Austin’s Bo Staloch, and Boston’s Bebe Stockwell. The open-air Scout stage focused on Americana with performances from Hudson Ingram, Derby, Michaela Anne, Calder Allen, and Devon Gilfillian.

An announcement from Rolling Stone points out that “beyond the music, the festival offered a rich array of local food vendors and artisan craft vendors, showcasing the best of the Hudson Valley community, while the World Culture Stage screened World Cup games throughout the day.”

A portion of proceeds from each ticket was donated to Kahan’s nonprofit mental-health organization, the BusyHead Project, which aims to end the stigma around mental health and improve access to resources.

Sophie Allen, who serves as Senior Vice President of Live & Creative at Rolling Stone, recently spoke to Pollstar about putting on the festival and booking headliner Kahan, who graces the cover of RS’s June 2026 issue. 

“So, Rolling Stone had a special edition a couple of years ago called ‘American Icons,’ which was a huge hit. We do special editions a lot of the time, and obviously this year is America’s 250th birthday. There’s a lot of crazy stuff going on in the world right now. We wanted to celebrate all things American and have a reason to do so, without focusing on the political aspects of the birthday. … And so that’s the birth of Stateside: we should bring “American icons” back, but we should also take it to a live format, which we felt was the right thing to do on July 4th. And of course, that, along with the super iconic Rolling Stone brand, we began having the conversations. And those conversations rolled into conversations with Noah Kahan’s team. I’ve worked with Noah’s team for a really long time — Joe Atamian is wonderful — and he has the best team and when that all seemed like it was actually coming to fruition and we could put the person that’s on the cover on our stage…this is what we wanted to achieve from the beginning with RS Live and at all of our different tentpoles,” Allen said.

She added, “We went smaller on purpose. We really wanted fans to feel like they were all getting a front-row seat to a Noah Kahan show, which, for us…I mean, he’s playing stadiums now, so we’re so honored that he’s playing at something on a much smaller scale. So, this is something more personal that a lot of festival-goers aren’t used to getting from a massive star headlining. Also, we obviously want fans to see and feel the local culture and get immersed in everything Upstate NY has to offer, which in July, Upstate is like the number one place to be.” 

Noah Kahan is booked by THE·TEAM’s Joe Atamian and Paige Maloney in North America. He’s repped in the rest of the world by CAA. He’s managed by Foundations’ Drew Simmons, who was recently honored as part of Pollstar‘s Impact 50 list.

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