Du Quoin Singer Amelia Eisenhauer Will Relocate to Nashville in July

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[A 12-year-old Du Quoin girl who has won every amateur music competition Southern Illinois has to offer is packing up her beautiful country voice and her fiddle and moving to Music City in July.

Amelia Eisenhauer's mother, Rhonda, who joins her daughter as a backup performer, will relocate to Nashville as well. Husband and father Chris, manager of the large Neal Tire Service in Herrin, will hold things down in Du Quoin while this duo tests the waters in Nashville. A younger brother, Andy, will be involved in all of it.

"We will get our apartment in July. Amelia has been working closely with Nashville producer Jonell Polanski for the past year. Her studio is DeCapo Music. We met her at a vocal competition in Nashville in 2010 when Amelia was 10. She was a judge. Amelia didn't win, but Jonell felt Amelia had a lot of talent vocally. Jonell specializes in artists in vocal development. She did Tim McGraw's demos," Rhonda said.

Amelia has been home-schooled, but will attend school in Bellevue, Tenn., about 15 minutes from downtown Nashville. The town is just south of Nashville. "We plan to tackle a major recording project this fall," Rhona adds during a phone interview while the family was vacationing in Branson.

"We have been hanging out in Nashville for two years," Rhonda said. "We have waited until she felt comfortable doing this." The mother and daughter extend their appreciation to Keenan Rice of Du Quoin for helping her in her music development.

Rhonda said a big confidence builder was during a recent acoustic performance of the Adell song "Someone Like You." The crowd was cheering and clapping. Nobody saw it coming. I have been a closet singer my whole life and it gave me the strength to play and sing. Andy has gotten into it, too."

Rhonda said Amelia grew up playing a lot of classic and bluegrass. Her role model is singer Alison Krauss and her group Union Station.. That's about as good as it gets in music.