It’s funny how life works out sometimes. I booked a flight on a whim to Cincinnati to attend the city’s Oktoberfest celebration (the biggest in the country) last month. It just so happened that on the same weekend, my buddy, Marc Scibilia, was playing a show across the river in Northern Kentucky on a tour supporting Jon McLaughlin.

And then, a week later, I saw Marc again when he popped by the studio as the tour traveled north.

Scibilia and I both grew up in Western New York. At 18 he left and moved to Nashville so he could pursue his dream of writing and performing music for a living. And at 18 I left and headed to Syracuse University.

In addition to our geographical history, I think the common trait between Scibilia and me is that despite doing well for ourselves, neither of us are satisfied. We’re both pushing to create something better.

Scibilia’s first album, “Out of Style,” was fantastic; Butch Walker executives produced it. But how is success defined in 2016 when it comes to music? It might entail a critically-acclaimed album, or perhaps it simply means connecting with an audience on a platform like Spotify, something that Scibilia has accomplished.

“A month and a half ago, I was watching what was happening in the news … not that there’s any shortage of reasons to not leave your house, but I was watching the news this one particular day and it really bummed me out,” he said on my radio show. “I went down in to the studio and I wrote this song called ‘Believer’ that I ended up releasing just a couple of days later.”

That alone points to the benefit of Scibilia’s current situation as an independent artist.

“I spent $25 to get it mastered,” the artist revealed. “I just threw it up (on Spotify).

“I want people to experience me on a more personal level now,” he continued. “When I create something, I don’t want it to go through the process of vetting of executive X, Y and Z. I just want people to hear my music, I want them to hear what I’m doing and I want them to hear it when I do it, not three years later.”

But fans of Scibilia will have to wait at least a little bit before he follows up his last album. The singer is on a self-described “endless” tour that wraps toward to the end of the year. He hopes to then hop back in the studio before he sets out on a new experience: a cruise ship. Scibilia has never been on one before, but that will change when he joins Train on the band’s fourth annual “Sail Across The Sun” trip that travels from Tampa to Costa Maya.

Now that sounds like a fun trip to book on a whim.

https://www.theweekender.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/web1_ralphie.jpg

Marc Scibillia and Ralphie Aversa both grew up in Western New York before taking different routes to success.
https://www.theweekender.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/web1_Mark.jpgMarc Scibillia and Ralphie Aversa both grew up in Western New York before taking different routes to success. Submitted photo

By Ralphie Aversa | For Weekender

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