Long before she even picked up a guitar, Jenny Scara had a feeling that she would be a musician.
Born in New Jersey but raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Scara first discovered she could sing in fifth grade. In high school, she was given a guitar and started taking lessons, eventually experimenting with her own songwriting as if it were second nature. From that point on, the idea of having a career in music always lingered in her mind.
Scara was also a student-athlete at Illinois State University, where she played soccer for four years. Eventually, she began to realize the sport wasn’t her true calling.
“If I really was in love with (playing soccer), I would have gone and done it, and it wouldn’t have been a ‘my coach telling me to do it’ sort of thing,” Scara said. “I would have just done it because that’s what I do with music. When you really love something, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s all you want to do.”
Growing up, her influences were wide-ranging. Classic rock acts like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry shared space with Frank Sinatra and 2000s pop. As a teenager, she was heavily influenced by indie bands like Young the Giant, The 1975 and The Killers.
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Scara began releasing music toward the end of graduate school at Illinois State University in 2023, where she studied politics and government. Her newest single, “Black Cat,” came out Jan. 16 as the first release from her upcoming album, “I’ve Got a Story to Tell.” The track is energetic, blending swing and indie rock with quick guitars and a catchy chorus.
The song was inspired by a bad psychedelic trip she had during her last semester of graduate school. According to Scara, the black cat serves as a metaphor for the unsettling experience and the uncertainty she felt about the next chapter of her life.
Scara said she wasn’t thinking too hard about the song’s meaning when writing it — the ideas just came naturally. But “Black Cat” reflects a turning point: the moment when she realized music was her true passion and that she wanted to pursue it without regrets.
In her songwriting, Scara has previously dealt with struggles of self-doubt and high expectations. Early on, writing songs was effortless, but, over time, perfectionism crept in.
“At the beginning, it was so easy for me to write songs, and I could just pop out a song in like 15 minutes,” Scara said. “But now, I’m sort of having the opposite problem, where I’m trying to be less critical of what I’m writing because I’m trying to make sure that I’m leaving room for creativity.”
Recognizing that overthinking gets in the way of her writing, Scara has worked to let go of the inner voice that says: “This isn’t good enough.” Writing alone allows her to be vulnerable and honest with herself, even when it feels uncomfortable.
She also doesn’t want her songs to spell everything out for her listeners.
“I’m not going to tell you exactly what this song is about,” Scara said. “I want you to do a little bit of the work too, and I think that allows you to apply it to your own life and the things that you’re going through.”
Scara’s upcoming album, “I’ve Got a Story to Tell,” which comes out March 27, expands on that storytelling approach. According to Scara, the record captures a period of her life after grad school, when she moved back home and navigated her own personal growth.
Noah Savoie, Scara’s roommate and engineer on the album, has worked closely with her in the past months to bring her vision to life.
“I think (the album) brings back a time period of music that is almost never touched on or given the light of day,” Savoie said. “There’s a lot of rockabilly, there’s a lot of blues influences, and she’s putting it in a more modern context.”
For Scara, music isn’t about chasing fame — it’s about forming a community and creating music that lifts people up. Performing live and engaging with fans has helped her cultivate gratitude for those who support her work as an artist.
“Especially now, life is so weird, and the world is so weird and scary and sad,” Scara said. “I feel like being able to have this thing that people can come to and enjoy, and then just feeling like they’re a part of a community of people is probably the best thing that any artist could do right now.”
Despite the self-doubt and weight of her own expectations, Scara mainly focuses on staying present. Daily meditation and journaling keep her grounded, reminding her to resist the urge to stress about a future she can’t control.
“(Scara) sees the other artists and she wants to be there, and she’s doing everything that she possibly can to get there,” said Tyler Witt, owner of Broken Record Music Club and Scara’s manager. “There’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes that a lot of people don’t get to see, and Jenny is willing to put in that work every day.”
Ultimately, Scara hopes to sustain herself through music, support her family and continue building her career “to the moon,” as she commonly phrases it with Witt. For now, she’s letting her own creative instincts guide the way.
“I’ve always known that if you just believe in yourself and tell yourself that you can do something, you’ll do it,” Scara said.
