When Noah Kahan tried to play a Dallas tour stop in 2018, he had to cancel the show.
The reason, Kahan said near the beginning of a two-hour set at Arlington’s Globe Life Field on Thursday night, was that not enough tickets had been sold.
That was not the case this time, as Kahan played the only Texas stop on his The Great Divide North American Tour. More than 40,000 fans packed up to the rafters in the home of the Texas Rangers, and belted every word right along with the Vermont-born singer-songwriter.
“The Great Divide,” released in April, is Kahan’s fourth full-length studio effort, following his 2022 breakout “Stick Season.”
Kahan, accompanied by openers Annabelle Dinda and Gigi Perez, masterfully blended hits from across his catalog in the winding set, bursting onto the stage with the uptempo “American Cars” carrying through to fast-paced, intense “Doors.”
The latter made former President Barack Obama’s annual Summer Playlist this year, a fact Kahan made mention of during a running bit where he feigns answering a payphone with a different caller at every stop.
“Obama?,” Kahan quipped into the receiver. “You finally put me on your summer playlist after 15 [expletive] years? Are you doing OK? It’s not a happy song at all. Is everything all right with Michelle?”
Set design by London-based STUFISH Studio dropped fans into Kahan’s native Strafford, Vermont: As the show opened, columns and doors arose as the roof of a clapboard house descended from above. To one side, a cop car sat parked under a gas station awning, complete with pumps and price signs. To the other, mossy rocks jutted out.
Kahan’s B-stage took the form of a fishing dock, illuminated with string lights.
Production design by Sooner Routhier and The Playground Creative allowed the house on set to shapeshift through seasons and settings, a massive LED video wall allowing for scenery to show a general store alight with police flashers during “Dial Drunk” and a sunset over the roof as Kahan sang “Willing and Able.”
LED wristbands handed out at the door illuminated the crowd during the show’s more emotional moments, like Kahan’s “The View Between Villages,” an angsty ode to the pain of growing up inspired by Vermont’s Route 132, or “Pain is Cold Water,” a ballad Kahan exclusively performs live that declares, “pain’s like cold water, your brain just gets used to it.”
The show was also cognizant of its stop in one of the capitals of country music: A rousing fiddle solo by band member Nina De Vitry during “Paid Time Off” drew raucous cheers of “yeehaw” from the crowd, as did nifty banjo work by Noah Levine and Dylan Jones.
Of the venue, Kahan remarked that the stadium felt like something out of Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” novel series. If fans were unhappy with the set list, he said, they certainly had the numbers to take him out.
But Kahan got there first, delivering a stunning experience more than worthy of the global hype.
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Lillie Davidson is a breaking news reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She graduated from TCU in 2025 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, is fluent in Spanish, and can complete a crossword in five minutes.