A crowded upper flat in Riverwest is piled with empty instrument cases. A teapot simmers on the oven and an ensemble of musicians is gathered around a drum set in the living room. They form a semicircle of moccasins, Chuck Taylors and bare feet, keeping time to a new song they’re practicing, which they soon decide will be named “Sugar Taken.” It is an early fall day and the living room windows are cracked open so the music can drift in the crisp air to the band’s namesake, East Fratney Street, below.
Calamity Janes and the Fratney Street Band (or as they simply refer to themselves, The Janes) started as a growing collaboration of friends in 2013. Asked to describe their genre, there is much buzzing among the group members. They agree they don’t like the term “indie” but they do like the term “Americana” and think that “folkgrass” is a good description. Besides the bluegrass and folk elements, there’s a touch of country and gypsy jazz to their songs as well.
More and more like-minded musicians joined the group until they filled out as a sextet. The band includes Krystal Kuehl on guitar, Allison Gross on banjo, Elizabeth Altman on guitar and clarinet (she even busts out the glockenspiel for a song) and Johanna Rose on standup bass. The four women are also vocalists in the group and harmonize like a choir of country angels. Their song “Easier, Better” could work for either a wedding or a funeral.
“We started with just us four ladies and we thought it was fitting to be named after this sharp shootin’ pioneer woman,” Kuehl says of the group’s patron namesake, the famous frontierswoman born Martha Jane Cannary.
The group eventually was rounded out by William Rose on drums and Ernest Brusubardis IV on violin. They released their first album Easier, Better in June.
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Back in The Janes’ practice space/living room, the group runs through “Sugar Taken,” and then practices “In the Garden,” a bouncy tune that will give you an uncontrollable urge to put on a cowboy hat and do-si-do. While Brusubardis cranks out a violin solo that opens their next song, “Hell of a Time,” cups are filled with Throat Coat tea (“our current band mainstay,” Altman says) and passed over the drum set as the melancholy song unfolds.
The Janes will take the stage again on Sunday, Sept. 28, at the Hotel Foster as part of the venue’s Soundtrack Series, tied to the Milwaukee Film Festival. It’ll be the last chance to check them out for a while. After the gig, the band will take a hiatus, citing school, traveling and having children as reasons for time off. A few of the band members will continue to play with various other groups they are associated with, including Thistledown Thunders, a bluegrass ensemble, and Hothead Caravan, a gypsy swing/hot jazz group.
The Janes plan to reunite in February and say they’ll be greater inspired by new individual life adventures. “We’ve all been doing a lot of gigs, a lot of stuff,” Gross explains, “so I think it’s going to be nice to take a breather, step away and come back refreshed with new ideas and songs and experiences.”
Calamity Janes and the Fratney Street Band play Hotel Foster on Sunday, Sept. 28, at 9 p.m.
