![Gretta Ziller's album All These Walls celebrates the joy of music. Picture by Noah Sole Gretta Ziller's album All These Walls celebrates the joy of music. Picture by Noah Sole](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/E9srhG6YCw3ZDt9UDADP4R/e9a6da1b-6453-42c0-9c44-105a50a81218.jpg/r0_0_3000_4196_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
GRETTA Ziller jokes she's the "black sheep" of her family.
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If she'd followed her parents' grand plans she'd probably be raising livestock or growing crops somewhere near the Upper Murray farmland of Thologolong in Victoria, where she grew up.
"I think my Dad always knew I was bit of a lost cause," Ziller laughs down the phone from her Melbourne home.
"I started playing violin when I was two and a half, so when you have a little toddler running around playing happy songs on her violin instead of caring about the cows or sheep, you know you can't win, because it never changed."
The world of agriculture's loss, has certainly been music's gain.
Ziller has become one of the most accomplished acts in Melbourne's fertile Americana scene.
Her critically-lauded debut album Queen of Boomtown (2017) was long-listed for the Australian Music Prize, and in a rarity for a Melbourne Americana artist, she earned two Golden Guitar nominations from the conservative Tamworth country scene.
Since then Ziller has continued to expand her musical palette to incorporate rock, pop, blues, soul and alt-country on 2021's lauded Judas Tree.
Ziller's third album All These Walls has pushed her boundaries even wider.
One minute she's channelling the breezy west coast pop of Haim (Ain't Even Your Lover), then grooving with Motown soul (St Louis) and even chugging long with foreboding blues-rock riffs (Bones).
"I don't fit nicely into any genre box," Ziller says. "I just go with that and just do me.
"It just happened that way that each song has its own sound and it all fits together as an album that sounds like me."
While the genre-hopping offers an eclectic sound for All These Walls, thematically the album is a celebration of music and life.
"The one thing I had in mind for All These Walls was to make it a joyous album," she says.
"My second album Judas Tree was fairly heavy and dark sonically and lyrically and that part of my life is over, and I wanted to produce an album that was about lighter and brighter things.
"It's about music and my love of music. About my joy. I succeeded in that."
It's difficult to find a more joyous moment than St Louis, which bursts with Hammond organ and keys, saxophones, trumpet, pedal steel guitars.
It's a song that Ziller has been attempting to write for years.
When Ziller was in her early teens she was urged by a teacher to sing for a school performance. Not knowing she could actually sing, Ziller chose St Louis Blues by the legendary W.C. Handy.
It ignited a fire in Ziller, who went on to study a Bachelor of Music at Melbourne University, majoring in voice, which initially led to a career as an opera singer.
I'd lie there at night stressing and panicking about what was going to happen. That's the truth of the matter.
- Gretta Ziller
"That song [St Louis Blues] has already been really special to me and I wanted to write a tribute to that and my musical influences," she says.
"I've been thinking about it for years on how to do it, and do it in a unique and happy way.
"During lockdown St Louis came out, so that was the way to do that."
However, that's not to say All These Walls is one-dimensional. Like all Melbourne-based artists, the pandemic's soul-destroying lockdowns left an impact on Ziller.
On album opener Cross My Fingers Ziller sings, "So I cross my fingers and hope to lose consciousness/ I know I'm fighting my mind."
"At the start of lockdown it was very tough," she says. "I'd lie there at night stressing and panicking about what was going to happen. That's the truth of the matter.
"As the album progresses I can see the more positive sides and I've been focusing on the things that you enjoy."
Live touring might have resumed and the borders are open, (Ziller flies to Nashville on Saturday to perform at Americanafest after earning a scholarship from the Academy of Country Music) but earning a living from music remains a slog.
In June the Let's Wing It Country Music Festival in Scone was cancelled a week out due to poor ticket sales.
Ziller was supposed to perform at the festival and at Mayfeld's Stag & Hunter Hotel, but pulled the trip entirely.
Last week Ziller addressed on Facebook what she described as "the elephant in the room" as many original artists struggle under cost-of-living pressures.
"It's been a rocky road, with each show costing money and a very few breaking even," she wrote.
"Paying the support and musicians and advertising. I've spent money and time on promotions, posters, radio and media interviews. Everything I could think of, yet nothing has turned the dial.
"It's a reality that's hitting many of us in the industry. I've spoken to bookers, PR folks, and label insiders.
"They've all said unless you're a major international touring act, a heritage act or one of the lucky few, the rest are struggling, like really struggling."