Cloverdayle [Live Music]

One spring evening in Ridgefield, Washington, Chad and Rachel Hamar walked onto the Clark County Amphitheater stage as 18,000 spectators sized them up. Four songs later, they left that stage to waves of cheering and applause, plus a lot of puzzled people turning to their friends and asking, “Who the hell was that? And why haven’t I heard of them before?”

The answers were simple. Chad and Rachel were and are partners in music and in life. And this gig, opening for country music icon Kenny Chesney, was only the second time they had ever played as Cloverdayle.

How they earned that opportunity is but one interesting detail in the saga of Cloverdayle. Plenty of history preceded that night, going back to the moment Chad, a college freshman, and Rachel, still in high school, locked eyes across a giant, crowded room at a jazz festival. (If you remember the words to “Some Enchanted Evening” or the “Dance at the Gym” scene in West Side Story, it was exactly like that.) Before then, their childhoods forecast their eventual union. Both grew up in the state of Oregon, raised by parents who passed their love for music onto their kids. They each had an affinity for the outdoors and in particular, shared a love for riding bikes with their friends. She sang in the choir at school and at church in Bend, Oregon; he built his foundation as a drummer, kindling a grasp of groove that would later underlie the guitar rhythms that would anchor the Cloverdayle sound. Singer/songwriters like Carole King, Amy Grant and James Taylor inspired Rachel, not only to write, but to sing songs with awareness and respect of their craftsmanship. He drew similar lessons; at age 3 Chad was spellbound by the music of Bobbie Gentry, then moved from there through Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Everly Brothers, and Willie & Waylon to name a few.

No wonder they connected at that jazz festival — a connection they affirmed when Rachel enrolled a year later at the same college Chad was attending. Their uncanny creative synchronicity was clear the first time they tried writing something together. “We were at Chad’s parents’ house,” Rachel recalls. “We took some lyrics Chad had already written. He was messing around with some guitar chords. So I came up with a melody and sang his lyrics back to him. I remember him saying, ‘Oh, my! Dad! Come here! You’ve gotta hear this girl sing!”

“I still remember that first feeling of collaboration,” Chad adds. It was so inspiring to have somebody else’s insight and to combine our ideas.”