Troy Cassar-Daley (born 18 May 1969) is an Australian country music songwriter and entertainer. Cassar-Daley has released thirteen studio albums, two live albums and five compilation albums over 30 years, including the platinum-selling The Great Country Songbook with Adam Harvey. Throughout this time he has received awards including five ARIA Music Awards, forty Golden Guitars, nine Deadly Awards (Australian Indigenous Artist Awards), four Country Music Association of Australia Entertainer of the Year awards and two National Indigenous Music Awards. Early life and career Cassar-Daley was born on 18 May 1969 in the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills to a Maltese-Australian father and an Aboriginal mother from the Gumbaynggirr and Bundjalung people. 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. 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. Solo career 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 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. His follow-up, Big River (1999),won another best country album ARIA Award at the ARIA Music Awards of 2000. His next four studio albums were Long Way Home (2002), Borrowed & Blue (2004), Brighter Day (2005),