Aaron Rowe

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When you watch Aaron Rowe on stage, he anchors himself behind the mic, broad shouldered and wide eyed whilst telling stories. Song histories, personal anecdotes or just random thoughts and funny observations are blurted out with erratic but effortless charm. His smile is so sunny and wide it feels permanent and his laugh is hoarse, warm and totally infectious. When he speaks his eyes glisten, but when he sings, they close as his head lulls onto his shoulder and tilts back. For Aaron, singing and playing guitar is not a choice, it’s an extension of himself - he has to do it. You can tell as soon as he begins it offers him not only freedom, but focus. 

It wasn't always that easy, though. When he first started playing music as a teenager, Aaron tried to keep it a secret. “Where I'm from, you can’t show people you’re soft, so playing music and singing was just off the cards.” However, it got tricky once he started walking around the area with a guitar strapped to his back. One day he was finally pulled over by “a few of the lads, they asked me ‘you playing music then, Aaron? Play us a song;” And when he humbly refused? “Play us a fucking song”. Reluctantly, he sang to them, sitting on a brick wall behind those tightly closed eyes. When he opened them, instead of laughter he was met with acceptance. “All they said was, ‘That was class,’ It was a really nice moment for me, and after that exact day I was like fuck this, this is what I want to do, and this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life”. He decided then and there that he was going to be a musician. 

Aaron grew up in Monkstown Farm, Dun Laoghaire on the southside of Dublin with his three sisters and single mother. “It was rough. Do you know what I mean? But rough in the sense that it was tough seeing her go through it. We never went without a hot meal but she went without everything.” Because his mum wanted him and his sister to be educated in the irish language, he ended up going to a different school to the boys in his area. He quickly began “living a double life”, softening his accent and picking up middle class manners. “When I was in primary school I just wanted to fit in, but when I got to Secondary I found that my strength was that I wasn't like the kids around me, and so I played up to it a lot. Once, someone in school called me a scumbag and I said ‘grand, now i'm going to give you full scumbag!’” 

So far, the story of Aaron Rowe looks like what fate feels like: paths crossing and stars aligning. 

Almost exactly a year ago, Aaron was singing covers at his regular Saturday gig in The Dame Tavern when one of his future managers would walk in and discover him playing. A few weeks later, Lewis Capaldi would also stumble into Aaron’s usual Sunday sessions at Cassidy’s on a stag do. Like fate, a few weeks after that, he would bump into Lewis again whilst performing at an open mic in Nashville, where Lewis introduced him to his best friend, now Aaron’s  manager, who just so happened to have listened to his demos that very morning. 

Far from an overnight success, after nearly thirteen years of gigging five days a week, his moment finally came. Call it fate, call it what you will, a good story is the least you can expect from a generational voice like Aaron. His own life experiences leading up to this moment means there is an unmatched maturity and vulnerability to Aaron’s songwriting, Somehow, he can balance the heart wrenching with the heartwarming, all the while holding open the door to us into his very personal world. This dichotomy he often explores on upcoming releases lies not only in its sometimes frank, sometimes devastating lyrics, but crucially in the old soul of Aaron’s voice, where he wears his influences on his sleeve; from Sam Cooke to Nina Simone to Paulo Nutini.  

What separates Aaron from his contemporaries is the everlasting quality to his songs - it's as though his voice trips and falls seamlessly through a melody, forever wounding its listener. You can see the mansion/ from the council estate,” sings Aaron in the opening line of his first single, ‘Hey Ma’. On the surface, it's a song written to his Mum about missing home and living vicariously through her whilst working over in England. However, through his colloquial and very intentional way of lyric writing, Aaron can encapsulate an entire world in a single line. ‘And down here no one's special,/ And they’d kill if you tried,/ But they’d help you in a heartbeat,/ And if they couldn't stop you bleeding,/ They’d die there by your side.’ The sharp inhalation of breath that cuts through the opening seconds of the song seems to warn us that what's about to follow is truly exceptional, because although grounded in a cold, casual reality, ‘Hey Ma’ feels transcendental. It’s what you’d call a forever song; a song that will stand the test of time, and Aaron doesn’t so much sing the words, as live them. As we climb the final moments of the song, hundreds of years shatter through the vocal, turning it to gravel, and Aaron throws away the melody in favour of mesmerising runs, so powerful and painful it is as if you can hear his heart breaking.  

A lot of the songs on the upcoming project are inspired by his home and the people Aaron grew up with. Talking With You, for instance, is about his uncle Mick: “Mick has no kids and adopted me, in a way. We used to drink cans of Guinness and watch the horses on TV.”  When Aaron had to start going over to England a lot, he felt guilty leaving Mick behind. “Shooting the bullshit/ watching the news/ picking a winner/ watching him lose… wish i was somewhere just talking with you.”  The Lane touches upon a similar subject, but holds even greater meaning for Aaron. “It's been a few years in the making, this song. When I used to go on the hop from school, I’d end up at my da’s place with his eccentric friend, Terry. One day he went ‘I have a song name for ya: Down Through The Lane’ and I was never sure what he meant by that. But then we started talking about my dad and his own dad, and the geography of where they lived and how we got to where we are today, and how you had to walk down this little lane off the main road to get to the gaff…” A few years passed and still no song, even Terry himself passed away, but Aaron always had that title in the back of his mind. It was only when he was up one night having a few drinks with his Dad, that the inspiration for the song finally came. “When my grandad was dying on his deathbed, my dad said he was holding his hand- imagine that, two hard men of that generation holding hands- and even when he was finally unconscious the only thing he wanted to say to his dad was I love you, and he couldn't. He just didn’t know how to say it. And he never got to say it.” However, Aaron is able to say it, and that’s the whole point. With the lyrical dexterity of Damien Dempsey and the visceral melodic nuance of Damien Rice, Aaron’s capacity for empathy within his songwriting is unparalleled, and he often becomes the perfect voice for that which cannot always be expressed. 

Over a month before the release of his first single, ‘Hey Ma,’ people were already sharing their own versions online by piecing together the song through snippets that had surfaced on social media. Something within just a few seconds of that song had broken through and touched people. He's played in pubs with Ed Sheeran, who is a fan, and supported David Gray at the 3arena without a single song out. Earlier on in the year he was invited to sing ‘The Parting Glass’ with Dermot Kennedy in Boston in front of 20,000 people who hadn’t a clue who he was, and yet the entire place erupted after he sang one line. Saying this, it doesn't take long to realise it’s not just his voice that has captured the hearts of so many people so early on in his career - its Aaron. His ability to blend this kind of timeless songwriting - whether singing about Monkstown, his ma or his uncle Mick - is truly part of what will make Aaron Rowe a touchstone for his generation, and will ensure he’ll always be sat on that wall, eyes closed, straddling the line between Ireland’s culturally rich past and trailblazing present.