Troy Cassar-Daley

Troy Cassar-Daley was born on 18 May 1969^[1] in the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills to a Maltese-Australian father and an Aboriginal mother from the Gumbaynggirr and Bundjalung people.^[2][3] At a very young age, he moved with his mother to Grafton in north-eastern New South Wales. At eleven, Troy went to the Tamworth Country Music Festival and returned the next year to busk on the streets.^[4]

At 16, he and his band, Little Eagle, were touring the North Coast of New South Wales and he made the top 10 in Tamworth's Toyota Star Maker Quest. He won the 1986 "Search for a Star" competition and then toured with Brian Young for seven months, in which he began to develop his songwriting skills. After returning home he replaced James Blundell as leader of country music band The Blue Heeler Band.^[1]

By late 1993 Cassar-Daley had enough original songs for a debut EP. The first single "Dream Out Loud" was released on 24 October 1994^[5] by Sony Music and reached number-one on the Australian country music charts. His first album, Beyond the Dancing, was released in January 1995 and won the ARIA Award for Best Country Album at the ARIA Music Awards of 1995. At the 1996 Country Music Awards, in Tamworth, Cassar-Daley won Best Male Vocalist. He also made a cameo appearance in the motion picture Race the Sun in which he performed a song in a bar scene.

In June 1996, Cassar-Daley was part of the Australian Country Music Showcase in Nashville. The Showcase included Lee Kernaghan, Gina Jeffreys and Tommy Emmanuel. As a result, Cassar-Daley returned to the US to record his new album True Believer (1998) with Steve Dorff.^{[citation needed]} His follow-up, Big River (1999),won another best country album ARIA Award at the ARIA Music Awards of 2000.^[6] His next three studio albums were Long Way Home (2002), Borrowed & Blue (2004), and Brighter Day (2005), the latter also winning a best country album ARIA Award. His next album, I Love This Place (2009) also won an Aria award for best country album and marked his change of record labels from Sony to Liberation Music.^[1][7][8]

Cassar-Daley performed the national anthem at the 2003 NRL grand final. He partnered up with Kate Ritchie for the singing competition It Takes Two aired on Seven Network in 2006. In May 2007 he re-appeared on the same show,^[9] this time partnered with Krystal Forscutt,^[10] a former contestant on Network Ten's Big Brother program. The same year, Cassar-Daley was featured in Wiggles music videos for the songs "Old Dan Tucker" and "Turkey in the Straw". Cassar-Daley with Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson played together at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 14 March 2009 for Sound Relief which was a multi-venue rock music concert in support of relief for the Victorian Bushfire Crisis.^[11][12] The event was held simultaneously with another concert taking place at the Sydney Cricket Ground.^[11] All the proceeds from the Melbourne Concert went to the Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Relief Appeal.^[11][12][13]

Cassar-Daley went on to release the albums Home (2012), The Great Country Songbook with Adam Harvey (2013), and Freedom Ride (2015).^[1] In August 2016, Cassar-Daley released his first book, an autobiography of his early life and music career titled Things I Carry Around with an accompanying album of the same title.^[14] In 2017 Cassar-Daley was the 50th inductee into the prestigious Australian Roll of Renown.^[15] In October 2018, Cassar-Daley released his 42-track double album Greatest Hits, along with a new single called "Wouldn't Change A Thing" on the Bloodlines label, part of Mushroom Group.^[16] The extensive album was also released on vinyl.^[17]

In June 2020, Cassar-Daley signed a worldwide label deal with Sony Music Entertainment Australia; he had first signed to the label in 1995.^[18] He released the albums Christmas for Cowboys in 2020 and The World Today in 2021, which won the best country album award at that year's ARIA Music Awards.^[19][20][21]

In 2024, he released his next studio album, Between the Fires, touring the country for the first time since 2019 to promote it. He recorded the album at his family home at Halfway Creek in Northern New South Wales, as he was grieving the loss of his mother.^[22]

Cassar-Daley is married to radio and television presenter Laurel Edwards with whom he has two children.^[23][24] One of their children is singer-songwriter Jem Cassar-Daley.^[25]

In 2020, Cassar-Daley's participation in Australia's Who Do You Think You Are? was broadcast on SBS, where he traced both his ancestral roots on his father's side in Malta, and his mother's Aboriginal Australian ancestry.^[26]

Cassar-Daley received his 45th Golden Guitar at the 53rd edition of the awards in January 2025.^[48] He has also received^{[as of?]} nine Deadly Awards (Australian Indigenous Artist Awards), four Country Music Association of Australia Entertainer of the Year awards, and two National Indigenous Music Awards.^[49][19]