A fine finger-style guitarist with a precise baritone, Van Kirk has a Ph.D. from the University of Alaska. After five years of touring and living in his van, he thought that a career in the sciences might be a bit more secure than playing music. Eventually, however, he realized that he could do more by writing songs than statistical models, and he put aside his computer, picked up his guitar, and set out again.
When Van Kirk reached Scotland and the prestigious Fringe Festival, the Daily Fringe Review wrote “The evening’s act was Kray Van Kirk, whose 12-string guitar and soaring vocals were spellbinding; the Alaskan singer-songwriter, in his Edinburgh debut, was not the reason I arrived early, but was certainly why I stayed late.”
Van Kirk, however, is not your average crying-in-your-coffee singer-songwriter. “We are driven by myth and the seasons of the heart,” he says. “Absolutely everyone, of any history or identity, needs to see themselves as being on a hero’s journey.”
Of this charming, quixotic, and eclectic performer, the Borderline Folk Club in New York wrote that Van Kirk was “what every singer-songwriter should aspire to.”