Published in the Quad-City Times on Aug. 24, 2024

I’ve got a bad habit of speaking in hyperbole when I get excited about something. After all, there are about 100 records that I regularly call “one of the best albums of all-time.”

So I understand if you’re going to take this next claim with a grain of salt, but I just want to say out front that I mean it.

Clover County is going to be the next big thing.

The Georgia-based singer-songwriter — real name Amandagrace Schiano — is on her first-ever tour right now and performed at Raccoon Motel for Alternating Currents Saturday night.

The music is fantastic — pensive, thoughtful, sincere. But what’s just as impressive is the trajectory Schiano’s career is on. 

At just 23 years old, the songwriter has already recorded songs in Nashville with alt-country band Hovvdy and written alongside a Harry Styles-affiliated songwriter. A day after her show in Davenport, Schiano flew to Los Angeles to meet with producers and writers like Caleb Harper, the frontman for Australian indie-pop band Spacey Jane. 

This summer, Schiano opened for one of her songwriting idols in Shakey Graves. She has plans to play with country singer Morgan Wade later this fall. 

In May, Schiano graduated from University of Georgia. Weeks later, she opened for folk band Lord Huron for two straight nights at the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre. It brought her to tears on stage. 

It’s all happening fast. 

“It was hard to process, because you look up and everything is out of your peripheral,” she said, seated next to her boyfriend Garrett at a crowded Great River Brewing, where the two took refuge from the Saturday rainfall.

“I’ll never forget it. I think about it once a day.”

“It was sold out both nights, too,” a supportive Garrett chimed in quietly, his eyes wide. 

It’s pretty astonishing, then, to think about the crowd Schiano got at the Motel on Saturday. Her set started about 45 minutes behind schedule, after a late-running raunchy comic cleared some of the place out.

So for most of the set, Schiano’s crowd fluctuated between one and two dozen fans. Still, she commanded it, unleashing a sass and charisma that I didn’t expect, considering she was admittedly nervous about the crowd engagement during our interview hours earlier. 

“Banter would be the main thing I remember about an artist,” she said.

Throughout the show, Schiano handled it with ease. She ribbed a fan who walked up for a high five. She threw out free T-shirts from a grocery bag.

But she also proved her musical acumen, playing infectious, already-released songs like “Outlaw,” “Glass & Gold” and “Black Leather Daydream.” 

The performance crept past the Motel’s typical midnight closing time, ending with Schiano on her knees, her guitar unplugged. Three times, she introduced the “last song,” and it never was. They were all fantastic. The loyalists in attendance stuck it out. 

“If you guys are still here, I’m gonna keep going,” she promised. 

Schiano said she plans to release an EP later this year and a debut album in 2025. Among the unreleased songs she played on Saturday night: “Into This With You,” “Glass Coke Bottle” and “Uncharted.” 

She also played “blue suede eyes,” a song you can only find on the Clover County Bandcamp profile. It’s the first one she ever released, a tribute to her father, a longtime radio host who wrote songs for his own recreation.

He’s the biggest inspiration behind Schiano’s music career, she said. And the song takes us into the room where his songs were made. There are hundreds of records in piles, a metal microphone stand and guitar in the corner and a poster of Elvis on the wall.

One day, when Schiano’s dad was out of town for a few weeks, the room went quiet. That’s where the Clover County story began. 

“I really missed the music in the house, and thought, what a cool surprise if I taught myself guitar and played it for him by the time I saw him next,” she said. “And it worked. He was very impressed and it brought us really close.”

Now, a new room is needed at Schiano’s parents house for her own songs. There are two tubs of diaries in their basement, she said.

Sometimes, she revisits them and finds cryptic lyrics that have turned into self-fulfilling prophecies, songs about a girl’s dreams that now look like Schiano’s reality. 

“It’s cool looking back on things like that,” she said. “It’s like: ‘Oh shoot, It happened?’” 

So I’m putting my expectations on paper, too: Clover County will be the next big thing. Pull this from a tub of columns in a couple of years and check.