Pura Vida Vibes

Pura Vida Vibes came from a trip to Costa Rica with my daughter. The four songs hold the places and people that made the trip feel larger than an itinerary: sunsets in Jaco, nights filled with music, new friends who showed us around, and the easy generosity we encountered along the way.

Aurora, Isaak, and Colin helped us experience more than the version of Costa Rica a visitor sees from a hotel. The staff at Pizza Pata made us feel welcome. Their kindness, humor, and local knowledge became part of the memory. The phrase pura vida was everywhere, but its meaning grew through the people who lived it around us. It described a pace and an openness I wanted to carry home.

One moment changed how I understood the reach of the music. At the Rolling Thunder Saloon, Arlene played my song Empire Dreams and Country Roads for the people there. I watched strangers in another country hear something I had made. People danced and reacted while the song filled a room I never expected it to enter. I had only been releasing music for a few weeks, so the experience felt wonderfully improbable.

That memory belongs in the catalog because it changed my understanding of the audience. Until then, most of the songs had been part of a private creative rush. They helped me explore emotions, relationships, values, and different genres. In Jaco, strangers heard the music together in a public setting. The distance between making a song and sharing an experience suddenly felt much smaller.

The album is a travel journal, but the heart of it is the time with my daughter. Travel changes when you share it with your child. You notice what interests them, how they move through an unfamiliar place, and which small moments become family stories. Lost it in Paradise carries the release and humor of getting away. Pura Vida Paradise takes in the broader feeling of the trip. Sunset in Jaco anchors the collection in a place we watched together. Whispers to the Moon closes with the quieter mood that arrives after the noise fades.

The original description leaned heavily on the language of paradise. The lasting story is more specific. We traveled together. People welcomed us. My music played in a Costa Rican saloon. A few songs became a way to hold onto what happened before ordinary life resumed.

Months later, I would see listeners in Vietnam finding my music and feel the same possibility more strongly. A person far away had chosen to listen. That experience would inspire Blue Horizons and connect with my hope that creative work might bring people together across distance. Pura Vida Vibes offered the earlier evidence. My song had played publicly in another country and become part of a memory shared with my daughter and people I had only recently met.

Pura Vida Vibes showed me that music could become part of a shared experience beyond my own home and community. Brighter Days Ahead, released the following month, turned that outward attention toward division, neighbors, and the work of building hope together.