On the launch of his new album, The World Today, one of the monoliths of
Australian country
music opens up about the things closest to his heart
On 1 April 2019,
Singer and songwriter Troy Cassar-Daley was finishing up a song with Cold Chisel guitarist Ian Moss when he took a phone call. His father, who had been depressed and in poor health following a stroke, had taken his own life. The song’s chorus – “watching it all go south” – took on a too-real darker hue.
As 2019 stretched into the pandemic of 2020, Cassar-Daley entered a downward spiral. His longstanding marriage to broadcaster Laurel Edwards, with whom he has two adult children, was suffering. The son of a Bundjalung woman from Grafton in north-eastern New South Wales, he tried to escape back to country, seeking his grandmother’s counsel.