Noah Kahan’s Rider Is Surprisingly Wholesome

On Noah Kahan’s rider right now: all-dressed chips, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, non-alcoholic beer, and plenty of Culture Pop — including his own flavor called “Noah Kahan’s Sparkling Black Cherry” from a collaboration with the probiotic soda brand. It’s a fairly wholesome backstage spread for an artist playing the biggest shows of his career, but that’s intentional.

“Life is less about the party than it is about taking care of ourselves on the road,” Kahan tells Bustle. The Culture Pop partnership also extends beyond the rider: the brand has supported the 29-year-old Vermont native’s mental-health nonprofit. “One of the coolest things about my career over the last five years has been the charity my manager and I started, The Busyhead Project. Trying to help other people is something that helps my own mental health,” he says. “Knowing that beyond playing a show, I’m helping to raise money for mental-health resources and doing some good is really important to me.”

That sense of connection carries to the crowd, too. Kahan’s fan culture has become a phenomenon in its own right with elaborate outfits, deeply invested crowds, and, occasionally, some truly unexpected autograph requests. Much of that can be traced back to 2022’s Stick Season, the title track of which took off on social media before the album became a multi-platform, global hit and pushed Kahan from longtime singer-songwriter to arena — and eventually stadium — headliner. Now, with his fourth album, The Great Divide, released earlier this year, his fan base has only gotten more devoted by the day.

Below, Kahan talks about his tour must-haves, the food stops he and his band seek out on the road, the fan moments that have stuck with him, and the collabs he’s still dreaming about.

Your tour is what literally everyone is talking about. Does your rider change depending on where you are? Do you try to bring in things specific to the cities you’re playing in?

Honestly, if there’s a really good restaurant in town or a famous place, we’ll order it for an after-show meal. In San Diego, I always like to get Taco Stand, and if we’re in L.A., we’ll do Sugarfish or something we all love that’s easy to get delivered. My band and I also always go to steakhouses on our off days. It’s a tradition we’ve been doing for a long time. Growing up in Vermont, there wasn’t exactly a LongHorn Steakhouse within 50 miles of my house.

You’ve spoken openly about having obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and living with anxiety. On a tour this big, what do you do when you’re feeling overstimulated? How do you ground yourself?

I do a lot of golf, video games, and reading — just things that aren’t about me and don’t force me to reckon with myself or what I’m going to do that night. It’s basically a healthy amount of compartmentalization. I try to make sure I’m not sitting there dreading or catastrophizing about how things could go wrong.

Sometimes, I get stressed out with my OCD because I want to make sure everybody’s having a good time. I put a lot of pressure on myself, but it’s important to remember that people, especially right now, are having a hard time affording shows. A lot of people are also struggling with their own mental health in this country. If I’m struggling with mine, there’s still a chance for us to go up there and do something positive together for each other — me playing the show and them supporting me and singing along.

Your fans have created such a culture around the tour. Is there a particular fan interaction that’s really stuck with you?

A couple nights ago, I signed some girl’s rib — and I don’t mean the rib on her body. She’d had surgery and carried around a piece of her rib. She was like, “Sign my rib.” And I was like, “Oh, I think I’ve seen this girl on Twitter.” So I signed a girl’s rib bone, which I thought was pretty crazy.

My favorite thing, though, is seeing how crossgenerational [the fandom] is. Yesterday, for example, at the show in Vancouver, I saw a really little kid, their mom, and then her dad or mom. It was three generations of people coming to the show, and that’s really cool.

You’ve worked with some incredible collaborators. At what point do you hear a song and think “This needs somebody else on it”?

It varies. Traditionally, if you’re thinking “This is going to be a song for somebody else,” it might be a song that has two different perspectives in the verses or some level of conflict within the lyrics, so that when two people are singing it, it feels like they each have a unique perspective. But sometimes it’s just fun to see where the universe takes you. I’ve released songs and then months later thought “What if this person was on this?” We’ve been lucky enough to actually have that happen.

It’s about dreaming big. It sounds so far away and impossible to say “Imagine if this person could jump on this song,” but I’m always surprised by how much people want to collaborate and how much community people want to form in music. Especially in a genre like mine, where there isn’t always this traditional collaboration happening. You don’t see a ton of acts featuring other acts on songs that are acoustic guitar-driven, melodically driven, and storytelling-focused. So it’s really fun when a collaboration can happen in that way.

Once the tour wraps, what are you most looking forward to?

It’s funny — whenever I’m on tour, I can’t wait until I have some time to rest and relax. Then I get home, and I’m like, “I don’t have anything to do. I hate relaxing. I need to be doing something.”

I’m excited for the challenge of just being in one place. Being on the road and traveling all the time is hard on my health, my routine, and my ability to stay healthy. Taking care of myself on the road has been really hard, but when I get home, that process has to continue. I have to find peace and solitude in being stationary.

I’m so excited to be [back] in Vermont, to be part of the Upper Valley again. It’s been a long time since I’ve been home. I’m just excited to be back in the places that make me feel comfortable.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.