APRA Development Award Winner Wants You To Follow In His Footsteps

Each year, APRA AMCOS' Personal Development Awards seek to ferret out the nation's hard-working, up-and-coming musicians most deserving of career support, coming armed with more than $15,000 in prizes to help the cause.

The competition spans a wealth of categories, including Popular Contemporary (comprising pop, rock, blues, folk, hip hop, dance and R&B), Country, Jazz, Classical, Film & Television and Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander, as well as a separate $12,000 grant for a promising Indigenous Australian musician or member of the media as part of the Smugglers Of Light initiative. In previous years, it's turned up a pretty impressive list of winners, including the likes of Gotye, Abbe May, Husky Gawenda and London-via-Sydney-via-Wagga Wagga Indigenous Australian musician Brendon Boney, who with his wife Tessa performs in the spousal "pop-folk-love" duo Microwave Jenny.

Speaking to The Music from Darwin, Boney describes the PDAs as "one of my favourite little things that I've done", and a "really, really beneficial thing to be a part of" — although finding out that he had won 2011's award came as something of a memory-jogger at the time.

"I just got to pick a few songs, put a little bio together, send it off and then I'd actually kind of forgotten about it until a few months later, when I got my phone call from APRA asking if I was in Sydney or if I could come and be a part of the announcement," he told The Music. "But yeah, it was a really, really proud moment for me, because before then I hadn't really had any measure of my songwriting. You know, it was a very personal, intimate thing; I hadn't really gotten too much outside criticism, I guess, of my art, so getting that kind of validation was really, really nice."

On a more practical level, Boney says, "The prizes were ridiculous. When I won, it was a really, really beneficial award to win", with not only the cash support going towards greatly advancing his work with Microwave Jenny, but the signal boost he received as a result of winning similarly solidifying his notoriety in the industry.

"It was pretty crazy, because, I mean, one of the cool things about winning a PDA is all the publications that kind of print your name afterwards, you know; Microwave Jenny's name was popping up in all kinds of nooks and crannies that it hadn't before, so that was really, really cool," Boney said. "That's not something that a lot of people think about when they go for these awards, but that was one of the really cool things, was just the reach was pretty broad. A lot of people know about the PDAs, and that was a really, really cool thing just to have people, when I was introducing myself to other musicians or people in the industry and saying, 'Brendon Boney,' and having people respond back, 'Ah, yes! I just heard, congratulations, you've won a PDA,' and that was amazing.

"And the money that I got was huge. You know, for any kind of struggling musician, unsigned artist, sitting back, trying to make a living out of your arse and doing nothing else, it really did give us the opportunity to kind of serve up a level of professionalism with our work with Microwave Jenny; it allowed us to go to the United Kingdom and live there and record there and write there… it really took it to a whole different level from what we were working at before. It was really, really awesome."

With so much help so easily available, Boney is ultimately full of encouragement for anyone thinking about applying to be a part of this year's categories — and if you are, be quick, because they close on Tuesday — saying that eligible creators should "definitely" take the time to put their name in the ring. 

"APRA want to support Australian composers and musicians and songwriters, they want to support you, they want to give you this money; that's why these things exist," he said. "And somebody has to win this support, you know; they're dying to give it to up-and-coming musicians, so get something in there. I was just as likely to win as anybody else who got something in there, and there was just a bunch of people who were judging who happened to like my stuff that year, so it's definitely worth it.

"It's a really easy thing to get involved with, and the rewards could be massive."