Victorian singer-songwriter Ally Paterson digs deep on her evocative new single \u2018Dig\u2019, out today. The track follows her previous release \u2018 Prairie Hotel Parachilna\u2019, a John Williamson cover that struck a chord with country audiences around the nation. The single climbed to #2 on the Australian Country Radio chart and remained in the Top 10 for four consecutive weeks, introducing listeners to Ally\u2019s distinctly Australian storytelling style – rustic, poetic and deeply grounded in place.
Yet long before she was writing songs in paddocks beneath the southern stars, she traded comfort for calling, bought sheep and dove headfirst into farming life with little more than determination and faith that she\u2019d figure it out along the way.
That same spirit runs through Ally\u2019s haunting new single. \u2018Dig\u2019 is an earthy, cinematic release inspired by the grit and independence of Australia\u2019s gold-rush miners, and the restless courage required to build a life from the ground up.
\u201cI was inspired by the gold-rush miners who travelled across the world to try and make a go of it, even when success wasn\u2019t guaranteed\u201d says the singer-songwriter. \u201cThe song came to me when I was at Sovereign Hill, a historical gold-fields site and replica of a gold-rush town – imagining what it would have been like to be a miner from the other side of the world, in a harsh landscape with growing unrest, big corporations and regulations moving in with increasing corruption\u2026what it would have been like to keep on digging, being independent and free.\u201d
Produced by multi award-winning Matt Fell ( Troy Cassar-Daley, Shane Nicholson, Fanny Lumsden) the track leans into rich textures of Australian folk and alt-country, forming the perfect backdrop to Ally\u2019s imagery of creek beds, hard earth, rain-soaked plains and men chasing fortune beneath harsh skies. It\u2019s an epic tale, both haunting and hopeful.
\u201cThe song is about digging your heels down and not giving in to the comforts of indolence, that real wealth and value is in the strength of character that is required to go out on your adventure, come what may,\u201d Ally says. \u201cIt is a song for the adventurous.\u201d
That philosophy is one Ally knows intimately. In 2020, she and her husband James began farming cattle before relocating their young family from Melbourne to a sheep property south of Ballarat. Neither came from generations of farming families but together they learned the trade from the ground up – often the hard way.
\u201cPeople often find our journey into farming an interesting story,\u201d Ally explains. \u201cJames was a carpenter and I was keeping books and having kids in Melbourne, and we decided to become farmers, bought a bunch of sheep and leased a sheep farm south of Ballarat. We dove in the deep end and learned on the job! Five years later, we bought some paddocks, then a house, James learned how to shear sheep, and we are WELL past the point of no return.\u201d
The idea of contributing to Australia\u2019s rich agricultural history fuels Ally\u2019s drive to stay the course. \u201cI feel extremely fortunate to be able to take part in something that has been such a big part of Australia\u2019s history, and to glean from people who have been doing it for generations. It has been a remarkable adventure, incredibly difficult at times but the most rewarding and fulfilling thing we could have done.\u201d
That quiet defiance is woven through \u2018Dig\u2019 – part bush ballad, part rallying cry. Driven by pounding rhythms, earthy instrumentation and Ally\u2019s evocative vocal delivery, \u2018 Dig\u2019 paints a portrait of people willing to endure uncertainty in pursuit of something real. With it, Ally Paterson proves she\u2019s an artist unafraid to dig beneath the surface in search of songs with substance, soul and hard-earned truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Victorian singer-songwriter Ally Paterson digs deep on her evocative new single \u2018Dig\u2019, out today. The track follows her previous release \u2018 Prairie Hotel Parachilna\u2019, a John Williamson cover that struck a chord with country audiences around the nation. The single climbed to #2 on the Australian Country Radio chart and remained in the Top 10 for … Continue reading “Ally Paterson – Dig”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2932,"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931\/revisions\/2932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}