I had never been to a concert alone before entering the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre for the Stick Season tour on August 16.
I was squished between two friends chugging vodka sodas and a girl attempting to read a novel in the dim lighting. It was nearly 30 degrees inside, but despite the heat, the stadium was nearly packed when opener Joy Oladokun took the stage.
Oladokun's set explored her small town upbringing and religious trauma as a Queer woman. Despite the melancholic subject, the performance hyped up the eager crowd.
At around 9 p.m., Noah Kahan bolted onto the stage with his band, launching right into his first song, "All My Love." The entire crowd was up on their feet within seconds. It felt like a battle between the audience and Kahan to see who could sing the chorus — "you got all my love" — the loudest, and their voices never wavered throughout the entire show.
The layout of the stage was simple, with just Kahan and his guitar at the front. He bounced around the stage nonstop throughout the first part of his set. Kahan told the crowd this sold-out show was very different from his performance to an empty crowd in Thunderbird four years ago.
As he played a few more slower songs, the lighting shifted from warm reds and yellows to a medley of cooler, calmer blues and greens. His solo acoustic performance of "Growing Sideways," a song about struggling with your mental health, caused a somber stillness to fall over the crowd.
The energy of the room rose again with "No Complaints." As the bridge was sung at a deafening roar, lights flashed black and red to the drum beat.
The next three songs flew by — they told stories of having a cold heart ("Northern Attitude"), being a bad ex ("Drunk Dial") and hating your hometown only to desperately miss it when you move away ("Homesick").
"You're Gonna Go Far," reminisced about childhood, and encouraged acceptance of where you’re headed in life. "Say whatever you feel, be wherever you are," Kahan sang, bringing forth memories of moving away for the first time to attend university.
For the encore, he returned to perform "The View Between Villages" and "Mess" before closing it out with the song that shares its name with both his recent album and tour: “Stick Season.”
When I left the stadium trying to beat the rush of traffic, I could still hear the echoes of thousands yelling "I'm split in half, but that'll have to do.”
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