Simone Keane spent her childhood perched in the boughs of a tree dreaming up magical universes.
Then one day the tree, dotted with red berries, was unexpectedly cut down to make way for an extension on her family's home.
"I used to climb that tree every day, it was like an escape," Keane told AAP.
"That was my first experience of grief as a child, of losing something that meant a lot to me."
Decades later, the fate of the tree is the centre of a slow and syrupy country song called Graced By Leaves, the title track on the Western Australian singer's fifth album.
"It started out about the old berry tree, but then as the song got going I realised it was a metaphor for people who grace our lives," Keane said.
"When they're no longer there, it's a hard thing to grapple with."
Trees, including the weeping peppermints that grow around her Albany home, act as signposts throughout the album, which hit number six on the ARIA Best Selling Country Albums list in November.
Kicking up the Leaves is an outwardly sun-drenched track, which veers into the dappled light and shadows of a forest.
It follows Keane's attempts to find peace after escaping a violent and controlling relationship.
"Sometimes when I try to talk about my experience people shy away from that, they don't want to know about it.
"But when you go and talk to the birds, they don't tell you to shut up ... they don't say 'why didn't you leave?'
"You can go there and let it out, and there's nothing there judging you."
Keane grew up in country Victoria, watching her dad play Beatles and Buddy Holly covers on his flamingo-pink electric guitar.
After training as a teacher she drove across the Nullarbor twice to make a new life in the west, determined to become a recording artist.
On the second and final trip she drove her Toyota Corolla on the 3000km trek, sleeping under the big galah on the Eyre Highway in South Australia along the way.
The release of her new album, which features two-time Grammy winner Lucky Oceans on pedal steel guitar, has been an odyssey too.
Keane, a self-releasing artist, has been pursuing airplay in Australia, the US and UK all while shipping her albums from home.
The late nights hunched over packing boxes and her computer was enough to strain her back.
But it's been worth it to hear her songs played on American folk stations, something she could only have imagined in her childhood whimsy.
"I'm an unknown independent artist from a really remote part of Western Australia," she said.
"It's amazing."
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