The Fox Fires is a North Carolina-based Americana and country band that celebrates the rich traditions of storytelling, musicianship, and the roots of American music. Formed in 2025, the group brings together veteran musicians from some of North Carolina’s most respected bands, creating a sound that blends Appalachian bluegrass, Red Dirt country, classic honky-tonk, folk, and Southern rock. They are currently recording their debut album with Saman Khoujinian and Kirk Stirland at Small Pond Farm Studio in Chatham County, NC.
Professor Twang and the Honky Tonk Review is what happens when three college professors, a music librarian, a public school teacher, and one fearless drummer walk into a bar—and start a honky tonk band. Based somewhere between Greensboro, Graham, and Durham, they serve up classic country favorites and rowdy originals with brains, boots, and a whole lot of twang. Equal parts sawdust and syllabus, this is honky tonk with a GPA.
Kirk Stirland’s route through life has been like the country roads and highways in the American West he came from. An itinerant youth spent in central and northern California during the culturally explosive 50s and 60s, followed by college and all the experiments with lifestyle and career that entails, resulting in a long career in media, mostly radio–but never far from music, from folk to country to bluegrass to rock, and beyond. Today, time allows further creative exploration of music, from songwriting, to playing numerous instruments, to curating a large collection of vintage instruments, to deeper experience in the recording arts from an advanced studio in a rural log cabin in North Carolina.
