From married man to fatherhood and now to the cusp of achieving musical greatness.
Innisfail's Cole Malone has had a remarkable past few years.
The former Ottawa area native came to Innisfail in 2006. He signed a music development deal with an Airdrie company in 2008. While working full-time in the oilfield services industry as a health and safety coordinator, Malone played many gigs in and out of town and was positioning himself to make it to the big time.
But the 31-year-old singer and songwriter put his music ambitions on hold in 2010 to get married and start a family with his first child Brennan. This year he kick-started his dream and entered the prestigious 2014 Nashville North Star competition at the Calgary Stampede.
“I started picking up my gigs again and this was one of the steps I took to get me back into the industry. It was a pretty good step,” said Malone, who has entered many competitions in the past but none as big as the Nashville North Star event. “This is sponsored by Royalty Records and there were a lot of the other acts that were there. To get in with the Calgary Stampede and Nashville North is a big thing for a country singer.”
The Stampede event, which is attended by the biggest and most important names in the Canadian country music industry, attracted about 150 applicants who each had to submit a video on-line. The competition was narrowed down to 10, and then six.
On July 5, they each had to perform at the Stampede's Nashville North. Malone performed Keith Urban's "But For The Grace Of God" and
‘Keep Your Hands to Yourself' by the American southern rock group The Georgia Satellites. It was a stellar performance by Malone. But it fell just short of number one. He was the runner-up.
“Part of me says that I always want to be first but to be picked second by industry representatives I am honoured to have that, especially since it was the first time I entered into the competition,” said Malone, whose wife Courtney attended his final performance. “I got lots of exposure from this. Things have started happening in the past few days that have not happened in many years.”
Although he did not get to take home the big prizes for finishing first – like a
recording session, a record release to country radio stations across Canada, and $2,500 cash – Malone still picked up a $1,000 cheque and plenty of solid interest from the country music industry.
“This is huge, already in two or three days things are starting to work, things are in the planning stage now. There is some songwriting happening. There are some plans in the works to do perhaps an EP,” said Malone, adding preliminary discussions have started with music industry officials. “There's nothing concrete but there has been lots of support, telling me I am in the right zone now to continue on doing this.”
