Alex Kilroy’s first album introduced a guitarist with interests stretching well beyond a single blues style. Released in May, Break My Chains moved through blues-rock, gospel, pop, Southern grooves, and melodic songwriting. Its follow-up finds him asking what happens when that range is brought back to its original foundation.
The answer begins with “Crossroads On My Mind”, released today as the lead single from New Shade of Blue. The seven-track EP arrives October 23 and is described as a rawer, guitar-led project grounded in traditional blues feeling and phrasing.
Kilroy’s biography makes the song’s central image particularly apt. Born in Transylvania, he spent his childhood imagining a future in America, going so far as to hang an American flag over his bed at six years old. The route from that room to a professional music career involved local bars, wedding gigs, The Voice Romania, a Berklee summer scholarship opportunity, and a performance he arranged himself at Buddy Guy’s Legends.
It also involved prolonged uncertainty. Visa complications delayed Kilroy’s plans and sent him back to Romania for months while he waited for his paperwork. “Crossroads On My Mind” revisits that period alongside the belief of his parents, framing his eventual American life as the result of endurance rather than inevitability.
The song arrives during a year of major personal change. Kilroy’s father, Iulian, died earlier in 2026. A guitarist and artist manager, he introduced a young Kilroy to the discipline required to learn an instrument and later pushed him to establish an identity separate from Stevie Ray Vaughan, the player who had inspired his move from piano to guitar.
Iulian’s influence extends into the design of New Shade of Blue. The EP pays close attention to the tradition Kilroy spent years studying without treating the past as something that can simply be reconstructed. Original songs stand alongside renditions of Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” and Vaughan’s “Life by the Drop,” the latter recorded on August 27 in recognition of Vaughan’s legacy.
That balance gives “Crossroads On My Mind” a clear role within the project. It introduces an EP rooted in blues history through a narrative that belongs specifically to Kilroy: a Transylvanian childhood, an imported recording, a family’s support, interrupted plans, and the eventual arrival in a country that had occupied his imagination for years. New Shade of Blue will be released October 23, while its opening single can be heard now.
