Just announced Darren Kiely will bring his new Space Between Dreams tour to 3Olympia Theatre on Saturday 10th of October 2026.
Tickets priced from €35.15 including booking fee & €2 restoration levy go on sale at 10am on Friday 24th April from Ticketmaster.ie.
Three Ireland presale tickets on sale 10am Wednesday 22nd April with #Three+
Darren Kiely’s journey with music has always been driven by something pure. When he picked up a guitar for the first time as a teenager in a small town in Co. Cork, he did so with the hopes of simply being able to play along to the songs he loved. As he sharpened his skills, he started to push himself further, setting himself new challenges – learn a full cover, play a gig, then, eventually, see if he could write his own song. Throughout this years-long process, passion and natural curiosity spurred him on. “It was never like, ‘I’m gonna do this full time’ or ‘I want to play stadiums’,” he recalls. “It was just one thing led to the next challenge or the next step.”
It’s that mindset that has led Kiely to his current position – one of the first artists to be signed to Sony Music Nashville’s non-country imprint, Free Flight Records, and winning legions of fans with his emotionally rich, folk-infused music. Putting out his own music, though, wasn’t necessarily always on the cards for the 28-year-old.
In 2022, having gradually built his way up to performing covers gigs at functions and weddings, he was at a point where he could comfortably make a living – an enviable position, but one that didn’t leave him fully satisfied. “Somewhere along the path, I was like, ‘I don’t want to play cover gigs forever, but I do want to see if people will listen to my music’,” he says.
He describes writing his own music as something of an emotional awakening. “A lot of the time, I felt like I was drifting through life, not really thinking about things,” he explains. “When you write it down or make a recording and listen back to it, it really hits you in a way where it’s almost like you’re discovering things about yourself, but talking to yourself as well.”
Making the move into penning his own material was fueled by a feeling that he not only had something to say, but that there was a value in what he wanted to express, too. “In the music I listened to growing up, there were loads of things I learned about myself and about life,” Kiely says. “But I also thought, ‘There’s some songs that have never talked about this, or my experiences, or how I view things.”
So far, the Irish musician has proved himself right. Across his releases so far, he’s shared a fresh perspective on timeless tales of making amends to those you’ve hurt but have stuck by you (‘Mom & Dad’) and self-doubt (‘How Could You Love Me’), and opened up about subjects rarely broached in music. ‘Avalon’ is a case in point for the latter – a rousing piece of folk-rock that explores the musician’s relationship with his home country and why he felt he had to leave. “This will always be my home / I see fields of green,” he sings. “But I can’t find a place to grow / Or the light.”
These days, Kiely is based in Nashville, but first left Ireland for New York in 2019. It was there he stumbled into playing gigs – an experience cut short by the pandemic, which sent him back home. Once the borders re-opened, he headed back to NYC to pick up where he left off, securing a desk job at an accounting firm but his focus firmly on developing his artistry. “It’s a really tough place and it toughened me up an awful lot,” he says of his time in the city. “I just got used to grafting and getting beat up a little bit by the place and coming back for more. Music’s like that – there’s a lot of great things, but in between them, there’s a lot of times where you’re like, ‘Alright, I have to go again and again’. It’s like you’re trying to write a song and it’s not as good as you want it to be, but you have to go again.”
As much as New York taught him, though, it also left him yearning for something – a community and scene of like-minded musicians to grow and learn with. So, in 2023, he upped sticks to Nashville after hearing about the songwriting scene in the city. What Kiely has found since making the move is not only keeping him productive and creative, but also aligns with his original ethos when he was first learning to play guitar. “I’m a very small fish in a big pond here,” he smiles. “I like that. If I’m around who I think are the best, I can try and learn a little bit from them and try and get a little bit better.”
You can hear that commitment to growth across his catalogue so far, from debut single ‘How Could You Love Me’ – which landed a place on Ireland’s top 50 viral charts – to his 2023 debut EP, ‘Lost’. The latter depicted its creator’s search for his place in both music and the world around him, pushing through imposter syndrome and moments of uncertainty. The key to the record – its successor, 2024’s ‘From The Dark’ EP – isn’t the moments of darkness, though, but the hope that lingers throughout the songs. “There’s probably a few songs that don’t have too much hope, but there’s a tinge of it everywhere because I don’t want to wallow in anything or make things overly negative,” he reasons. “For me, there is that little bit of hope in every situation.”
Kiely’s upcoming music continues his knack for making distinctive folk-pop with something to say. ‘Find It In You’, a driving, uplifting song that finds him reassuring a partner who’s not ready for a relationship that he’ll wait for them: “Whenever your walls fall down and it’s love that you need / I hope you can find it in you to find it in me,” he shares. The contemplative ‘Married On My Phone’ deals with the relatable experience of witnessing someone you used to know going through big life milestones via your phone screen. “I saw someone I knew from years ago had got married via Instagram and I was just thinking, ‘Isn’t it crazy that you see significant events of people you’ve lost touch with [like this]?’ What happens if, one day, you end up seeing the person in your current relationship get married on Instagram?” For Kiely, that song is so different to anything he’s written before – and intentionally so: “I just wanted to hit the nail on the head of all the modern things I don’t really like.”
‘Old And Grey’, meanwhile, harks back to his youth of playing traditional Irish music – experiences that still occasionally peek through in his music today. Midway through, it surges with a swell of group vocals, intertwining with a melancholy fiddle melody to create something poignant and powerful. “I don’t sing Irish folk songs really, but I wanted to have a song that feels like it could be playing in a pub back home, and I really want to play that fiddle part live,” he says.
These songs are a testament to an artist who has always refused to get complacent or let his music become stagnant. They expand his sonic tapestry, pushing him into new pockets of sound while keeping his core DNA intact. “I’m not a band that has the same sound for every song,” he says. “It can sound like different things. That’s one thing that I think has changed in how I’m writing music now – it’s me, but there’s a different sound. I think that’s important.”
No matter how much success Kiely has achieved so far – from gaining traction from his early self-released singles to a recent sold-out headline tour – he’s remaining true to those pure intentions he started out with. As he continues to push himself forward and give himself new challenges, his ambitions are staying humble. “I just want to sing songs that I believe in,” he says. “Songs that people can sense that I care about them and what I’m singing is really authentic and honest.”
