Columbus is Ohio’s state capital and while its population far exceeds Cleveland and Cincinnati, it didn’t grow up as an industrial or trade city. There is a downtown proper, but it pales in comparison to the urban sprawl of its sister cities. The Ohio State University alone brings over 60,000 students to its main campus, and there are smaller colleges scattered throughout, notably CCAD (Columbus College of Art and Design), whose student base leans heavily creative. When you factor in that late teen/early 20s population alongside an abundance of venues ranging from dive bars to mid-size clubs, it’s no surprise the music scene is bustling; night after night, clubs stacking two, three, four locals on a bill. But as a many-decades-long resident of central Ohio, I’ve observed that the local scene moves in cycles that align closely with the student lifecycle. Completely unscientific data would say most local bands last anywhere between one and six years, some end prematurely as studies and life take precedent, others last longer than they should, members still holding out hope for a golden ticket that, sadly, will never arrive.
It’s why I have a local band bias. The number of Columbus bands I’ve seen with genuine talent who squandered it, unwilling to hop in a van, play out-of-town shows, prove they had what it took beyond their comfort zone, is countless. And for every band that, were they based in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, might have had a real shot at national or international success, there’s a counterpart made up of kids who lack the talent, the dedication, or the dream. Scrolling through cringe.com, the best live events calendar Columbus has to offer, it’s difficult to tell which local bands are worth catching on a Tuesday night and which are best avoided. There are likely bands out there putting in the sweat equity, earning their dues, playing the clubs, bands that, were they from anywhere else, would already be favorites of mine. But I look past them because I only see them as local. Until recently, Villagerrr was one of those bands.
While Villagerrr is, and has been, a full band, it started as a solo project of Mark Scott. With all this talk about Columbus, Scott actually grew up in Chillicothe, a small town about 45 miles south of the capital. While it twice served as Ohio’s capital, the last few decades haven’t been kind, its plight mirrors that of many small towns that once depended on industry, only to have the main employers leave and strand generations of families scrambling to find new lines of work. For a kid growing up there, music was an escape. It gave Scott the time and space to learn guitar, to write lyrics that reflected the experiences he’d lived and the dreams he was building. What Chillicothe couldn’t offer was an abundance of like-minded kids who wanted to play in a band, or the venues for musicians to share their stories so Scott made his way to Columbus, worked his way up through the scene, and found the people who would eventually become his bandmates and the bands he’d eventually share bills with.
Not content playing in front of the same friends a few times a month, Villagerrr began pushing outside of town, on their own and on bills with slightly larger, more well-known acts. In 2024, they released their fourth album, Tear Your Heart Out, which showcased Scott’s ability to write songs that sound like both Chillicothe and Columbus: small-town patience in the flow of the songs, a warm and radiating soundtrack for a hike through one of Ohio’s parks, and underneath it, the urgency of a band playing a D.I.Y. club like Cafe Bourbon Street.
Villagerrr’s latest, Carousel, is another home recording that punches well above its weight, carrying the sound of a record that actually had a proper studio budget. The slowcore songs meander at a relaxed pace but move with clear purpose, carrying a Midwest spirit that people from here can identify immediately and struggle to explain to anyone from the coasts. A slight, recurring twang of pedal steel lends a country flavor, lowercase “c” country, not the pickup truck/red Solo cup/cowboy hat variety, but the sitting-by-the-creek, skipping-rocks, building-bonfires-miles-from-the-nearest-house kind. It’s the record that made me finally take notice and think of Villagerrr as something larger than the local band bias I’d been applying to them.
On a Wednesday night in mid-May, I met Scott at a bar near where he lives, a Cleveland Cavaliers playoff game on the TV above our heads, one we were both invested in. Many of my early questions were about getting to know him, understanding what had led him to this point, which was just a few weeks out from releasing Carousel (out today on Winspear Records). One of the things I’d always been curious about was how Villagerrr kept landing on such strong touring bills. For Scott, it doesn’t seem like something he agonizes over. If they’re asked to hit the road for two weeks through the Midwest, up the West Coast, through the Southwest, they treat it as part of the job and say yes.
As we part for the evening, after a few hours of conversation, Scott mentions that he’s not sure how much longer he’ll stay in his current place, his landlord is raising the rent, and paying for a home base when he spends so much time on the road has lost some of its appeal. “Maybe I’ll just drive out to California and live out of my car for a while,” he says. I can’t tell if he’s serious. But a recent Instagram story on the Villagerrr account, featuring what appear to be California highway signs, makes me think maybe he was.
A couple of your videos have like 50,000 views on YouTube. Do you have any sense of how that happens? How do you get 50,000 views on a video?
MARK: I don’t have a perfect answer to that. I just fear that so much of it is algorithmically driven on a lot of these platforms. My friend Trevor makes them and he’s awesome, but sometimes I’m just like, are people actually watching and listening to this, or is it just coming on after they put something on at work? Which I guess is kind of like radio.
That’s not a terrible thing. Through algorithms I get fed bands all the time on Instagram and YouTube, and I’ll go down that rabbit hole. I’ll watch it, and if I like it I’ll keep going.
MARK: Yeah, so it’s not all a bad thing. It can skew stuff in my head a little bit, though. It’s really cool that that many people check stuff out, but sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s truly interested.
Just by virtue of living in Columbus, I felt like every time a tour got announced with rising indie bands, they’d post tour dates and Villagerrr would be on some of the dates. How did all that touring come about?
MARK: Our first few tours started the same way a lot of bands do, we were opening for people in Columbus constantly. I was playing all the time, even before the project was called Villagerrr. First it was called Villager with one R, then three. That’s how we started making connections in the DIY spaces of other states. Eventually we asked ourselves, why don’t we tour? We did that a few times self-booked, and then we hopped on tours with friends who had started getting booking agents. After that, we were just kind of in the pool of bands that some of these bookers thought seemed reliable.
Do you have a booking agent?
MARK: No.
So if somebody wants you on tour, they just contact you directly?
MARK: Yeah. Well, now our manager, or I guess he’s not officially our manager, but someone from our last label, Darling Recordings, has been helping us sort through emails and communicate with labels like Winspear now when we get a little overwhelmed. But, for a long time, it was just us, and I still have a lot of control over that stuff. The whole band has been more involved lately too.
I’m definitely going to miss some here, but you did dates with bands like Momma, Merce Lemon, Horse Jumper of Love, Joyer, Tombstone Poetry, Real Estate, Lilly Seabird, Greg Freeman. Who am I missing?
MARK: We toured with Teethe; they basically just started out as friends. Honestly, I’m struggling to remember them all.
I was at the Teethe show you opened. I texted a friend and said while I wouldn’t really call them shoegaze, I would call them pedalgaze as they spent the entire set looking down and playing with their guitar pedals.
MARK: Yeah, that was the thing. And what’s a shame is that Boone (Patrello), the guitar player who was probably in the middle of the room, is really funny, but they were just committed to a very specific presentation. I don’t want to blow up their spot, but they wanted everything to feel cohesive, all those transitions between songs and everything. It was cool.
You’ve also tour with Ratboys.
MARK: We have. They played our first show when I changed the name to Villagerrr. We were at Cafe Bourbon Street, and they played. Lily Seabird played too.
When I talked to Robber Robber, it almost felt like I was talking to another Columbus band even though they are from Vermont. They were talking about you and Golomb and saying, “We love Columbus, we love the bands there, we love the people, we love playing there.”
MARK: It’s really cool how that works. All these bands have stayed in touch and keep doing the music thing. It shows that if you just keep doing it, and if you have the privilege of keeping a core group of people together, things will probably happen or at least you’ll get better. And you make connections, which certainly helps.
Speaking of connections and the sense of community, it feels like “scenes” are starting to happen again. When I was in college, cities like Seattle, Chapel Hill, Chicago all had really thriving scenes. These days, it feels like Asheville, North Carolina has something special going on with artists like Wednesday, MJ Lenderman.
MARK: People keep going to Drop of Sun there to record, and other bands will go there too. I feel like having a studio that people actually want to travel to probably flows through the scene and builds the reputation of the whole area.
Do you feel like something is happening in Columbus right now?
MARK: Yeah, I definitely notice more bands touring around, it feels like there are a lot of very distinct, different things going on. I don’t think there’s a specific “Columbus sound,” but yeah. The DIY scene has been huge for a while, and it does seem like things are building.
When I was in college, and just out of college, it felt like the local bands biggest goal was to put out a CD. They’d play a bunch of shows, take the money from those shows to record, have a CD release party, and that would be the end, the final goal. Very few bands would travel out of town, to places like Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Detroit, to play shows. I’m impressed that while you’ve maintained your Columbus roots and still play plenty of shows here, you’re also go on the road for weeks at a time.
MARK: What made me want to get out was partly a feeling that there wasn’t a ton of interest in what I was doing locally, and thinking maybe someone somewhere else would care. But I also have to be honest, we were not as good back then. We were too loud, the guitars were too harsh, and I wasn’t nearly the singer I am now. You think back and realize there was probably a reason people weren’t that interested. But it’s cool that a lot of bands around here now, especially some younger bands that we’ve played with, bands from Kent who’ve moved here, have sort of become friends of ours. Not to say we’re the reason for anything, but we do try to encourage them to play as much as they can, and I think they can see it’s really not that difficult. Or they can just ask us about playing out of town shows and we’ll be like, “Hit this person up.”
The Columbus band Two Cow Garage used to spend more time on the road than they did at home. I remember seeing them once in Columbus, on a weeknight, play to a small-ish crowd. That same week, I went to SXSW and saw them play to a packed house full of rabid fans who were singing along to every word of every song. It was amazing to see that people who couldn’t see them once a week really relished the opportunity. I’ll be honest, I probably have some local band bias. I’ve only seen you live once, and that was when you were touring with other artists. But, if you were from, say, Chicago or New York, and I heard your stuff, you’d be my favorite band, and I’d keep my fingers crossed for a Columbus date.
MARK: I think that’s true for a lot of people, wherever they’re from. Honestly, I grew up mostly in Chillicothe, so I don’t even fully identify as a Columbus band in that way. But yeah, it’s still local.
I’m too old to go to a club and see a local band that I don’t know play an 11pm set. But when I listened to your last album, Tear Your Heart Out, I realized I needed to start paying attention to Villagerrr and should try to check you out sometime.
MARK: And a live band is obviously a whole different ballgame from a record. But yeah, a lot of local bands, their live sets can be hit or miss, because you don’t know what stage of development they’re at, or if they’re just playing with their coworkers.
I do think what you’re doing is admirable. Even two hours to Cleveland, just go there once a month. You need that experience of playing outside of your circle, outside of the people you know who show up regardless.
MARK: Even just going to Indianapolis and then Chicago, you can do that on a weekend. The drive back would be a little long, but it’s really not as crazy as people think.
What kind of kid were you? Were you a creative kid? Did you get into music because you wanted to be creative, or because you were listening to music and wanted to do that?
MARK: I don’t know. I wasn’t particularly creative in the sense of making things in the real world. I spent a lot of time by myself.
Did you have access to instruments?
MARK: My dad got me an acoustic guitar from Walmart, and I started learning stuff on that. I started trying to learn Led Zeppelin songs, which was really hard. But I eventually got a handle on some of them and branched out from there. When I started taking an interest in writing songs, I got super into Mac DeMarco. There are all these videos of him explaining how he just records everything by himself, and making it seem easy. That’s basically when I started.
What you’re talking about, learning how to play Mac DeMarco songs, that was all when you were a teenager?
MARK: Yeah. But I didn’t really make a full song until I was maybe 18 or so. Some of my friends have been writing songs since they were really young. That wasn’t me.
Do you think your friends or teachers from high school would be surprised to see what you’re doing?
MARK: I wasn’t a terrible student; I did enough to get by. I was average. But I was not very outgoing. I think they were surprised. I was a stoner, but I was a controlled one. I wasn’t showing up to school like that.
Are you still in touch with people from high school? Have any of them come to see you play?
MARK: I haven’t really maintained relationships with a lot of people from high school. Some of my college friends, I still talk to some of them, and some of them have come to shows.
Were you performing under a different name before Villagerrr?
MARK: It was called Mitch Mitchell, named after Jimi Hendrix’s drummer. I’m named after my dad, so I liked the idea of some distinction there. I probably had that name for about a year before I realized it was a little annoying that everyone already associated it with a famous person. I should have thought of that.
Were you playing out regularly at that point?
MARK: Yeah, at least in Columbus. We were playing the classic five, six, seven, eight local shows a month. Whenever we were asked, we were playing. You couldn’t say no. It was fun.
And then you got sick of that, and that’s when it became Villagerrr?
MARK: Yeah, there was that, and also the band itself kept changing. I was putting out a lot of music and playing with a lot of different people, it was hard to find the right group. It wasn’t always a big catastrophe when someone left. Sometimes it just wasn’t working; other times it was more than that. But our drummer Zayn (Dweik) has been playing with me since the first Villagerrr show, and Cam (Garshon), the bassist, joined shortly after. Once we settled into that core, I added the extra R’s because there were a couple other Villagers already. There’s one that does EDM who was not happy about it. He sent me a message saying I couldn’t have missed the other Villager with 40,000 monthly listeners. I said, honestly, I didn’t know, “I’m sorry, I’ll change it.” And I did. Since then, I’ve messaged him a few times and there’s no real problem.
Did you ever send him a shirt or anything?
MARK: I asked if he wanted to do a remix of one of my songs, like a club remix. He said to email his people. I said all right, but I haven’t followed up.
Would you say Villagerrr is your vision, your project, with people who help execute it? Or is it more of a true band dynamic when it comes to writing and recording?
MARK: It’s definitely been pretty much me. I’ve been leaning toward letting more people in, and honestly Boone, who plays in Teethe, has played on my songs more than anyone, even the people who play in my band regularly. He’s been a huge part of it. But as much as I want to involve more people, I kind of like having the most control. The track record shows the band has had a lot of people come through, and everyone has their own lives. It’s not like we’re making a bunch of money. Touring with a bigger band, having a bigger band, it can get heavy bearing that burden mostly on my own. But it does eliminate a lot of decision-making. I just get to decide what’s going on.
I interviewed a band called Sub*T, and they recorded their first EP with Alicia from Bully. The band is two women, with session players otherwise. They said the best advice Alicia gave them was that she took too long to accept that Bully was really her project, not a fully democratic band. Once she stopped feeling like every decision had to include everyone, she said it became so much easier.
MARK: Yeah. Even our label gets particular about how things are presented. And it is funny, you’ll see stuff online about some sort of “one-man band fatigue,” and the idea that full bands are back in. I like bands, and I like solo projects. It doesn’t really make a difference to me. But yeah, as much as I don’t love having everything centered around me, it just feels easier to say it’s my thing.
And I think it’s a little different from a band like Ratboys, where the members have known each other since before they played instruments. That’s a fundamentally different thing than you building something and bringing people in and out.
MARK: For sure. I started doing stuff completely by myself. I put out, I don’t even know how many records, probably eight albums before I ever asked anyone to contribute a single note. I played everything. Some of those are private and I’m not going to point anyone toward them. But yeah, eight records before I even asked someone to add a single part.
The whole new record was recorded in your basement?
MARK: Yeah, basement, or at a friend’s house once, and sometimes in my room. But it’s all been pretty homemade.
The album sounds great. It doesn’t sound like it was recorded in a basement. Because it was done so DIY, did you spend much money making it?
MARK: Not really. I’ve acquired gear over the years, so that counts in some sense. But it wasn’t a big-budget thing. The label advance did let me get it mastered, though I’m still a little skeptical of the mastering. The guy did a good job. I just think I probably should have done it myself.
What’s the advantage of being on the label?
MARK: They help facilitate the physical releases and things like that. But I did learn that it’s common practice, especially for smaller labels, that when they give you the records to sell, you buy them from them. I didn’t know that going in. You’re just excited to have a label, and then you realize there’s a tab. I understand why it works that way, but it caught me off guard.
Do you break even when you tour?
MARK: We have recently, very recently, which feels nice. It’s not like we’re paying each other thousands of dollars and nobody has to work. But it helps.
It has to beat coming home having lost money.
MARK: That’s just what was happening for most of the earlier tours.
What has been your best touring experience to date—one where you got taken care of, you got paid, everything went well?
MARK: The Ratboys one was the first one like that. We played about 20 shows with them, gone for almost a month, went basically all the way around the country. They were really generous. Their tour manager was very patient with us since we don’t have one. Our bassist Cam does a lot of that work, communicating with venues and things, but Ratboys’ tour manager helped a lot too. They were sharing their food with us. There was actually a green room sometimes. That stuff just doesn’t happen when you’re the opener.
What about a worst experience?
MARK: We were playing at a venue on Super Bowl Sunday and I don’t think there was a single person there to see the show. Our set literally started at the beginning of halftime. I think it was Alicia Keys performing. It was pretty humiliating. But the bar staff actually felt bad for us. There was probably a guarantee involved and they ended up paying us out of pocket and offered to let us to stay at the bar. That was the silver lining. We ended up driving home, but yeah, we’ve had plenty of those.
Because you’ve spent so much time touring, do you have people who are coming out to see Villagerrr, even if you’re opening for another band?
MARK: Yeah, and that is cool. Because when you’re the support act for a band with a big reputation, it can be a little disheartening to feel like nobody’s there for you. But the more we play, and I think with the label and the distribution and the press, you do start to feel like, “Okay, we’re actually bringing out 10 or 20 percent of the people at these sold-out shows.” And if you took just those 10 to 20 percent and put them in a smaller place, that would feel pretty significant.
Before we get into the record itself, do you have a Mount Rushmore of artists? A core group of artists you’re always going to be a fan of, no matter what?
MARK: I’ve really always liked Neil Young, and for the last six years or so even more than I did before. I love Elliott Smith. I love Alex G. And somebody who’s a little controversial, he’s from Ohio, which I identify with, the Red House Painters. Mark Kozelek. Sonically I don’t think I need to explain the connection. He’s got so much music, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot from it.
“Crystal Ball” is my favorite song on the record. There’s a little shoegaze element to it, the guitars are different from the rest of the album. It stands out as maybe a bit of a departure. How did that song end up sounding the way it does?
MARK: It started as a nylon-string guitar voice memo. I mentioned I recorded something at my friend’s house, that’s the one. I set up all my stuff there and I was really struggling to find a way to make that song sound right. Then Dan Poppa, who plays in People I Love and used to be in Sun Dots, he added some vocals and synths. He tracked over my guitar part, and I ended up removing mine completely and just keeping his. And then Boone, who’s on basically most of the record, added the kind of stereotypical shoegaze guitar wash. It sounds cool. I never thought I’d have a song that was so on-the-nose in that direction, but I like how it turned out. I was pretty unsure about it for a while.
What about “Gleam”?
MARK: Honestly, that one might be my least favorite on the record. It’s one of the oldest songs. I feel like I could have done more to make it interesting. Zayn plays drums on it, which I like. Lyrically I feel like it’s a little… I don’t know. It just comes up all the time in conversation, but I’m not sure it’s fully earned that.
You’ve been making a lot of videos for this album. Is the label asking you for content or is that something you like doing?
MARK: They definitely want content, yeah. But Trevor has been really cool, he just loves making videos. He lives with our drummer and guitar player, so he comes out on tour and to recordings, and he splices together photos and footage.
I tend to listen to music for the vibe, I don’t pay a ton of attention to lyrics. I’ll sing along if something is repeated, but really I take in the whole thing, which is sort of a disservice to your songwriting. I don’t always know what you’re writing about and sometimes I don’t stop to find out. But I did pick up a line in “Swimming” about singing songs that someone else wrote. What is that line about?
MARK: I guess a lot of the time when I’m writing songs, they come from a pretty painful place. Sometimes I was playing a lot of shows, but more often I was spending a lot of time alone, writing and recording. It can feel strange to perform something that came from somewhere very personal. Like: I’m singing about this painful thing, but I don’t necessarily feel that way anymore. Or maybe I do, or maybe it’s even worse. But I’m not re-entering that headspace every time I perform it.
So almost like you don’t recognize the person who wrote it?
MARK: Yeah, just a little bit of detachment from it.
That actually connects to something I heard when I interviewed Aaron from Fust. I asked him if his songs were fact or fiction. He said most are based on real things, but he writes from a third-party perspective, like someone watching him from the outside. He called it the unreliable narrator. He said: I’m writing about my own life from the unreliable narrator’s perspective. That blew my mind.
MARK: Yeah. And it makes sense, because how could you write from an extremely personal, biased place and fully encapsulate the true nature of what happened? It’s going to be unreliable just by virtue of your limited perspective.
He also said he uses people’s names in songs but the names aren’t of real people, he’s just trying to personalize the emotions he’s trying to convey.
MARK: That’s really interesting. I feel like that’s similar to what I was doing on two early songs, “Indiana” and “Virginia.” I was using those place names in a similar way, they’re not really about those places specifically. But if you’ve been to a place like that or have an image of it in your head, it can take you somewhere. And in a more literal sense, I was using those words as placeholders for people’s names.
I was going to ask what your connection to those states was. That’s a real talent, making someone think maybe one thing when you’re really representing something else entirely.
MARK: I have spent time in both of those places and know people from there. The connection isn’t nothing, but it’s not the whole story either.
Are you keeping a tour diary at all?
MARK: I started to on this past tour. I’ve done it occasionally.
I love watching music documentaries. In 10 or 20 years, those stories are going to be gold. You should be more intentional about writing them down.
MARK: Yeah, I definitely should be more intentional about it.
Are there common themes you find yourself returning to in your writing?
MARK: A lot of my stuff comes back to personal relationships, forgiveness; forgiving other people but also forgiving yourself. And especially on Carousel, the perception of oneself and how you might be perceived by others. Putting yourself out there and thinking about how that looks from the outside.
Would you be making music if people stopped listening tomorrow? Who is this new record for?
MARK: This one feels a little more like it’s for myself. But I’ve worried about that even as I’ve been making it. I still want people to connect with it, not because I want to be hugely popular, but because if this is the path I’m taking to build a career, I at least hope that what I’m saying lands with someone.
I was looking at your Bandcamp page and read quotes from people. Someone said the last record was really important in their life.
MARK: I’ve heard that before. It’s jarring, but it’s meaningful. I’ve felt that way about music too, so it’s nice to think I’m paying that forward in some way.
If a fairy godparent handed you $50,000 with no strings attached, not a label advance, no payback, what would you do with it?
MARK: Honestly, I think I’d get a better vehicle. I’m leasing something right now, which isn’t wise. And probably get everyone in the band whatever gear we’ve been needing. Then just save the rest for the road.
A vehicle makes a lot of sense for how much touring you do. Have you had the classic flat tire, vehicle breakdown experiences?
MARK: Many times. And many speeding tickets, always when our drummer Zayn is driving. Nobody else has been pulled over, only him. He’s gotten about eight tickets. Once he got two in two consecutive days, one around Milwaukee and one in Minneapolis. We also got a flat tire once and had to get it fixed at a Walmart. When we were leaving, we got pulled over because the front and back license plates didn’t match. The car had been stolen previously and it was his car, but they thought we stole it. Just insane.
That’s exactly why you need to write all of this down. If I see you at Ace of Cups in December and the album came out in May, what would make you look back and feel like the year went well?
MARK: I can’t get too specific about unannounced stuff yet, but we’re playing a festival in the UK for the first time. A few shows and then some solo dates in Europe after that. And we have some other tours lined up, one with a band from Chicago. I can’t say who yet. We might also be doing something on the west coast. There’s a lot in the works. There are so many intangibles with shows and tours, it’s hard to tell what will actually matter for your career. Playing South by Southwest helped us a lot. So hopefully we’ll just keep playing and keep sustaining ourselves doing it.
I’ve been asking every band this. Is there a song that when you hear it, instantly transports you somewhere?
MARK: The only thing that immediately comes to mind is Prince. My dad had this old Motorola flip phone with a headphone jack, and he had “1999” on it. Sometimes he would take me with him to work since I was a kid. I’d lay down in the back of his pickup truck and listen to “1999” on his flip phone. So anytime I hear that song, I think about that. It’s pretty funny how archaic a way that was to listen to music, but at the time it felt incredible, like, a Prince album on your phone? You can listen to whatever you want?
