Kray Van Kirk

The room was almost empty after Van Kirk's show at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. A man with shirt-sleeves rolled up in the August heat walked over to him and stood hesitantly for a moment before thrusting out his hand.

"I use to sing for my wife in the evenings, but she has dementia now and doesn't remember me. That song about the lost lovers and the dance hall..." "I really liked that one."

A fine finger-style guitarist with a precise baritone, Van Kirk has a Ph.D. from the University of Alaska. "We are driven by myth and the seasons of the heart” he says. “Science comes later. We need new stories and new myths for a very complex 21st century so that everyone, absolutely everyone, regardless of creed, color, gender, sexuality or anything else, can listen and look and see themselves on the Hero's Quest.

Of this charming, Quixotic, and decidedly eclectic performer, the Borderline Folk Club in New York wrote “it is what every singer-songwriter should aspire to.”