The sudden success of singer-songwriter Marc Scibilia might seem like an overnight sensation. But the Buffalo-bred, now Nashville-based musician worked for years, toiling away in the industry, before his song “More To This” became a viral hit late last year.
With over 1.5 million followers, and over 1 billion streams across all of his social media platforms, Scibilia has mastered an approach to making music that feels distinctly modern, yet also distinctly his own. He works mostly by himself in the home studio he built following the pandemic, frequently sharing an inside look, and pulling back the curtain behind the magic of his unique style of live looping
“It just became a product of several things colliding,” Scibilia said. “COVID, and building a studio where I could kind of do everything, so I didn’t have to have people in during that period of time. And then learning, since I had all those instruments plugged in, what if you could actually live loop them so that you could make records really fast and come up with ideas really fast? And then I had one video kind of get big on the internet, and it was just me working in the studio. I wasn’t making anything. So I was like, ‘Well, what if I just showed this to people, this thing I’ve been working on? And then that exploded from there.’”
His take on The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony,” which trended at No. 1 on Instagram for weeks, among countless other popular covers and studio session videos have earned him new attention and new audiences, leading to his first-ever world tour this spring, following a sold-out US tour last fall.
“The show we’re doing now as compared to even what we did in the fall, I was a totally one man band, kind of doing what I do on Instagram in the fall,” Scibilia said. “And now in the spring, I wanted to add one person to it. So I have this amazing drummer, Garrett Tyler, coming with me. And that frees me up a little bit… In the fall, it was like there were no safety nets. It was me, and like 10 instruments on stage. And I was creating all the sounds. This time around, we’re going to do that some. But there’s also going to be just some musical moments where I can just experience things like a normal musician who has people to play off of… It’s going to be a really different show.”
As a proudly independent artist Scibilia appreciates being able to work completely on his own terms now, after struggling with labels and other industry frustrations for years.
He started making music right out of high school, moving from Buffalo to Nashville in 2007, and signing a publishing deal just a few years later. Most of his early success in the 2010s came via song placements, with his song “How Bad We Need Each Other” landing on FOX’s hit show “Bones,” and his rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” airing as part of a JEEP commercial during the 2015 Super Bowl.
Scibilia performed on “The Today Show” in support of his 2015 debut album, Out of Style, amid tours with the likes of James Bay and Zac Brown Band, and later scored a huge hit overseas with German DJ Robin Schulz, who featured Scibilia on his international chart-topping smash “Unforgettable.”
“I think for younger artists that are trying to have a career in music, I think there’s so many ways to do it now,” Scibilia said when asked about what advice he would give to new musicians starting out. “I think that if you can afford to float your life and also make art, in the meantime, and make your videos and post them, I think the longer you can delay having business people in your corner, to add pressure to your situation and influence your art, the better…
“So I think that if you can make a living, and make music and keep trying things until you start to click with an audience, you maintain more control and more power,” he added. “I think that’s really beneficial because artists always make the best decisions about their art.”
Working independently now, Scibilia released his fourth album, More To This, last November. Working on the album entirely on his own, the immensely personal nature of the title track—that grapples with the death of his father, and Scibilia’s own experiences as a father himself—has resonated with listeners in a profound way, propelling him to an even deeper level success than he could have ever expected.
“When I wrote the song, it was cathartic,” Scibilia said. “It all came out at once and it was this, like a burst of creativity and sadness and beauty all at once. But between writing a song, and actually getting on stage and playing a song, there’s so many things that happened and so many setbacks you have…”
“And I remember the first night I walked on stage in Indianapolis,” he added. “It was our first show. I never played there. It was a packed full room. And I got to that song, and I started playing it, and I just looked out in the audience. And again, between writing this song, and all the logistics that got to that moment, literally the car breaking down that morning, I looked out in the audience and there were just so many people that just had like, their eyes were fully red and just tears streaming down their face. And I had this out-of-body experience where I was like, ‘Oh, you have to forget about all the logistics that brought you there.’ When you walk on stage, people don’t know how difficult it was to get to that actual show, or they don’t know what you went through to get there. It is a profoundly personal and spiritual and emotional experience when you’re on stage. And sometimes I have to remind myself of that because there’s so much that goes in between it. But I realized that night, this is real stuff for people, and I have to be totally present to it.
Marc Scibilia – More To This World Tour
Wsg. TBA
Elevation (Inside The Intersection), 133 Cesar E. Chavez Ave. SW, Grand Rapids
April 1, 7 p.m. (doors), 8 p.m. (show), $25 advance, All Ages
Marcscibilia.com, Sectionlive.com
