Aaron Rowe

Monkstown Farm, a €100 acoustic and a friend busking

Aaron Rowe was born in 1996 and raised in Monkstown Farm, a working-class estate in Dún Laoghaire on the south side of Dublin. As a boy he kept any interest in music quiet for fear of being bullied over it, and put his time into boxing and kickboxing instead. The turn came at 15, watching a friend busk in town and working out that a guitar could bring in money. His mother bought him an acoustic for around €100 along with some instructional material, and he began writing his own songs almost as soon as he could hold a chord down.

His guitar heroes came out of his father's record collection and the Irish canon — Rory Gallagher, Paul Brady, Mark Knopfler, Derek Trucks and David Gilmour. The singing came from somewhere else: Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Paolo Nutini. Irish traditional music took longest to reach him. He has said he wrote it off as music for old people before coming round to it, and it now runs through both his own writing and the ballads he plays between his songs on stage.

Three sets a day, and the Sweet Caroline problem

Older players on the Dublin pub circuit got him support slots, then bookings of his own, and within about eighteen months music was paying his way. The work was relentless — as many as three sets a day, almost all covers pitched at tourists. He has been blunt about what that did to him: he did not want to sing Sweet Caroline for the rest of his life, and describes the circuit as soul-destroying, a standardised song list repeated until it meant nothing. By his early twenties he was burnt out and close to stopping altogether.

Two pub nights changed the direction. One of the people who now manages him walked in on a Saturday residency at the Dame Tavern. Weeks later Lewis Capaldi, in Dublin on a stag do, wandered into Cassidy's during Rowe's Sunday set. Rowe thought little of it at the time, until the two ended up standing beside each other at a bar in Nashville while he was there on a writing trip — a few pints, a friendship, and an introduction to the friend of Capaldi's who became his manager. Columbia Records signed him. Ed Sheeran, who became a mentor, gave him a Wee Lowden acoustic, a gesture Rowe called the nicest thing he had ever seen.

Exodus, and the singles that followed

The recorded career is short and dense. Hey Ma arrived on 23 May 2025 through Columbia and reached number 10 on the Irish Homegrown Chart. Talking with You followed at number 13 and Lose Lose at number 10. The debut EP, Exodus, came on 12 September 2025 on vinyl, download and streaming; its track Drawing the Line went to number 15 on the same chart.

Four more singles have landed in 2026. Please Don't Hate Me opened the year on 16 January and gave him his first entry on the main Irish Singles Chart at number 45. John's Song arrived in April and remains his best placing, number 7 on the Homegrown Chart. Hollywood Sign charted at number 80 and Forever Now, released on 18 September 2026, at number 68. There is still no album.

Hey Ma was co-written with Iain Archer, who pushed him to keep the specifics in rather than sand them off — the homesickness and the guilt of leaving, written across the move between Dublin and London, with fiddle set low in the arrangement. Rowe's stated case for writing that plainly is that naming one real person tends to find the listener's own version of them. He has been airing unreleased material on stage well ahead of release: Double Edged Sword at the Aviva in July 2026, Santiago at Forest Hills Stadium in September.

Walking off the Loop Tour

Rowe spent much of 2026 opening Ed Sheeran's Loop Tour, starting in Sydney on 13–15 February and running through Glendale on 13 June, Nashville on 20 June, Milwaukee on 25 June, Denver on 4 July, Las Vegas on 18 July, Minneapolis on 15 August and Toronto on 20–22 August. Setlist logs place him at Lumen Field in Seattle on 1 August and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on 8 August, five songs apiece.

It ended on 15 September 2026. After Macklemore performed Hind's Hall and called for a free Palestine at MetLife Stadium, promoter Messina Touring Group announced he would not play the remaining American dates, saying several venues had refused to proceed with him on the bill; Macklemore said Sheeran had told him the Kraft Group's Robert Kraft had barred him from Gillette Stadium and pressed other stadium owners to do the same. Sheeran said the decision was Messina's, not his. Rowe withdrew from the rest of the tour the same day, saying he would lose all respect for himself to carry on as normal. Finneas, Lukas Graham and the Irish band Beoga, who played a segment of the show, all pulled out on 15 September as well.

Rowe addressed it directly on stage eight days later, at a sold-out headline show at the 200-capacity Drake Underground in Toronto on 23 September. He called the affair a circus, said those with power were pleased that people were arguing over a few gigs, made clear his objection was not aimed at Jewish people, and grounded the position in Irish history: that is why we stand with Palestine, because we have seen this before. He worked a free Palestine into an Irish folk ballad. Brad Wheeler, reviewing for the Globe and Mail, noted the raspy voice and the commitment to traditional balladry and reckoned Rowe would be fine despite the lost dates.

Where he stands in October 2026

The American work continued without Sheeran. Rowe stayed on Dermot Kennedy's The Weight of the Woods tour, playing MGM Music Hall at Fenway in Boston on 18 and 19 September and Forest Hills Stadium in Queens on 29 September alongside Jonah Kagen. That partnership had already produced the pivot of his year: two nights supporting Kennedy at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin on 11 and 12 July 2026, after which he announced his own headline run.

Those tickets went on sale at 10am on 17 July 2026 from €36.65. The run is seventeen dates, opening at Patterns in Brighton on 15 November and closing at the Electric Ballroom in London on 10 December, taking in the Fleece in Bristol, O2 Academy 2 in Birmingham, Academy 2 in Manchester, Jacaranda Baltic in Liverpool, the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds, the Cluny in Newcastle, SWG3 in Glasgow, the Mash House in Edinburgh, Limelight in Belfast, Róisín Dubh in Galway, Cyprus Avenue in Cork, Dolan's in Limerick and the Guildhall in Derry. The 3Olympia in Dublin on 5 December sold out and a second night was added on 6 December; both are now gone.

Two further bookings are confirmed. Rowe headlines the Dublin New Year's Festival Countdown concert at Dublin Castle on 31 December 2026, above The Academic, THEATRE, KK Lewis and DJ Shelly Gray, with early-bird tickets at €44.90 released at 10am on 30 September. He is also among the first Irish acts confirmed for Eurosonic 2027.