Runner Turns Noah Kahan’s Sold-Out Fenway Show Into A Free Concert

It was raining in Boston on Tuesday, Jackson Kelly had been putting off his run all day, and Noah Kahan tickets at Fenway Park were going for $300. So Kelly laced up after dinner and solved two problems at once.

The Boston runner lives blocks from Fenway, where Kahan was opening a historic four-night homecoming run at the ballpark. With no real plan, Kelly jogged toward the stadium, heard music spilling out, and started looping the grounds in search of the best acoustics, which he found on Van Ness Street, he told Runner’s World.

“You could clearly hear him,” Kelly said. “It felt like you were there.”

The Noah Kahancert

Kelly turned the outing into a mobile concert, jogging past crowds of 30 to 50 people huddled on the sidewalk in the rain to listen, and spotted a few other runners doing exactly what he was doing. Four miles and some on-the-run karaoke to “Willing and Able” later, he headed home soaked, cold, and grinning.

“I thought it was really pure,” he said to Runner’s World. “It’s very, very cool that this guy has such a following that there are people willing to stand out in the pouring rain just to listen to the sound echoing off buildings.”

Kahan And Runners Were Always Going To Find Each Other

The Vermont-raised Kahan has become New England royalty, and his newest album even includes a nod to Boston’s running scene: “But the Charles meets the sun / And the Harvard track team runs / Past my truck, stuck on Storrow.” Boston runners have been putting the lyric all over their social posts since.

The collision of running and concerts is becoming its own little genre, too. Just last month, Harry Styles ran six miles to his own Wembley show. Kelly’s version is the budget option: instead of running to the gig, run around it.

The Hack Still Works This Week

The best part: Kahan’s Fenway residency isn’t over, so the price of admission remains a pair of shoes and a decent rain jacket.

Kelly, who ran cross country at Kalamazoo College and now prefers the 5K and 10K to the marathon grind, is between training blocks. The run he almost skipped ended up being the one he’ll remember.

“It turned a run that I didn’t want to do at all into a really awesome experience,” he said. Total cost: zero dollars and four wet miles.