Kirsty Lee Akers can't escape renovated houses.
The Golden Guitar-winning singer-songwriter and her husband Jesse starred in Channel 9's The Block last year and are now mid-way through renovating their own home at Wangi Wangi, on the western shores of Lake Macquarie.
"We walked away with $300,000, which is life-changing money, and now we're working on our own house and filming our own reno and turning that into a series," she said.
"It feels like we're still on The Block."
Akers, like so many other artists, struggled with COVID restrictions and lockdowns.
"In the beginning I was so depressed. I had a whole year of shows booked in that took months and months to plan and they all got cancelled within two weeks," she said.
"It was a weird feeling, going from having shows every weekend to having nothing. I had to adapt and find new ways to be creative."
Wild is the end result. The album - her sixth - is being launched at this year's Tamworth Country Music Festival. She worked on it with long-time co-writers Phil Barton, Trey Bruce and Bruce Wallace via Zoom from Nashville.
"It's great to finally have some new music out there because my previous album came out in 2018. It's been four years between albums, which is crazy," she said.
"I was meant to be over in Nashville in April 2020, writing songs. I always try to do a trip to Nashville every year and just spend a month straight writing every day with different writers.
"A lot of artists started getting on Zoom and co-writing songs and I wasn't very keen on that in the beginning, but then I gave it a go and we ended up with so many songs."
The lyrics on Wild are typically Akers. Tongue-in-cheek and a lot of fun.
"I might not sound it when I'm singing but a lot of the time I'm actually being a bitch," she said, laughing.
"I love that about songwriting - you can pretty much tell someone where to go in a song and they don't even realise.
"As for the tone of the album, yes, it's different in a production sense. I've always been someone who doesn't want to do the same thing twice. Creatively, I struggle with that. But no matter what I do, my voice is country as, so it's always going to sound country no matter what I sing."
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Wild was produced by Akers and released on her own record label, Rider Records.
"We went into our second lockdown and we were trying to figure out what direction to go - was I going to stay with a label or go out on my own?. It's always been a bucket list item of mine. Anyway, Jesse and my manager Perrin and I decided it was now or never."
Akers, who describes herself as a "control freak", says it was "scary but an amazing feeling" to start her own record label.
"I signed my first record deal at 18 years old and I've had record deals ever since then. I'm now 34. It's amazing to be able to release an album that is purely, 100 per cent, me," she said.
"We don't want to be the kind of label that makes artists feel that they have to make decisions that they are not entirely happy with, or record music they're not keen on.
"We'll obviously give our opinions and advice but essentially the label is about supporting artists and being in the background."
