Kirby Alexander Sibiski is an American artist and writer. His debut trilogy of albums, Reform, Anxious, was written and recorded between 2019 and 2023 and released in November 2025. He began work on his fourth album in October 2025.
Rooted to Kutztown, Pennsylvania, Kirby’s work blends autobiography, psychoanalysis, political theory, and philosophical reflection. Drawing on Milan Kundera’s idea of the poetry of coincidence, he transforms lived experience into affect-as-narrative. His work has been pretentiously described as “cinema through sound.”
Early Life
Kirby Alexander Sibiski was born at Lehigh Valley Hospital to Shannon Kyle Brown Sibiski and Gerald “Skip” Joseph Sibiski on February 21, 1996. The couple had met years earlier at Shorty’s Bar. His name was inspired by baseball player Kirby Puckett and St. Elmo’s Fire character Kirby Keager, played by Emilio Estevez.
In his early years, the family lived in a small apartment on Main Street in Kutztown, before moving to the end unit of a row home with a large backyard on Lenni Street. Both parents attended college for several years, but neither earned their degree until Skip graduated in 2002.
They had a dog named Zo, an Australian Shepherd, who lived with the family until she passed away when Kirby was in middle school.
His younger brother, Beckham Brown Sibiski, was born August 25, 1999. Kirby later recalled watching Gargoyles with his father the night of Beckham’s birth. According to their mother, Kirby greeted his brother’s arrival with enthusiasm rather than jealousy, even suggesting the playful name Bathtub Goodman for him. The two were close and often made up games together, from “Boat Game” and “Ball Game” to living room soccer, basketball, and wrestling.
During childhood, Kirby and Beckham often spent time with their grandparents, Leroy “Jock” Brown and Jacqueline “Jackie” Winter Brown, while their mother worked cleaning houses. Jackie ran a flower shop, Jackie & Daughter, out of the side of their house, and helped Kirby’s Aunt Shawn expand the business to Kutztown. “The Shop”, as the family called it, would later become Kirby’s first after-school job, where he swept floors, prepped flowers, and ran deliveries with Leroy.
Kirby’s Aunt Toni and cousin Josh (referred to as “Uncle Josh” growing up) were also involved in the boys’ lives, always coming together for holidays and often seeing each other for family dinners at spots like Dryville Hotel. Josh’s daughter, Kenzie, was born when Kirby was in middle school. He and his brother got out of school early that day.
Skip held a full-time job and coached soccer in the evenings, but the family maintained a strong sense of togetherness—often sharing nightly dinners. Visits from Kirby’s paternal grandparents, Connie (Nana) and Gerald (Pop), as well as his Aunt Sherie and her husband Uncle Chuck, were more sporadic, but still filled with love. Nana and Pop lived in Ocean City, MD, while Chuck and Sherie lived in New Jersey.
Kirby, Beckham, and their parents would visit their Dad’s side of the family every holiday, often going to Topton to see the Browns before making the four-hour drive South. The family would often listen to Preston & Steve on the drive. They also always went down during summer vacation. The boys sometimes visited Sherie and Chuck, who recorded their wild antics on VHS; they had a trampoline, a pool, a mini claw machine, and lots of other fun toys.
Back home in Kutztown, the family would gather to watch television in the parents bed, where Beckham laid in between the parents and Kirby at the foot of the bed. They watched shows ranging from VH1 reality TV and Project Runway to Celebrity Deathmatch and professional wrestling.
Kirby also recalls playing video games like FIFA, Sonic the Hedgehog, Cookies & Cream, and Crash Bandicoot with his father. For games like State of Emergency, Skip printed out the cheat codes and put them in a binder.
Both brothers’ lives were deeply shaped by soccer, participating in local travel teams from a young age. The sport became a central part of their family rhythm and early social life.
Education
Kirby began his education at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Preschool in Kutztown before transferring to Trinity Lutheran Preschool, a YMCA-affiliated program. The move was primarily financial, as St. John’s tuition had become too costly. Trinity would later emphasize diversity and inclusion, while St. John’s remained associated with more traditional values.
He attended Kutztown Area School District for elementary through high school. Once the boys entered school, their grandparents would take the boys out to breakfast at least once a week. Eventually this evolved into the Tuesday Night Dinners with extended family. Their grandparents generally played one of two CD’s on repeat in the car, one of them being Down By The Tabernacle by The Gaithers.
Elementary School (2001-2007)
Kirby entered the public school system in kindergarten, where he was taught by Mrs. Gaffney and the first of two teachers named Mrs. Kenney. His first-grade experience, however, proved difficult—his teacher’s frequent scolding left a lasting impression, and his parents considered requesting a transfer.
In second grade, Mr. Ebner played a formative role in restoring Kirby’s confidence and love of learning. The two met before school once a week to play video games such as Mario Kart and talk, establishing a mentorship that helped heal the anxiety left by the previous year.
From that point onward, Kirby thrived under the guidance of teachers like Mrs. Fritz, Mrs. Grimm, and Mr. Westgate. During one fifth-grade Halloween celebration, Kirby, inspired by Flavor of Love, dressed as Flavor Flav—complete with clock necklace and foil “grill,” but notably without blackface.
Around fourth grade, the Sibiski family moved from Lenni Street to Highland Avenue, where they would remain until early 2022.
Middle School (2007-2010)
Middle school is when Kirby started taking a deeper interest in music. His grandmother encouraged him to take art lessons with Joanne Lapic, and he began exploring new bands like White Lies, Editors, and Arctic Monkeys.
Shannon loved bands like The Smiths and Echo & The Bunnymen, and suggested Kirby listen to White Lies because he’d grown up loving The Killers, especially their first album Hot Fuss, which Shannon owned on CD. Throughout school, Kirby would DJ and sing in the car on the way to soccer practice while his mom drove.
Kirby had already spent several years playing competitive soccer. He began his club career with Reading Rage, then joined FC Revolution, where his mother served as team manager (to save money) and his father as a girls’ coach (to make money).
The family remained deeply involved with the club for years until a dispute over a lack of player recruitment for Kirby’s team, as well as unpaid coaching wages to their father, led to their ousting from the club via email on Thanksgiving Day. In response, Kirby created a tongue-in-cheek Facebook page titled “Not Being a Part of FC Revolution.”
Following the fallout, Kirby began training with ACFC, a high-level youth team coached by Khanh Nguyen, women’s soccer coach at Albright College. The team featured players two to three years older than him and wore Manchester United-style kits.
Kirby’s development continued under Coach Greg Ramos at Lehigh Valley United, one of the nation’s top-ranked teams on GotSoccer. His father had already joined the club as a girls’ coach following their separation from FC Revolution. Although the program offered elite-level development, the strict, authoritarian coaching style drained the joy from the game.
Kirby left a heartfelt letter for his parents on the dining room table explaining how unhappy he’d become and that he no longer wanted to attend practices. They supported his decision, even though it meant stepping away from the professional trajectory he had once envisioned. Though he didn’t think much of it then, his mother told him that day, “Maybe you should become a writer.”
Afterward, Kirby returned to Rage to reunite with longtime friends. During this stint, he scored the decisive goal that secured the team’s qualification for a tournament in Florida—a cross that unintentionally found the back of the net. Since the family couldn’t afford travel expenses, Kirby attended the tournament with a teammate and his father. Kirby suffered a small knock early on, limiting his playing time in the tournament.
High School (2010-2014)
Often placed out of position at Rage and desiring a new challenge, Kirby moved on to Lower Macungie Soccer Club, a team one age group above his own. He scored his first and only goal for the club during his debut tournament.
Under Coach George, his team operated with a cohesive, collective ethos—George was known for saying, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Kirby seemed poised for a collegiate soccer career, with his performances as a 6-style holding mid earning him recruitment interest from several universities.
He later attended a camp at Drexel University, a Division I program, where he found himself competing against older, physically mature players. The environment’s intensity and authoritarian tone shook his confidence, arriving just as many of his Lower Macungie teammates were graduating and moving on to college. Left without a team during his final year of travel soccer, Kirby rejoined old friends at Berks Ajax for one last season.
His focus began to shift from athletics toward social life and relationships, and during his senior year he entered his first relationship with Kiersten, which ended in February. He’d also begun writing song lyrics to himself and playing more with his mom’s old portable CASIO keyboard. He took a music production elective with his long-time friend and future collaborator J.C., and then attempted a music theory class (the only class he ever dropped).
His other old friend Colton Sterner, member of the Triple Threat with Kirby and Adam Stevens, began teaching him how to play basic chords on the guitar. Colton would later give Kirby his first electric guitar and amp. The guitar is notably featured unplugged on “Palette Switch”, the first song from Wasted Potential.
Kirby achieved mostly straight A’s throughout school, getting his homework done during study halls. He recalls that he “only did homework at home a handful of times.” Despite wavering interest in pursuing soccer at the next level, he attended a camp at Lebanon Valley College, where he was recruited—thanks in part to Coach George, an alumnus of the program. Arcadia University also expressed interest, and Kirby maintained communication with both schools.
However, the prospect of phone conversations and direct recruitment proved nerve-wracking. Having relied heavily on his mother’s guidance for scheduling, logistics, and communication, he found the transition to self-management difficult.
One evening during senior year, his younger brother Beckham made an offhand comment—something to the effect of, “You know you don’t have to play soccer.” The casual remark struck Kirby as revelatory, offering a kind of permission to step away from a pursuit that had long defined his identity.
Kirby ultimately decided not to continue soccer in college, committing instead to Arcadia University for its proximity to Philadelphia. His other finalists included Lebanon Valley University, which felt too rural without the athletic component, and West Chester University, which he ultimately declined. Inspired by the MTV series I Just Want My Pants Back, Kirby declared a Communications major with the intent of entering the music industry.
However, following a self-guided exploration of anarchist thought for Mr. Chamber’s senior English class essay at KAHS, as well as personal forays into the Wild West era of the Internet, his coursework quickly steered him toward critical theory. There, his professors would properly introduce him to Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the philosophical frameworks that later influenced his artistic and intellectual development.
Toward the end of senior year, Kirby’s long-time friend, Tucker Landis, invited him to RatMilk, a DIY punk house down the street from Kirby’s home. The two were also doubles partners in tennis, with the pair going to Counties and Districts, as well the two winning the second (Tucker) and third (Kirby) flight Berks county singles championships.
He wouldn’t return to RatMilk until the summer when Corey Arnold, a good friend since fourth grade, invited him again. There, he reconnected with Noah, his friend since kindergarten and future collaborator, as well as the future bassist for BURP!. He’d also spend time with Julia, a Kutztown schoolmate and future flatmate, and Kody, a local show organizer and later frontman of BURP! and Raskol. Kirby would return to RatMilk, later renamed Spaghetti Haus and Mind Palace, often during the next few years.
He’d also started coaching the Kutztown indoor JV soccer team as a volunteer in his final year of high school. He was then paid by the team’s Booster Club to run summer training sessions twice a week. The teams he trained would go on to make districts the next two years while Kirby was away at Arcadia.
Arcadia University (2014-2018)
During freshman orientation, Kirby first encountered Katherine “Kat” Faulkner, a punk-inspired bass player whose blonde hair and self-assured coolness reminded him of Debbie Harry. Though they didn’t speak at orientation, Kirby was immediately drawn to her.
Weeks later, while walking with a friend who lived on her floor, Kirby joined a hallway conversation where he and Kat bonded over a shared reference to The Cure’s Robert Smith. He asked her to hang out, nervously shaking as he took down her number—a moment she later admitted made her wonder if something was wrong.
Their first concert together was The Menzingers at First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia. The night ended with the two sharing drinks back at her dorm, talking until morning. Kirby ensured Kat was safe, and though their relationship didn’t turn physical for several months, the emotional connection deepened quickly.
In the following weeks, they saw We Were Promised Jetpacks at Union Transfer, where they were photographed by Kirby’s longtime friend Pablo, who had previously taken him to see Savages in high school.
After Thanksgiving break, Kat visited Kirby’s apartment to watch HER, which she’d never seen. The two were both nervous, and Kat initially sat at Kirby’s desk chair before he said she could sit with him on bed. They also started Little Miss Sunshine, which he’d never seen, but was cut short when his roommate Brent, who lived with him every year of college, came back to the room.
Kirby and Kat began spending increasing amounts of time together, and when her friend asked what they “were,” the pair realized they had never defined it. That same night, they shared their first kiss—after which Kat, overcome by nerves, ran away. Their relationship blossomed soon after, lasting several years and marking Kirby’s first experience of genuine love.
Arguably Kirby’s first performance for another person, he played an acoustic rendition of “Moon Song” by Karen O for Kat in his dorm room during Freshman year.
Kirby’s early coursework in music industry studies proved underwhelming, and an assignment interviewing BURP! for Loco Mag—Arcadia’s student publication—left him anxious and self-critical. These experiences caused him to question his initial career path.
Around this time, his social life expanded. After a dorm inspection uncovered alcohol in his apartment, campus housing officials conducted a full search—leaving him angry about privacy invasion. Ironically, they overlooked his Union Jack laptop case containing an eighth of marijuana.
Kat was an RA, and while the incident didn’t harm their relationship, her position limited her social freedom. She avoided parties to protect her job, while Kirby’s interest in nightlife grew, creating tension neither fully addressed.
When Kat left to study abroad during Spring semester Junior year, their relationship unraveled. The two last saw each other in December, and by February, they had broken up. Kirby immersed himself in house parties with Corey at Temple University.
Before senior year, Kirby declared what he called his “Summer of Self-Improvement.” He got into shape, read voraciously, and landed an internship, feeling more confident than ever. When he encountered Kat again, he was briefly dating two other women, but he soon rekindled things with her—ending both other relationships.
The reunion proved emotionally turbulent. As graduation neared, the couple’s shared history and lingering affection collided with the inevitability of change.
Kutztown and Hamburg Music Scene (2018–2019)
After graduating from Arcadia University with straight A’s (and one B), Kirby returned to his hometown of Kutztown. His grandfather helped him secure a manual labor job at the Kutztown Folk Festival, a position that paid little and left him feeling directionless. Communication with Kat gradually faded, and Kirby slipped into a period of depression.
By late summer, still living at home, Kirby accepted a position as the head middle school soccer coach and later as the assistant coach for the high school tennis team. However, he spent many evenings drinking heavily, wrestling with feelings of stagnation and uncertainty about his future.
A turning point came when Jordan Kemp, a close friend (later a Physics Postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford University), invited him to an open mic night at the Kutztown Pub. Kirby performed in public for the first time.
A few weeks later, he returned to play again, forging friendships with Lefty and members of Uncle Jake & the 18-Wheel Gang. The Monday night open mics became a ritual until the event was shut down in December following a minor scandal involving marijuana in the pub’s smoking area.
Soon after, Brady, the lead singer of Uncle Jake, invited Kirby to open for their holiday show in Lenhartsville. Nervous but determined, Kirby performed after a few Dogfish Head beers, with his father dropping him off and friends Peaches and Brady’s girlfriend giving him a ride home.
In early 2019, Lefty launched a new open mic at The Westy in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, where Kirby became a weekly regular alongside Lefty and Johnny. Lefty and Kirby sometimes performed as Kirby & The Low-Lifes, with Kirby singing and playing acoustic guitar and Lefty on drums. He was also joined by several other local Hamburg musicians from time to time.
Through these gatherings, Kirby met Darren, a local figure known for his friendliness and deep ties to the Hamburg community. Darren and his father eventually offered Kirby his first paid web design gig, creating a site for the family’s luxury bathroom trailer rentals, PAFancyFlush.
One night at the Hamburg VFW, a local known as Stinky, who took his own life a few years later, pulled Kirby aside and urged him to believe in himself and his work after seeing him perform several times at the Westy.
Around this time, Kirby would also spend late nights with locals who used to party with The Bloodhound Gang and stars from Jackass.
Wasted Potential (2019–2020)
See Wasted Potential (2019-2020)
Darren’s father, who organized the region’s Blues, Brews, & BBQ Festival in Leesport, invited Kirby to play a short set during the summer of 2019. Attended by his parents and Noah, other attendees were somewhat shocked by the despair of the lyrics. He was paid in free food, including bacon on a stick, which he later reported was “quite delicious”.
Through much of late 2019, Kirby drifted through an unstructured routine of partying, open mics, and heavy drinking, still living at home and without steady employment. The Hamburg nights of 2019 were long, wild, and often blurred with weekends spent drinking at the Kutztown Pub and Shorty’s.
When the Fall semester started, he befriended Johanna and a group of German exchange students from Kutztown University. The group frequently met up for drinks, and Kirby quickly developed a crush on Johanna.
As his anxiety worsened, Kirby was binge drinking to blackout levels several nights a week, often spending his last dollars on cheap beer. Wednesday karaoke nights became a ritual—two pitchers of Yuengling Premium for ten dollars and plenty of friends and strangers happy to buy him drinks.
The escalating lifestyle eventually caught up to him. Run-ins with local police and mounting legal trouble forced Kirby to take stock of his situation. Though he felt unfairly targeted, the experience—and the need to pay fines—pushed him to find work for the first time in months.
He secured a job at a family-owned fundraising company down the street from his house, taking calls and doing admin work for $12/hour. Though he found a sense of solidarity with some of the workers, especially the older ladies who worked with him in the office, he hated the job. He’d keep the position until mid-2021, but the lack of actual work to do left him with time to read books by writers like Bruce Fink and Zizek, and even listen to podcasts on Google Analytics and SEO.
By fall 2019, the Westy open mic that had defined much of his creative life came to an end. He occasionally played at nearby Pappy T’s, but the scene had faded. When the exchange students returned home in December, Kirby had already found new company in a fresh circle of weekend partiers. In early 2020, he opened again for Uncle Jake & the 18-Wheel Gang at Beer Wall in Reading, keeping the momentum alive until the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly shut everything down.
During lockdown, Kirby’s grandmother suffered a stroke after a fall. Though she regained her ability to speak and interact, she remained in a nursing home for much of the rest of her life. His grandfather, then in his nineties, visited her nearly every day—whenever pandemic restrictions allowed.
With social life on pause, Kirby stopped drinking and turned inward. The isolation and clarity of the pandemic gave him space to focus on music production. Having written most of his material acoustically during the open-mic years, he began recording and producing his songs from home.
In spring 2020, he released “The Dead End,” his first self-produced track. Over the next several months, he completed a collection of recordings that would become his debut project, Wasted Potential.
This Is Not a Life (2021)
At the start of 2021, Kirby began working on his second major project, This Is Not a Life (often abbreviated TINAL). The album marked a creative leap from his earlier work, fueled by new equipment purchased with COVID-19 unemployment benefits—including a MicroKorg synthesizer and an iRig interface.
Prior to purchasing the new gear, Kirby received a message of praise from Carson, a younger Kutztown Area High School alumnus who knew him through mutual friends. Coincidentally, Carson was close with Emma, younger sister of Maya Workowski, who would soon become central to Kirby’s life.
One night while working on the album, Kirby matched with Maya on Bumble. Their initial conversations were long, personal, and unexpectedly familiar. He eventually realized she had graduated with his younger brother Beckham, who once joked about her unibrow back in elementary school.
In high school, he had vague memories of seeing a “timid and shy looking girl” who he “wanted to hug and tell everything would be alright”, which he later believed to be Maya. He’d also remembered her getting an award for a paper she wrote when he attended his brother’s (and Maya’s) high school graduation. Maya, meanwhile, admitted Kirby had also caught her eye during the year the two were in high school together.
As COVID-19 vaccines became widely available, the two arranged to meet in person for drinks at Saucony Creek Brewery. Maya later admitted she had taken a quick shot beforehand to ease her nerves, so she asked Kirby to pick her up instead at the last minute. When she climbed into the car, “Barely Legal” by The Strokes was playing.
They hit it off immediately. Within two weeks, Kirby met Maya’s parents over tacos on Cinco de Mayo, and soon he was having dinner with her family nearly every night. Their relationship was passionate and occasionally volatile. Maya, who had just finished college and was working as a dog sitter, brought optimism and energy into Kirby’s life at a time when he was still stuck in a job he couldn’t stand.
That summer, as Kirby’s mother announced her sudden decision to divorce his father, he found himself caught between family upheaval and the early tremors of instability in his own relationship.
In July, Darren’s father asked Kirby to perform at the Blues, Brews, & BBQ Festival again. That year, the festival had grown in size, and Kirby was set to headline. However, the performance went off the rails from the start. For the first time, Kirby was playing with backing tracks, performing songs from Wasted Potential and TINAL. The auxiliary cord provided by the sound engineer didn’t work properly, and the backing tracks got interrupted mid-song. Some in attendance also complained that his music style wasn’t blues. He played a live rendition of Cat Power’s “Sea of Love” for the first and only time. Maya was in attendance, and Kirby received a compliment from someone who caught the end of the set.
Encouraged by Maya, he then quit his job to focus on travel and building a new career. The pair began co-working together several days a week. Kirby learned about SEO and started his own blog, eventually securing work with Rock Content after a fortunate recruitment on LinkedIn. He would later leverage these skills and experiences to scale his freelance writing business.
After a trip to Chincoteague and attending a wedding with the Workowski family, the couple began planning a Workaway trip through Europe. But by early fall, cracks in their relationship began to show. After several near breakups, the trip was canceled. Maya decided instead to travel solo to the United Kingdom, offering Kirby to join her temporarily.
He flew to London with her, the two staying in Chelmsford together for a few days before he traveled south to Bournemouth to see White Lies perform a one-off acoustic show. The night before, at a karaoke bar called The Dancing Jug, he befriended a Brazilian man and spent a long evening partying. Two mornings later, he caught a 5:30 AM train to Manchester for the Manchester United vs. Manchester City derby—arriving just as the match kicked off.
Kirby spent his brief time in Manchester exploring Salford, staying at The Bee Hive Inn. He drank with locals who told stories about Peter Hook of Joy Division and complimented him on his resemblance to “some actor I can’t remember.”.
Before leaving, he visited the Science and Industry Museum, where a Factory Records exhibit tied the experience together. The visit, suggested by a fan he met at the White Lies show who invited him out for post-show drinks at Wetherspoon’s with his girlfriend, became a symbolic pilgrimage for an artist whose work is steeped in post-punk and Situationist influence.
Maya invited him to return earlier than planned, and Kirby cut his Manchester trip short to reunite with her—unaware he’d find himself back in the city just months later. After returning to the U.S., Maya followed about a week later. For a time, things between them seemed to improve, but emotional volatility lingered. Meanwhile, Kirby’s mother moved out, and the family home was put up for sale.
The year came to a head on New Year’s Eve, when Kirby accompanied Maya and her family to visit relatives in Virginia. After heavy drinking beginning in the afternoon, he blacked out, ending the night in isolation while everyone else fell asleep before midnight. He later characterized the six-hour car ride home with the Workowskis the next day as “uneasy”.
A Modern Man (2022–2023)
From Topton to Philly
After several days of distance with Maya following NYE, she asked to meet at Dunkin’ one morning and ended the relationship. Devastated, Kirby sent an emotional and scathing message expressing months of pent-up resentment. Her curt reply—“I can’t believe you just said that”—seemed to seal their separation.
In the aftermath, Kirby resolved to rebuild himself, if only to win her back. He called Corey, who was also going through personal struggles, and the two began talking daily, providing mutual support through one of Kirby’s darkest periods.
At the same time, Kirby’s family home was sold. Years of depression and transition had left him detached from the process, and many keepsakes were lost in the move. He relocated to Topton, moving in with his grandfather, mother, and Josh.
From there, he began constructing what would become his freelance writing business, the foundation of his current career. On his birthday, his grandfather gave him a card signed from both grandparents that read, “Our faith in you is never-ending.”
He eventually reconnected with Maya, meeting for coffee at Bagel Bar to apologize for his drunken behavior months earlier. When reconciliation failed, he decided to travel to Europe, spending a month in Manchester, with side trips to Amsterdam and Rotterdam to see White Lies perform. In Manchester, he played his first international open mic performance at Grand Central.
After returning to Pennsylvania, Kirby visited Jordan in Chicago with Corey. Julia—who was seeking a roommate for a Philadelphia apartment—messaged Kirby needing an answer. Hungover and encouraged by Julia and Noah, he committed on the spot, without ever seeing the place. Rent was just $500, and the decision marked his leap back into city life.
Kirby threw himself into his “Second Summer of Self-Improvement”—strict dieting, daily workouts, sobriety, and even an earnest but short-lived self-help blog. But as his grandfather’s health declined, Kirby found himself emotionally distant, despite living under the same roof.
Kirby moved to North Philadelphia in August 2022, where he resumed drinking and socializing. He drove a car for the last time the same month. Within weeks, tragedy struck: his grandfather passed away on his first night in the nursing home. Kirby’s mother broke the news the following day, after one of his late night-into-mornings in Fishtown. The Topton house was sold shortly after.
For the funeral, Kirby wore a sleek black shirt he’d purchased from a homeless man for five dollars while waiting for a late-night trolley. Though the day carried grief, it felt more like a celebration of life. His grandfather, in his late 90s, had lived fully, surviving cancer and decades of hard work and devotion.
Kirby sensed a quiet completion in his grandfather’s passing, as if he’d stayed alive long enough to see the family stable and self-sufficient. In contrast, Kirby later reflected, the Maya breakup had felt harder—it was “the death of a future rather than the end of a full life.”
Philadelphia and Anneke
In the weeks following the funeral, Kirby’s drinking and nightlife continued. At Ortlieb’s Tuesday Karaoke, just a week or two after his grandfather’s death, he met Anneke. Standing alone and leaned up against a wall in a red jacket, Kirby noticed a woman across the room beckon him over with her finger. He joined her group, which included Anneke, briefly before taking the stage to sing.
Later that night, Anneke approached him at the bar and greeted him with, “What’s up, red jacket?” The two quickly bonded over shared interests—for instance, she was Dutch, and he had recently visited the Netherlands. She even knew “Help the Aged” by Pulp, especially ironic given that she was a bit older than him.
When Kirby mentioned his grandfather’s passing and apologized for dampening the mood, Anneke replied, “If you didn’t mean any harm, you don’t need to apologize.” The simple remark resonated deeply, symbolizing a turning point in how Kirby related to guilt, vulnerability, and authenticity.
After a long conversation, they exchanged phone numbers before she left. However, when she didn’t get a text from him, her friend Hannah asked why. Realizing he’d saved the wrong number, Kirby got the correct one and reached out. Anneke admitted she’d wished he’d kissed her that night. They set a date for the following Monday.
After their first date, which Kirby later said, “went as well as a first date could ever possibly go,” Anneke left for a trip to Mount Kilimanjaro. The distance, combined with Kirby’s depression and muted communication, caused strain. Despite several promising dates, the relationship faltered for a time. Still, their connection would linger and grow in unexpected ways in the years that followed.
As 2023 began, Kirby received an unexpected call from Anneke while listening to “The World Is Full of Crashing Bores” by Morrissey — the line “No one ever turns to me to say, ‘Take me in your arms and love me’” echoing poignantly in his ears. The timing struck him deeply; after weeks of silence, the simple act of her reaching out moved him to tears.
They reunited at a Bowie Night at Johnny Brenda’s. They’d planned to meet at the venue, but both ended up on the same Eastbound 15 (Girard Street) SEPTA bus. After a series of rocky starts and reconciliations — most of which Kirby later admitted were “entirely my fault” — the two officially became a couple. Despite their strong connection, Anneke was nearly a decade older, and both understood that their love, however genuine, might not last forever.
When Pulp announced their reunion shows in Sheffield, he decided to travel abroad, combining the concert with a friend’s wedding in Lisbon. Anneke supported his decision, encouraging him to go without reservation or resentment.
The Return Home
Kirby’s trip lasted two months, spanning England and Portugal, and seemed at first like the quiet end of their relationship. Yet they never officially broke up, maintaining calls and messages across the distance.
When he returned to the U.S., his Philadelphia lease had ended, and he moved in with Anneke temporarily. The arrangement quickly became tense: both knew they weren’t ready to live together, but Kirby’s depression left him paralyzed and unable to act.
After several uneasy weeks, a personal moment between them underscored his emotional exhaustion — they both realized he wasn’t strong enough to offer the support she needed. Acknowledging this, they broke up, and he called his mother and asked for a ride home. Anneke offered to drive him to the meeting point so his mother wouldn’t have to come into the city and he wouldn’t have to take the Regional Rail train.
Back in Kutztown, Kirby moved in with his mother and her boyfriend, Michael. The transition brought both comfort and collapse. Deprived of his coping habits, he sank into a deep, quiet depression, spending days lying in bed with no motivation. Realizing he had been self-medicating for years, he decided to try SSRIs, reasoning, “If I was already using weed to self-medicate every day, why not try something that might actually help?”
For a brief time, he also attempted to quit smoking and coffee, but quickly resumed both, feeling he needed them to sustain focus for his freelance writing. He remained sober for a short while until late December, when he joined one of his oldest friends for a five-day drinking binge at his friend’s aunt’s house outside New York City in the days leading up to New Year’s Eve.
2024
The year opened on a fitting note for Kirby — with a week-long hangover. Determined to reset, he decided to fly to Los Angeles to see Morrissey perform “You Are the Quarry” in full. With no lease tying him down, he planned to stay for a month.
The concert was canceled the day before the show, but Kirby embraced the trip regardless. He spent the following weeks immersed in LA’s nightlife — attending Morrissey dance parties, going to Club Underground every Friday, exploring the underground rave scene, and diving headfirst into chaos and sunlight. Life on SSRIs dulled the severity of his hangovers, a mixed blessing that allowed him to sustain longer nights but also blurred the edges between joy and excess.
While Kirby was away, his mother and her partner Michael adopted Mookie, a small rescue puppy reportedly found abandoned in a milk crate. Mookie quickly became a cherished part of Kirby’s life — “I began to love that dog more than almost anything,” he would later say.
Returning home, Kirby realized he couldn’t rely on his mother and Michael’s generosity forever. He joked that he had been there too long — when he first returned home in October, the family had watched one season of The Amazing Race, and by the time he left, the next season’s promos were already airing.
In March 2024, he moved into a new apartment and resumed full independence. However, his freelance workload began to decline just as new expenses emerged. The next several months were marked by uncertainty and rebuilding. By summer, he had reestablished his client base, returning to a stable income through writing and editing work.
Despite renewed productivity, his drinking resurfaced. Nights out became frequent once again, until late summer when a reconnection with Anneke prompted him to slow down.
The turning point came on Thanksgiving Eve, when Kirby went out drinking in Kutztown, first at the Pub and later at the Fraternal Order of Eagles (FOE), a members-only bar nearby. The next morning, feeling better than expected, he had a quiet realization:
“Why sacrifice time with family — moments of clarity, warmth, and meaning — for another night surrounded by blackout drinkers and fleeting company?”
2025
By 2025, Kirby had completely quit drinking, adopting what he called a “California sober” lifestyle — sober from alcohol but open to the occasional (or not-so-occassional) joint. The final sip came early in the year, when he shared a small sip of wine with Anneke before deciding, definitively, “I’m good on that.”
In the first months of the year, Kirby and Anneke confronted a difficult truth: their timelines still did not align. She wanted to start a family soon, while he remained focused on his creative and personal evolution. The breakup was calm but heavy, marked by mutual affection and the acknowledgment that love sometimes can’t overcome circumstance.
In the months that followed, Kirby entered a period of movement, meditation, and artistic renewal. He began walking 10 to 20 miles a day, singing as he went.
One afternoon, he staged a spontaneous protest performance in Rittenhouse Square. A group of anti-abortion demonstrators were playing drums and chanting slogans; Kirby, headphones in, began singing Morrissey’s “Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up on the Stage.” When the group continued shouting, he lit a cigarette, stood within a few feet of them, and belted “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before” at full volume.
Throughout 2025, Kirby also turned his attention to the nature of public art and access. He avoided most private or curated spaces, attending only two ticketed concerts — Pulp and Morrissey at The Met Philadelphia in September. While he also attended West Philly’s Porchfest in the summer, he later critiqued its cultural whiteness, not-so-subtle gentrification, and performative inclusivity.
In October 2025, Kirby began work on his fourth album. He also started the process of releasing his entire discography dating back to 2019, set for release in November 2025.
Discography
LPs
| Title | Release Date |
| Wasted Potential (2019-2020) | November 16, 2025 |
| This Is Not a Life (2021) | Unreleased |
| A Modern Man (2022-2023) | Unreleased |
Singles
| Title | Release Date | Associated Album |
| “The Dead End” | March 20, 2020 | Wasted Potential |
| “Lucky” | August 6, 2021 | This Is Not a Life |
| “Either/Or” | August 15, 2021 | This Is Not a Life |
Acoustic Compilation Albums
| Title | Release Date |
| Wasted Potential (Acoustic) | Unreleased |
| This Is Not a Life (Acoustic) | Unreleased |
| A Modern Man (Acoustic) | Unreleased |
Demo EPs and Compilations
| Title | Release Date |
| Pub Daze (2018 Demos) | Unreleased |
| Red Harings (2019 Demos) | Unreleased |
| The German Exchange (2019 Acoustic Demos) | Unreleased |
| Blind, Deaf, & Numb (2020 Demos) | Unreleased |
Live Albums
| Title | Date Recorded | Release Date |
| For The Glue Sniffers (Live at Pappy T’s) | January 30, 2020 | Unreleased |
Unauthorized Cover Albums
| Title | Release Date |
| Kind Eyes (2017 Acoustic Covers) | Unreleased |
| The World Deserves to Know You (2018 Acoustic Covers) | Unreleased |
| My Early Humbug Years (2019 Acoustic Covers) | Unreleased |
| The Mechanical Age (2020 Covers) | Unreleased |
| Situation Domestique (2021 Acoustic Covers) | Unreleased |
| (2022 Acoustic Covers) | Unreleased |
| The Morrissey Tapes, Vol. 1 (2023 Acoustic Covers) | Unreleased |
| The Morrissey Tapes, Vol. 2 (2024 Acoustic Covers) | Unreleased |
Selected Publications
| Title | Publisher | Publish Date |
| “Republicans inconsistent on issue of big government” | Reading Eagle | August 2, 2020 |
| “My monthly student loan payment went from $800 to $285. Here’s how.” | The Philadelphia Inquirer | April 11, 2024 |
| “The Safety Trap: Society’s Destructive Fear of Risk-Taking” | PopMatters | May 1 , 2025 |