Two Fernie musicians are officially on the map.
Brothers Caleb Brown and Sam Moffat of Naturalist were named people’s choice Artist Of The Year at the 2019 Kootenay Music Awards, held in Nelson on Saturday.
As a result, they have secured a spot at the upcoming Kaslo Jazz Fest in August.
They were one of 32 artists nominated for the award, alongside fellow DJs, DJ Dubconscious, DJ Ginger and DJ Deblock.
When the brothers found out they had been named as finalists, they were excited.
“We definitely didn’t think we were going to win Artist Of The Year,” said Brown. “We were hoping maybe we could get best DJ.”
Brown and Moffat hadn’t originally planned to attend the awards banquet but after some coaxing from their friends, one of whom helped organize it, the brothers decided they would go.
With this encouragement, they thought there was a good chance they would win best DJ. Never did they think they would win Artist Of The Year.
“They wouldn’t tell if we did or not, but it just seemed like we had it. So we came all the way out there. During the awards, it was happening, they were announcing Best DJ and Ginger actually won. We were pretty devastated,” said Brown.
The brothers stayed for a few more awards and started to leave before they announced Artist Of The Year. Once again, they were encouraged to stay by some friends, who insisted on getting photos with them after the show.
Moffat and Brown admitted they were distracted as the event emcee started to announce Artist Of The Year.
“Then all of a sudden our photo came up on the screen and they started to introduce us, and we were like, no way,” said Brown.
Their award was the result of receiving the most votes online during the voting period.
In August, the brothers will be heading to Kaslo to perform at the acclaimed Kalso Jazz Fest. In the meantime, they will continue to release mixes under their guise, Naturalist Radio. You can find these playlists, released monthly, on Spotify.
Leading up to August, they plan on taking their music to a new level.
“We’re actually going to really focus this next month on getting in the studio and creating our own music. We’ve been talking about doing that for a while,” said Brown.
“Sam’s produced music before under his own name, but we really want to start getting some Naturalist tracks out there,” he added.
The brothers are excited for what the future holds.
“Things are really happening for us right now, it’s kinda crazy,” said Brown.