Article Contributed by jbleicher.com
Published on 2026-03-25
Photo Credit: Sophia Medina
As a child growing up in Transylvania, Alex Kilroy hung an American flag above his bed and told his mother he was only visiting Romania. Years later, that unlikely dream has led him to the heart of the blues tradition he idolized as a kid. Today the rising guitarist and singer-songwriter announces his debut album Break My Chains, arriving Friday, May 15th, alongside the release of the album’s powerful title track and lead single, introducing listeners to Kilroy’s soulful guitar work and deeply personal songwriting.
“Break My Chains is about breaking the chains of trying to be somebody else,” Kilroy says. “Breaking the patterns in your own mind. Realizing you’re a soul having a human experience.”
Recorded in Florida with a handpicked band and shaped alongside producer Tres Sasser, Break My Chains introduces an artist whose road to this moment has been anything but typical.
Kilroy was born in the Transylvanian town of Bistrița, into a family where music was constant. His father, Iulian, had been a guitarist before turning to management, and his aunt was a nationally recognized singer who competed in Romania’s Eurovision selection. Stories from those early years describe a toddler matching the pitch of his father’s guitar as it was tuned – a small moment that hinted at the musician he would become.
Music school began in first grade. In Romania’s conservatory system, Kilroy studied classical piano for six years while friends played soccer outside. He loved music but chafed against the rigid structure.
Everything changed one summer when his father imported a car from the United States with a DVD tucked inside: Stevie Ray Vaughan – Live at Montreux.
Kilroy pressed play. “Texas Flood” filled the speakers. Vaughan, sweat-soaked and gripping a battered guitar, radiated something Kilroy could not name at the time. Later he would call it freedom.
“I could feel what he was feeling,” Kilroy recalls. “It clicked. That’s me. That’s what I want to do.”
His father struck a deal: learn three Stevie Ray Vaughan songs note-for-note in one summer and he could switch from piano to guitar. What was meant as a challenge became liberation. Within a few years Kilroy was fronting a Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute group that landed festival slots across Europe. At fourteen he opened for blues legend Lucky Peterson at Romania’s Sighișoara Blues Festival, a stage previously reserved for American artists.
Still, his father warned him against imitation. “You can’t be the next Stevie Ray Vaughan,” he would say. “He already did that.”
That lesson stayed with Kilroy as his ambitions grew. At twenty, after raising money through wedding gigs and even appearing on The Voice Romania, he secured a scholarship to Berklee College of Music’s summer program. Watching the American coastline from the airplane window, he remembers thinking: That is America. It felt less like arrival and more like return.
Though finances prevented him from enrolling full-time, the trip changed everything. Posing as his own manager, Kilroy cold-called Buddy Guy’s Legends in Chicago and secured a show. Backstage after the performance, a member of Buddy Guy’s team handed him a Grammy and told him, “Just wait until you get the one with your name on it.”
The years that followed included visa complications, months back in Romania waiting for paperwork, and eventually a move to Nashville, where Kilroy rebuilt his life piece by piece – sometimes literally. After a car accident, he taught himself auto repair on YouTube and rebuilt his totaled vehicle from junkyard parts.
Eventually that determination led to another turning point when Kilroy relocated to Florida and connected with industry veteran Clyde Harris, who introduced him to his partner Pat Armstrong. Signing with Harris and Armstrong marked a shift from the long, self-built road toward a focused creative vision.
“We’ve got to start with the product,” Kilroy told them. “We’ve got to make a great album.”
Working closely with producer TresSasser, Kilroy developed Break My Chains as a cohesive statement rooted in blues tradition while embracing modern edges and melodic songwriting. The title track captures the philosophy behind the record.
Now based in Orlando with his fiancée and their young daughter, Kilroy sees the album as both a milestone and a beginning.
Through it all, the through-line has remained freedom – freedom to leave home, to claim another, and to honor the past without being confined by it.
His father, Iulian, was the first to hear the masters and the one who taught him respect, dignity, and the discipline to never give up on the life he imagined. Iulian passed away earlier this year after a long illness, but the lessons he instilled remain at the center of Kilroy’s journey.
The boy who once insisted he was only visiting Romania now stands firmly in his chosen country, green card in hand and guitar strapped on. The American flag above his childhood bed was never decoration.
It was direction.
With Break My Chains, Alex Kilroy takes the next step forward.
