Mandurah band Applejack and Moonshine are celebrating their nominations for three awards at this year’s Western Australian Country Music Awards.
The local lads have two film clips in the Best Music Video category and are also up for Best Group of the Year.
Guitarist Dave Feenstra said the group were surprised to find out about the nominations, after entering the awards a few months ago.
“We were a little surprised as there had been some time pass between entering,” he said.
“In between that time we had been focusing on some up and coming shows such as Blues at Bridgetown, Nannup Festival, Ravenswood Blues and Roots, Country Rocks the River with Adam Brand as well as some studio time finishing off our second follow-up album
“We’ve been keeping ourselves pretty busy behind closed doors.”
Still relatively new to the scene, Applejack and Moonshine have already experienced a great deal of success.
They were nominated for Best Emerging Artist in 2018 at the WA Country Music Awards but just missed out to another Mandurah talent, Jasmine Atkins.
Feenstra said they didn’t mind going down to another local because success for the entertainment industry in the Peel region was something the band were on board with.
In fact, keeping things local is something the band pride themselves on and that’s evident in the production of their music and video clips.
Mandurah filmmaker Jaxon Foal filmed and produced both of the videos up for awards – ‘Applejack and Moonshine’ and ‘Deep, Dark, Down’.
They were filmed at the Ravenswood Hotel in the haunted cocktail lounge and the deserted front bar.
The clips also featured girls from Rivertown Cabaret as well as cameos from their record producer and special guests.
“All our film clips are tongue in cheek, slapstick comedy as it kind of suits the bands persona,” Feenstra said.
“We love making records but producing a film clip just brings a whole new dimension to the process.
“They’re like a short movie so it can be a challenge getting everything into it and telling a story in such a short time frame but it is a heap of fun.
“Audiences nowadays respond to video so much more than just putting out a record – we released our debut album and it went okay but it wasn’t until we released the music video clips that we gained some real traction overseas with quite a solid fan base in Mexico and South America.”
But there’s no rest for the wicked with Applejack and Moonshine already onto their next project.
“Our next single ‘Judgement day’ is due to be released next month but we are pretty excited about the video clip for this one,” Feenstra said.
“We thoroughly enjoy what we do so it is very, very rewarding to be able to continue doing it.”
