After 20 years in Nashville, singer Marc Scibilia is feeling more 'empowered' than ever

East Nashville singer-songwriter Marc Scibilia has been around town for two decades, and after years of grinding, he's gone viral. Again and again and again.

"This has been the best year I've ever had, and I've been making music for 20 years," the 38-year-old native of Buffalo, New York, said.

A folk rocker, multi-instrumental virtuoso, and husky-voiced vocalist, Scibilia has made a name for himself with his one-man band social media videos and his reflective indie tracks. You may know him from his songs "Summer Clothes," "Good Times," and his tune with Robin Schulz, "Unforgettable."

Scibilia will be performing two sold-out shows at the Basement East in Nashville on Thursday and Sunday and releasing his fifth studio album on Friday, "More to This."

Ahead of the big weekend, Scibilia spoke with The Tennessean.

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"I think the way I feel about my career now, the one word I could use now that I've never been able to use is 'empowered,'" he said.

Marc Scibilia jumps from social media virality to sold-out live shows

When Scibilia's booking agency first told him that they wanted to set up a tour of 500 to 600-person venues, he was really nervous about it.

"I thought, I've never played rooms that big," he said. "I really don't want to do this. Can we play smaller shows? And they were like, 'No, we should really try these.'"

His team was right. The Basement East show on Thursday night sold out quickly, and Scibilia's team added another show on Sunday evening.

The ticket sale victories on Scibilia's 2024 tour are some of the most tangible elements of his blossoming career.

"Even looking back at the last week: two sold-out shows in Chicago, the tour selling out, and playing in so many amazing cities, and having people show up to gigs for the first time in my career. ... I am kind of taking a pause and just realizing what a beautiful moment it is."

The studio and stage are nothing new to Scibilia. He has been tirelessly creating since his move to Nashville at 18 years old.

During his last month of high school, Scibilia remembers a nervous guidance counselor calling him to her office and asking if he had any plans to go to college.

"And I told her I love making music and I had been to Nashville and I thought it was a really cool place," he said. "And so she sarcastically asked me if I was going to move to Nashville and write songs for a living, and I thought it was the best advice anyone had ever given me."

A month later, he relocated to Music City and started writing songs, treating his music career like a nine-to-five job as he posted up in the studio.

He has released four albums, seen many of his songs featured in commercials, and toured with James Bay and Zac Brown Band. But what really changed the game for Scibilia's career was social media.

During the pandemic, he built a recording studio in East Nashville and dove into computer programming, arranging songs through looping techniques.

"I had been messing around with that, and then I had this one viral video happen," he said. "It was just a video of me working in the studio ... and so when that video went viral, I thought, 'Why don't I just show people this thing I've been working on?' And that's when it kind of went crazy."

The internet loved Scibilia's live-looping technique and began devouring his content — videos of him racing from one instrument to another in the studio as he builds the tracks of song covers.

Scibilia kept the momentum going, using his platform to showcase his singer-songwriter content in addition to covers and mash-ups. His audience has been receptive to both kinds of content, he said.

Most recently, Scibilia went viral for the title track from his new album, which is being released Friday. "More to This" is a raw track about death where Scibilia finds himself insisting there must be "more to this" existence.

He wrote the song in response to his young daughter, who had been asking him questions about death every night before bed. Scibilia and his wife would do their best to answer.

"It was actually very childlike and beautiful," he said. "But it was weighing heavier on me every time."

In a moment of inspiration, Scibilia grabbed his guitar in the stairwell of his garage and wrote "More to This" in 20 minutes.

Over emotive guitar, he soulfully croons: "Don't the question beg an answer / Don't the song beg a dancer / Don't you dare / Tell me that there / Ain't more to this / More to this."

Scibilia recorded a video of himself singing the track, and a day after posting it on social media, he woke up to millions of plays and thousands of messages from fans.

"This is the beginning of it," he said. "And so we put that out. And then I just started creating throughout the year."

From there, he began crafting his new album, a project he didn't realize he had set out to complete until the song had gone viral.

Thirteen more songs followed, creating a masterful singer-songwriter record where Scibilia captures glimpses of his East Nashville life with his family and his Buffalo upbringing in his impassioned tracks.

Scibilia gears up for 'difficult, intense' Nashville shows

When it comes to playing live, Scibilia's shows are both a marathon and a sprint.

It's 90 minutes of Scibilia combining his one-man band looping expertise and his indie tracks that his fans have discovered over the past year.

"It's a really difficult, intense show," he said. "I'm very active, I burn a lot of calories, and there's not a lot of margin for error."

When Scibilia is looping his tracks in the studio and recording his videos, he's able to do as many takes as he needs to get the timing perfect.

"I didn't realize what a luxury that was until I got out on the stage and realized you have to nail this every night," he said. "You almost have to play a 90-minute perfect set, in a way, because you're proving it to people."

Scibilia said a lot of skeptics on the internet wonder if he is actually looping live, or if he's really pre-recording his content. "I wanted to do these shows to show people that, you know, it is real."

But Scibilia understands that perfectly performing and layering with multiple instruments every show is an unachievable task.

"That comes with some major mistakes every night ... but people really enjoy the errors as well," he said.

If you can't catch Scibilia at his sold-out shows this weekend, he'll be back in town on his world tour next year for an April 18 show at Brooklyn Bowl.

For more information on Marc Scibilia, head to marcscibilia.com.

Audrey Gibbs is a music journalist at The Tennessean. You can reach her at [email protected].