How I Created Vila Tequila™

Friday, November 13, 2025 - 3:08am

I wake from a deep sleep, the kind where something pulls you out of it without warning. The room was completely still and quiet, and for a second I didn’t know what time it was or why I was awake. I rolled over and looked at the clock. 3:08am. I remember thinking, damn… I need to get back to sleep. It was one of those nights where waking up at that hour feels like a mistake that can ruin your day.

I rolled back over and closed my eyes, trying to drift off again. I was right there, at that edge where sleep starts to take you .. and then, without any buildup or reason, two words came into my head.

Vila Tequila™.

They didn’t come as any part of a thought I was forming. They were just there. Clear. Repeating. Vila Tequila… Vila Tequila… My sleepy brain started to kick in, what the hell is Vila Tequila? I just lay there in the dark, not moving, trying to make sense of two words.

Again… Vila Tequila. I didn’t connect it to anything. It wasn’t something I had been working on, thinking about, or even exposed to. I hadn’t been drinking. I hadn’t had tequila in months. There was no lead-up to it at all. The words just kept repeating.

I remember thinking, I’ve got to get some sleep. I stayed still, trying to shake it off, not wanting to engage with it. Eventually it faded, and I drifted back to sleep.

A few hours later, just after 6:00am, I woke again. This time it was that half-awake state, you’re not even moving yet, just lying there, aware you’re awake. And before I even shifted, those same two words crept back in. Vila Tequila .. over and over. Exactly the same. No variation, no explanation. Just there. Where did this come from… why is it in my head?

Now I couldn’t brush it off. It didn’t feel random anymore. It felt like something I had to look at. I rolled over, grabbed my phone, and searched .. “Vila.”

Google immediately tried to correct me. “Did you mean Villa”? I remember thinking, no… I didn’t mean Villa. I searched it again and started going through the results more carefully. Basic meanings and translations came up, Portuguese words, rest, farm etc but nothing connected to what I had just experienced. It felt empty, like something was missing. So I kept scrolling.

Then I saw something that made me stop.

Slavic folklore, a Vila, (pronounced Wila) is a fairy-like spirit of nature. That caught me. I kept reading, digging a little deeper, and then I came across a description that changed everything.

“A Vila is a beautiful spirit of forests, mountains, and waters. Often benevolent, especially toward children and those they favour, but highly independent, unpredictable, and notoriously vengeful if disrespected, challenged, or if the nature they protect is harmed.”

“Notoriously vengeful if disrespected” ... that's the line that hit me.

I stopped right there. I remember thinking, “Damn… that’s a great name for a tequila”.

Those words stuck .. “Vengeful if Disrespected”. That is the definition of tequila. There’s no middle ground. You respect it, or you suffer the consequences.

It was 6:00am on a Friday morning, and my mind was moving in a hundred directions. Those two words that had woken me up twice now had meaning. Not just a translation, but a character. Something defined. Something with presence. And I kept thinking, Vila turns vengeful if disrespected. That line wouldn’t leave.

Then the next thought came in right behind it. This wasn’t just a name. It needed a story.

Because Vila wasn’t empty, it carried something. Something with weight. Something people could feel.

At that point, it wasn’t just two random words anymore. It needed direction.

But a name on its own wasn’t enough. If this was going to be real, it needed something people could connect to immediately. Something that could carry that feeling.

It needed a song.

And I’m no songwriter. I’m barely a guitar player. But I started anyway.

I thought..”Where to begin”. My son Jordan used to play a song every Friday when he finished work, ‘It’s Friday’ by Dean Brody and Great Big Sea. That moment stuck with me. That shift from the week into the weekend. That’s where it had to start.

Within minutes, the first line came to me: “Clocks tickin’ hard on Friday…” As soon as I wrote it, I knew it was right. The first line is always the hard line, and this one anchored everything.

From there, I started building the scene piece by piece. I asked myself what it needed. Sun, fun and sand. I thought about the song Toes and that feeling, so I reworked it into “sand burning under my feet.” Then came a sunset, fire in the sky. The feeling of moving into the weekend, being on your way somewhere with “A cooler full of trouble”.

The pieces didn’t come all at once. They came one at a time, and I placed them as they showed up.

But I still needed a sound to carry it, something recognizable, something people would hear and immediately know it was ours.

I’m not a technical player, so I kept it simple. I thought about the rhythm from Beer in Mexico by Kenny Chesney. I liked playing on guitar. A simple D chord riff. That’s something I could manage. But I couldn’t copy it, so I flipped it. I started with a C chord and moved into a G, hitting it over and over until it settled into something that worked.

Now my song had a base and starting to have its own feel.

But the most important part was still missing, a strong chorus.

I remembered Brian May saying in Bohemian Rhapsody that they needed something the fans could sing. That stuck with me. This couldn’t just be a song people listened to, it had to be something they stepped into, became part of.

So I wrote lines, over and over, till I got it.

A dozen lines later, it came: “Raise that bottle, raise your soul…” Then the next line followed: “Let that ocean take control…” Lines not there to describe anything, lines meant to be repeated.

With the chorus was in place, everything started to connect. The verses, the rhythm, the structure, it all came together. For the next 48 hours, I stayed in it. Writing, adjusting and building.

At that point, I started to feel it. Not just see it.

I started building everything around it. The website. The identity. Vila was to become something more than just a name, she was destined to be something rooted in what I had discovered.

Beautiful… but vengeful remembering “ notoriously vengeful if disrespected, challenged, or if the nature they protect is harmed”.

Vila needed to become a spirit and protect the nature of the agave fields. “The Goddess of Agave™.

Days later, it was all there. The two words that had woken me up were now a brand. There was a story behind it. A song that carried it.

And when I stepped back and looked at it, there was only one thing left that hadn’t been done yet.

All I needed now… was the tequila.