Innisfail has a rising country star in its midst.
Cole Malone, winner of the Nashville North Star competition last summer at the Calgary Stampede, was recently nominated for male artist of the year and the fan choice award at the Alberta Country Music Awards in Red Deer last month.
The local artist recently released his very first single, a country rock song called Half the Bottle.
“We released the single on February 1 to Canadian country radio,” said Malone. “It was produced at MCC recording studio in Calgary with Graham Sharkey and Johnny Gasparek, and was released with Royalty Records.”
The new song has already received some positive feedback and some airplay here in Alberta and across the country.
“It was picked up by an Ottawa radio station for a ‘Pick it or Kick it' night (competition),” said Malone. “It won four nights in a row.”
Like several other country songs past and present, Half the Bottle is a song that echoes a popular theme in country music – one of love found and love lost.
“The song is about someone going through a breakup and the stages that go along with it,” he said. “A bit of the down part is in the first half of the song, and then getting over you and moving on is how the rest of the song goes.
“The hook line in the song is, “if getting over you is half the battle, it's all good I still got half the bottle,” he added, noting he and two co-writers, one based in Nashville and one in British Columbia, wrote the song together.
Malone is currently working on an EP (extended play) release -- a musical recording longer than a single, but shorter than a full album or CD.
“It will be between four and six songs,” said Malone.
In addition to a busy recording schedule, Malone has also partnered up with Charisma Entertainment in Edmonton.
“We're going to be doing a lot of shows across Alberta this year. There's going to be some tours and the EP's coming out hopefully by late summer,” Malone concluded.
Half the Bottle is available on iTunes and a variety of digital retail sites including Amazon, Spotify and www.cdbaby.com
For more information or to hear the new single, visit Cole Malone's Facebook page Cole Malone Music or website at www.colemalone.com
Cole Malone
"We're going to be doing a lot of shows across Alberta this year. There's going to be some tours and the EP's coming out hopefully by late summer."
