The multi award winning star will perform alongside local musicians in the free community concert, on Thursday August 17 at Buchanan Park Complex.

Mount Isa Police are paying for the concert, which Cassar-Daley said was a unique and encouraging action, considering the importance of the cause.

“I see signs of it on my way around this country. I find it’s a bit of the scourge of our community that never gets talked about very often,” he said.

The musician says while he has never had domestic violence in his life, people related to him have been affected in different ways.

“I thought you know what, I need to be a part of this in a stronger manner and actually do shows that are themed around it sometimes as well,” he said.

The artist said it’s easy for him to bring up the heavy subject of violence in music, which is a wonderful communicator.

“There are certain songs that I aim towards domestic violence, and I think that’s important.”

“The more we talk about it the more awareness we bring to it, because it is one of the issues in our society that really does get pushed under the carpet, really quick.

“What got me involved was looking at some of the statistics like, nearly one woman a week is killed through domestic violence. I thought someone was making it up. That alone scared me into action.

“I think it is insidious, it harms families,” he said.

One of Troy’s songs pointing at domestic violence, ‘Everything’s Going to Be Alright’, features a choir of local singers.

“There’s about 30 people in the choir so far, and I think it’s building,” Cassar-Daley laughed.

“I’m just so looking forward to performing with them, I can’t wait to hear what they do with the two songs that we get to be a part of,” Cassar-Daley said.

Troy’s band changes depending on the show; with a full band including keyboard with rhythm section, or sometimes fiddle and steel guitar, which he says is “very sad and just gorgeous”. 

The two time Aria award winning artist has released a new album and book, titled, ‘The Things I Carry Around’, which he said was a difficult task at times.

“It’s sort of silly because you put a lot of work on yourself – any people that decide to write a book, I tip my hat to to them because it’s the closest I’ve come to a divorce in my whole married life… crazy.”

“It took me over a couple of years, I stopped and started the process for a bit. I really wanted to write it the best I could, and I got about halfway through it and decided it was just too much.

“There was a lot of emotional stuff in there that I just didn’t really feel like confronting at the time. It becomes like, you’re either gonna tell your story or you’re gonna cop out and make it some little light write, and I didn’t want to do that.

“So it took a bit of courage to get back to it, and confront the things I’d buried long ago, about my childhood and things like that. So it took a bit longer because of that,” he said.

Cassar-Daley comes from a “big beautiful Indigenous family”, and an equally big Maltese family on his father’s side.

“The disfunction of living between two cultures like that was confusing for me, I had issues with my stepdad and it was all that sort of stuff that I’d wanted to fix about my life when I got married and tried to keep the family together as well.”

“I guess you have to talk about all that stuff, you have to talk about all the things that made you who you are, and I got a bit sick of talking about myself, to tell you the truth,” he said.

This week Troy has just returned home after performing two shows at the Broadbeach Country Music Festival, paid for by ratepayers.

“I had my wife there with me, and just a really lovely band of people to share the music with, and it was a great experience.”

He is looking forward to playing for Mount Isa and then Doomadgee for the Frontier Days Music Festival.

“I’m sort of on a high, but I’m looking forward to creating more of a high when I get back out to the gulf, that’s for sure,” Cassar-Daley said.

Opening the concert will be Mount Isa Emergency Services and Defence band ‘The Hoax’ at 6:30pm, before Cassar-Daley and band at 7.30pm.

Gates open at 6pm and entry is free.