Americana Artist David Starr Goes Coastal with Exotic Storytelling in “Cabo San Lucas”

Americana artist David Starr dives headfirst into a Pacific coastal tale for his latest single and music video release “Cabo San Lucas”. Starr has been releasing one single a month starting in November 2020 for his ongoing Touchstones album project. While the rest of the selections for the record are some of his favorite songs reimagined, “Cabo San Lucas” showcases Starr’s storytelling ability, and serves as the sole original on the project. 

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The song is guitar-centric with a beachy tale of two lovers ultimately washed away. Starr delivers the lyric in a soulful vocal, taking the listener on a journey to an exotic landscape. Written by himself in the height of quarantine, you can hear how writing the song could have been an escape itself and almost a vacation in a way. 

Having spent time in Cabo San Lucas in the past, Starr drew upon his own personal experiences to craft the song, “My family had a house down in Cabo years ago. I used to spend some time down there in my slightly wilder days. The idea for the song came from the notion that a romantic or exotic locale can be the thing that breaks your heart. Of course, there have to be people in the picture, but the location is the star of this song.”

The track features David Starr on vocals and lead guitar, Mark Prentice on bass and keyboards, Matt Bubel on drums and John Prentice on acoustic guitar. The entire Touchstones project was produced by Starr and Mark Prentice, with co-production by David Kalmusky, and was recorded, mixed, and mastered at Addiction Sound Studios in Nashville, TN by David Kalmusky along with Ethan Barrette and Alberto Sewald. 

So far Starr has covered such classics as “Drive” (The Cars), “Angel From Montgomery” (John Prine), “I’ve Got To Use My Imagination” (Gladys Knight), “Someone Like You” (Van Morrison), “These Days” (Jackson Browne), “Gotta Serve Somebody” (Bob Dylan), and “Every Kind of People” (Robert Palmer). When the time came to choose songs Starr picked those he describes as “musical comfort food” and included “Cabo San Lucas” in the mix. 

“This song was written early on in the pandemic before we started recording for the Touchstones project. As we worked through the list of songs for the release, I just thought it fit with the others as part of the whole 2020 experience, if you will. After the year we all had, why not?”

In addition to his artist career, Starr is the owner of Starr’s Guitars in Cedaredge, CO. The store is such an institution that the town proclaimed the musician’s birthday as David Starr Day in 2016. In 2020 he worked with Breedlove guitars to craft his own limited edition model titled “Rise Up Again,” after the song off of his acclaimed 2020 release, Beauty and Ruin, produced by John Oates. 


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